An unholy....

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2016)

I went into this one with high expectations, I'd read various commentary suggesting how terrific it was.
Alas, it would seem I was mislead. This feels rather more like a rehash of one of the Salem Witch movies, but this time it's just one little family who are seemingly failures at farming, and seem equally inept at hanging onto their children or preventing them from going in religious rapture against each other.
Overall the best and most interesting (amusing really) part was the fathers reference to 'an unholy union with a black goat' directed at the twins who seem to be about six years of age. The goat will have his reckoning however which is one of the better parts of the entire movie. Of all the acting going on here, this goat is sure to get a follow-up job, perhaps in marketing for PETA?
Whilst dark and broody, there is little else here for the horror genre, the 'witch' who like all before her seems to live in a basic leaf covered lean-to in the forest is a little creepy for all of her very brief appearance if more so than her seeming interest in 11 year old boys, 1 year old boys, rabbits and goats. Ultimately the 'horror' comes not in the form of the witch, but in a place you probably don't anticipate early on, but it's not really horror, its more just gore for the purpose of having it.
The acting is actually very good, it is just the script that really lets this movie down, and the absence of any particularly good story or character development. There is, as one should expect, a lot of god squad praying and religious mania, I imagine the modern equivalent of this ignorant zealot nonsense would be a Donald Trump rally or an anti gay marriage meeting - there is just a little too much prayer and a little too much action going on, however I imagine that is fairly typical cause and effect as far as praying goes. The mother of all these children is as mad as a hatter, completely bonkers as again we all too often get with religious nut cases.
If you like dark and brooding, black goats, religious mania, crazy mothers and Paedophile witches then this is the film for you, if however your tastes verge more on the normal and sane, and you look for more than dark screens and suspect goats in your horror, I would look elsewhere.