REVIEW: The Witch (2016)

“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”

After being less than a few minutes into Robert Egger’s striking directorial debut, “The Witch”, I was sure that I was in the capable hands of a filmmaker who knew what he was doing. Aptly described in promotional material as a “New England Folktale”, Eggers has crafted a deeply potent, gothic fairy tale that would have The Brother’s Grimm shaking their heads in jealousy.

Bouncing off the hysteria of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, “The Witch” follows a pilgrim family in 1630, after they are banished from the Puritan Christian Plantation they once called home. Forced to start a new life away from the structure and rules of the plantation, the family find themselves at the complete mercy of the world around them; as they try to preserve the sense of purity and patriarchy that gave them structure previously. When the youngest son disappears suddenly, the family start to become aware of a mysterious and deadly presence lurking all around them.

Egger’s film is theological horror at it’s best.

Not since “The Exorcist” has the onscreen fight between good and evil been so terrifyingly based in a real-world spirituality. It is a film about what happens in the absence of a God. The family find themselves alone, at the mercy of the devil; becoming more and more worn down – clinging desperately to their purity as it slips through their fingers.

Consider Caleb, the middle child of the family. Faced with the onset of puberty and a budding sex drive. He feels an attraction to his older sister, Thomason; who is maturing into an adult herself. Caleb is tempted by the sins of the flesh. Thomason is tempted by a better life, to see the world, to “live deliciously”. A temptation that is later offered to her when the satanic presence reveals itself.

The tone in Eggers film is foreboding and off-kilter from the get-go and only elevates as the story plays out, eventually reaching a bone chilling level of hysteria and evil. By the end of the film I felt shaken, haunted and afraid. It is a film that will bury itself deep into your brain and stay there.

You may want to sleep with the lights on.