"What went we out into this wilderness to find?"

Rating: 8/10 (31 January 2020)

Robert Eggers vividly recreates an authentic Puritan world in this unnerving film boosted by a strong atmosphere and tremendous performances from its cast. Ralph Ineson steals the show here as William, a devout Christian father who takes his family out of the plantation they are living in after a disagreement he has on religious matters with the plantation leaders. They set their markers down in the New England wilderness, and begin to farm. Strange and devastating things begin to occur before long. The baby Samuel vanishes while outside with the eldest daughter Thomasin (brilliant performance by Anya Taylor-Joy) and the crops fail. Facing starvation, the family soon begins to turn on each other, as Puritan fears and paranoia suffocate the household.
"The Witch" offers a subtle type of horror in an original and unique setting. The film plays like you are watching a heavy drama on stage ("The Crucible", perhaps?) and yet the horror elements just keep building and building, accompanied by a strange score, and serve to rack up the tension, and your nerves, before reaching its crescendo in the final scene. Eggers put a marker down with this film. What more is to come?