Wickedly good stuff

Rating: 10/10 (1 November 2018)

There are multiple interpretations that have been offered on this opaque masterpiece, but the one I like most is that the piece is an example of a group hysteria that goes really badly wrong, or at least it's too simple to just blame the nymph-like beauty at the heart of the film for being 'a witch all along'. She actually comes across as the most saintly character up until the denouement. In the meticulously crafted dialogue of first-generation American pilgrims one becomes immersed in the wierd mindscape of 17th century Puritans, where there's an unflinching belief in the supernatural - be it heavenly or hellish... Somehow the horror seemed just so much more genuine here than amidst the usual comic stumbling fiends that make up the stock of the tired genre.. Anyway I loved it from start to finish, and felt such a transgressive kick, a liberated feeling becoming involved in a vicarious way with the goings on. One witnesses in subtle symbolism and audacious moments a bit of everything from murder to incest, suppressed greed & vanity, obsession in bucketloads, pubertal lust, love mingled with hate, hopes for salvation meeting fire & brimstone, to name a few. And it was all so much more pointed and realistic in the austere, sprititalised and just plain paranoid setting that the director so painstakingly creates. This is far too clever and too serious to be pidgeon-holed as 'horror'. It's more of a psychological thriller with buckets of blood and bible-talk. And the suggestion online that the whole family were all hallucinating on the ergot from rotten corn is way too delicious an idea to dismiss outright.