gets under your skin and haunts you

Rating: 10/10 (19 February 2016)

Sometimes you can't believe what you're seeing in a cineplex that will more than likely only show the latest from the major studios. A film like The Witch or most other films from the studio A24 - mostly (if not all) done independently and then picked up for distribution - such as Under the Skin or Springbreakers, would normally be relegated to some art-house theater where not many people could see it. But unlike some distributors who think in only day-and-date theatrical/VOD (or just VOD only), A24 puts something like The Witch as basically a mainstream release (needless to say I saw the trailer for months, many times, in front of big horror and other releases). But I love that a film that goes for being all about simply scaring you by its brooding imagery, period dialog and actors who you won't know unless you have every cast member of Game of Thrones memorized (hint, it's the parents), gets to be seen by so many people. It's not about silly jump scares or characters who are idiots... well, not in the sense of the usual teenagers, but let's get to what I mean.
This is all about witchcraft, but it's also not the simple 'riding around on broomsticks' shenanigans or anything that comes close to being jokey. Filmmaker Robert Eggers (which is all the more astonishing as it's the director's *debut*) suffuses his actors and crew into a setting that is unmistakably 17th century New England, and it's from here everything else can be conjured up. His story follows a family of Puritans from England who are cast out from their community (we don't know why, no real need to, except that the father and mother are, to say the least, very religious, even for the Puritans!) They set up a farm and are preparing for a long season until they can grow their crops. They have a bunch of kids, an teenage daughter, an adolescent boy, two twins and a baby. Right at the start the baby is taken by... who? What?
Sometimes having some ambiguity can work in a film's favor to make the horror from the story and place even more potent. There's not too much ambiguity with The Witch (unless someone wants to warp around things to their liking, or found something I don't know), and it's clear: there is some real heavy-duty black magic going on in the nearby woods, and whether the spirits (in human and animal form) come to the family because they're religious or just because they're evil beings that like to slather themselves with blood is a little more open to interpretation. And in less confident hands it could have become schlocky or unconvincing, set in a period so that either monotonous imagery could unfold (it could have easily been a too-hard-to-take pace wise effort) or all about the special gore effects.
Eggers finds the sweet middle ground, and creates a portrait of a family undone by their own religious fervor, while also being true to what were, at the time, historical accounts of witchcraft. Whether those carried much creedence, Eggers doesn't care - he commits to showing these woods and showing something like a goat or even an apple as something deathly serious, and yet loaded with significance. He doesn't move the camera around like crazy, and of course he doesn't need or should have to: the production design is among the greatest in any horror film, not to mention the certain color palette that he and DP Blaschke give to every shot so that it's like the world is drained of color - grays are even grayer, browns dirtier, and blacks somehow much blacker. It's a serious, darkly directed film, but there's always an intensity about it that doesn't make it ponderous to a point that takes one out of the movie.
A large part to why the film is so effective and chilling is the acting. The main adults (Ineson and Dickie, rarely below a 10 emotionally speaking, though Dickie has the trickier role as the one who has to try, up to a point, to keep his wits about him) are very strong here, both playing variations on God-petrified mortals, but the movie for me really belongs to Anya Taylor-Joy (her first major movie role, expect to see her in many things to come) and Scrimshaw as Caleb.
For the former, she has to carry many scenes all based on why she is a trustworthy person, and she sells it, while for the latter, this boy, it's a role that needs someone to play the period dialog (which is only occasionally obfuscated by the accents) and having to be genuinely scared to death when faced with the evils in the woods. When you have characters who are both "simple" folk of the Lord while also being capable of being twisted by the same dark forces they can't escape, you need people to sell it. They all do, to lengths not unlike out of Polanski at his fiercest.
So combine a filmmaker who wants to make Dread with a capital D his priority, a setting and location and things like just a barn or a door that feel eerie and ominous, and actors who dig in to characters who could very well destroy one another due to their fears (except for Thomasin), and you got a unique genre piece that works just as well as drama as horror, if not better.