Overwhelming Experience of Terror

Rating: 9/10 (27 February 2016)

The new indie-horror The Witch will cause one of the following two reactions in anyone brave enough to face it: 1) to run away as far and as fast as possible from the residuals of nightmare fuel; or 2) to dive in deeper, seeking out the bleak origins and intense terrors underlying its cold surface. Either reaction would be legitimate, as its unsettling visuals and themes are as enveloping as they are hard-to-stomach. Less a forceful, shocking horror than an atmospheric vision of fear, these two disparate effects point to the same truth: The Witch is an overwhelming experience of sheer terror. Set in 17th century New England, teenager Thomasin and her family are banished from their paranoid town and forced to make a life of their own. As witchcraft and black magic begin to make their way out of the neighboring woods and into the family's life, things go from bad to worse. Newcomer Eggers directs with such fervency for authenticity, it feels like he time-traveled to capture this unique era for horror. His characters carry all the affectations you expect of the period (old-fashioned English, enclosed communities), but more importantly, each member of the small cast is layered with empathy and dark humanity. Those characters, coupled with the dreary beauty of the visuals and the mesmerizing score, give us a clear first-look at a fearless talent. Eggers not only has a handle on the surface level aesthetics, but dives into some deep wells of thought, like religion vs. spirituality and the very notion of innocence. Thematically propulsive, visually rich, and disarmingly demented, The Witch casts a spell you can't learn even at Hogwarts.