Atmosphere and Scenic, But All Style, Little Substance

Rating: 4/10 (1 March 2016)

To be cautious, let me start with SPOILERS ARE INCLUDED. That said:
I will preface by saying I wanted to see this movie, and I wanted to like it. Historical horror has worked well with me in the past. The premise holds together as a great send-off. A family rejected by their community, forced to eke out an existence at the border of an ominous wood, fueled by zealotry and potentially paranoia.
What the film does right: It is beautifully shot. It gives a great atmosphere of starkness, and one can palpably sense what sort of desperation could occur. The lighting of the scenes, with its low glow and candlelit imagery reinforces this. The sound works well with this (most of the time), and the actors manage to deliver some effective scenes, two in particular standing out.
When a child first disappears, when a daughter confronts her father, these scenes by themselves read very well, if they don't connect well with each other. But herein lies the fundamental problem with this movie. It doesn't tell a story, at least not as a whole.
As you watch the movie, scene to scene, it seems more like a series of unconnected or at best very loosely connected vignettes than a story. In a different sort of film, that may have been all right as well, except this is a film that takes a singular point of view with this one family. At first, it looks like it will be a story of seeking a lost sibling, then a story of paranoia, then a story of supernatural witches picking off the family, then a potential story of punishment for indecent thoughts as a sin, then a story of child abuse pushing a character to enact vengeance on her family, and so on and so forth. The longer you watch it, the more you are waiting for the moment for the plot to turn, for the story, or whatever message the film is trying to put forth, to present itself. Except it never does. The writing at the end of the film pretty much confirms it, as the film reveals it was based on numerous separate witchcraft stories of the era. It doesn't tell a story because it has no one story to tell. Following its anticlimactic scenes, you are left with an ending that is as unsatisfying as it is nonsensical, and numerous holes in both the story and plot.
The titular witch is never really identified, whether it is an old hag, a younger counterpart, one of the main characters, or if any of these are the same person or not. . .and honestly, leaving the theatre I am not sure I cared. "Evil animals" switch likewise, from rabbits to birds to goats, with no specific internal logic or reason presented. Plot points are developed and just as quickly abandoned seeking the next "scare", but the scare never comes. And honestly, it is a shame. For a film with such great potential, a very worthy theme, beautiful shots, good sound, even a solid cast. . .I left never having any desire to see it again.
Two out of five stars, being generous, and that is mostly for the cast doing the best they could with little, and for the talented cinematography and lighting/sound designs.