Hmmm

Rating: Null/10 (19 February 2016)

It could be said that the point of this film is that the nature of evil is nature itself, as much of what happens could be explained, with today's knowledge and science, to be natural phenomena caused by the poor living conditions in the raw nature, but to this God-fearing farming family in 1630s New England, the unknown and unexplained was thought to be sorcery and witchcraft, as they slowly begin to suspect one of their three surviving kids may be a witch, possessed by spirits, following the death of their middle child.
But it could also be said this film, and all of its grey-hued frames, should have been released in independent/ art house cinemas, because I don't think general audiences will go for such a slow burning (perhaps a bit too slow, at times) Gothic, folk horror. Images of injured and dead animals, and dying and dead kids, were extremely difficult to watch, I had to look away a couple of times. Quite a few (maybe 8 to 10 of the 40-odd) audience members left during the film, and there was a mass exodus when the credits began. Within 30 seconds of the film ending, I was the only one remaining, the only one who stayed through the closing credits.
This has at least two endings, when the screen goes black for several seconds. The first time, another scene eventually follows. The second time, the closing credits eventually begin, which, as formulaic of a criticism as this may be, made this final scene feel tacked on.
While the film got under my skin, to be sure, I'm not sure could recommend this, or ever watch it again. This film also reminds me of the tone of 1971's, The Blood On Satan's Claw, another Gothic horror I enjoyed, but probably couldn't watch again. The shot of witch in red coming out of the dilapidated cabin toward the boy was beautifully eerie, and reminded me of some visual Jean Rollin might have done in the early 1970s.
I must give credit both to Ralph Ineson who, as the father, is excellent, and to writer/ director Robert Eggers for putting out such an uncompromisingly bleak horror film, not watered down for the PG13 crowd, but again, some of the images were too difficult to watch, even for a horror film fan like myself. Being a speaker of a multitude of languages, the use of Old English didn't bother me, but I can also understand why it put off a lot of reviewers.
If this was screened at Sundance in January 2015, that means it must have been filmed in 2014 (at least, if not earlier than that) so why was it not released until February 2016?