Scared But Absolutely Satisfied

Rating: 8/10 (2 October 2017)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
We are told an age-old folk tale about a witch as it would have been understood by the Puritan psych in 1630's New England, as absolutely true. And it is told oh so horrifically through the chilling crescendos of musician Mark Korven, the beautiful cinematographic direction of Robert Eggers, the big acting performance of a small cast, and the unnerving hidden messages of the plot. Even hours after the credits stopped rolling, my mind was still trapped in the unwelcoming atmosphere of this 1630's world. For effectively rattling my peace of mind, I give The Witch an 8/10.
Let me first give a well-earned applause to the cast, especially to the two actors who play the older siblings. Harvey Scrimshaw, who is a new coming child actor, illustrates the curiosity of a growing boy and gives a possessed performance I will never forget. And Anna Taylor-Joy, who plays the center character, was given more room than the other actors because of the ambiguous role her character was supposed to portray, and own it completely.
As for the music, it does it's job right from the get go. In the first 5 minutes of the film there is a moment where the music crescendos during a slow-moving shot of the family praying on their new settlement. It successfully makes a boring backdrop of trees seem like a sinister hell-trap. This was one of the many moments where the soundtrack was successful in creating an atmosphere that screams (sometimes literally) there is something bad going on here. But this atmosphere would not have been so successful if it wasn't for the cinematographic choices of Eggers that makes the horrors ever palpable. My favorite was that of restricted narration, where we are held in suspense guessing what our main character's faces are witnessing, we become eager yet terrified to see the truth.
But what really made this movie deeply unsettling for me was that the monster to be feared was not just the witch, but also the urge of the main characters to resort to hasty generalization in regard to who the witch was. Thomasin does not fit into the idealized feminine of her time and place--one who is to never question "thy" father (or any patriarch), is to never dare even think about disobeying the religious doctrines of Puritan faith, is to be sent off to serve another family upon reaching physical maturity, and is to bear children and clean. It is consistently inferred that Thomasin urges to cross the borders placed on her by her world (family, societal, and religious world). Her opposition to her role combined with the fact that she is a young woman, made her a the likely witch in her family's Puritan eyes. As a result of the continued stifling of her freedom, suppression of her creativity, and the rejection of her by her own mother and father (and the stressors of having to live on a dying farm in the middle of nowhere) she was desperate for acceptance and comfort. She was a perfect target for Satan to lure into signing away her soul. I was deeply unnerved by this movie because our main protagonist eventually became the witch her family unlovingly and falsely blamed her of being.