For some time some friends had recommended me to watch The Witch, and now that I have finally done so I have decided to talk about it, because I have found a product, a story, and a staging that is not at all what I expected.

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Year: 2015
Category: Period, Supernatural Horror.
Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson, Sarah Stephens, Bathsheba Garnett, Julian Richings.

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Plot

In the 1600s, when a family of Christian settlers, formed by a marriage and their five children, is banished to the forest, which according to popular belief is controlled by a supernatural evil.

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Opinion

A family is expelled from a Puritan Plymouth Colony, for which they are obliged to move to a farm near a forest. While there, Thomasin, the eldest daughter, plays with the baby of the family until he suddenly disappears, to which the father decides to blame a wolf for the disappearance. Starting from this event, the mother, Katherine, begins to distrust Thomasin, whom she also blames for the disappearance of a silver cup. William, the father, takes his eldest son, Caleb, to hunt with him, as winter approaches and food supplies will not be enough to survive it. While all this is happening, the twins, Mercy and Jonas, play with Black Phillip, a goat who in itself generates more fear than any generic horror movie.

Very slowly the viewer becomes a witness of how the family nucleus is destroyed because it is sown in it, after the baby disappears, different feelings and thoughts of guilt, hatred, resentment, lust, and suspicion, making the lie and the deceptions surround the family relationship, causing the members of the family to begin to doubt and fear one another.

At times, I came to think that everything seen on the screen was nothing more than a story of the exaggeration of religious fanaticism carried to an extreme in which the characters become paranoid, however, thinking that was a mistake, from the first moment, with the disappearance of the baby, and the scene immediately following, it is revealed to us that what we are witnessing is not only a situation generated by the illusion and paranoia of the characters who conceive themselves as sinners, but, since it begins the film, all events are triggered by the presence of evil itself.

The performances are really very good, especially that played by Anya Taylor-Joy, an actress who does a great job as Thomasin, the main character, whom I can remember for her performance in the movie Split (2016). On the other hand, the performance of Ralph Ineson, whom I could only recognize by a small role that he played in Game of Thrones but has participated in many other productions, is quite convincing, playing the role of a parent with fear of not be able to feed his children and wife. Kate Dickie, whom I also recognized for her participation in Game of Thrones, does a very good job acting like a mother desperate and concerned about the spiritual destiny of her children and herself. Finally, the other performance that we can highlight is that of Harvey Scrimshaw as Caleb, a small child who takes more responsibilities than he deserves, and who makes a good participation, especially in a specific scene.

This is not the classic horror film that we are used to seeing, it is very different, much slower, much more subtle, it does not try to generate fear in the spectator with appearances of horrible and deformed creatures on screens, but it tries to exploit all the fears real people had in that historical period, and often do not move away from the fears of many people today, fear of losing a child, fear of not being able to feed their own family, fear of losing faith, the fear of being influenced by evils. In addition, based on stories that really exist, and from which they got inspiration, including for the dialogues, the story recovers a realism that we rarely see, especially considering that supernatural elements are used.

The photography work is really incredible, it maintains the same aesthetic, the scenes in interiors are filmed with the only illumination of the candles, giving a very dark shade almost sombre, while the scenes on the outside are recorded in the absence of sunlight, everything is dark, the sky always remains cloudy, so despite being in the field, it does not show a beautifully natural scenario but a gloomy one.

The work of the director, Robert Eggers, was really very good, and even though this is his first film, it shows a skill behind the camera that really should cause envy in many of his more experienced colleagues.

Even after all that has been said, I must say that the film is not for all audiences, watching this movie with a wrong idea of ​​what is going to be seen, can result in a huge disappointment, as I said, this is not the classic horror movie, but the opposite, I would say it is a horror movie made for people who usually do not enjoy this genre, because this time, despite having a fairly simple story, the development and depth of what is shown seeks to annoy the viewer in a different way.

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Trailer