Not your average horror movie

Rating: 7/10 (2 April 2020)

The Witch is one of the best horror movies I've seen. The production design and the use of mostly natural light creates a realistic environment which reinforces the audience's suspension of disbelief which, in my opinion, is more important in horror movies than in movies of other genres. Eggers manages to create a dark atmosphere which makes you feel uneasy throughout the movie, a quality he improves on in The Lighthouse (2019). A common criticism of many horror movies is that they use cheap pop-up scares to scare the viewers, something Eggers avoids in this movie. There are only three, maybe four, scenes that look like other horror movies. The rest of the horror comes from the paranoia and distrust within the family the movie depicts. Strong 7/10-