The Witch Review
“Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”
The Witch Is a movie I’ve anticipated pretty hard this year and it immediately got a lot of critic praise and a lot of hype but every non-typical horror movie does these days. The casual viewers didn’t seem to be the biggest fans of it but was The Witch a victim of over-hype? The answer is no but that does come with a technicality.
The Witch is set in the 1630’s and is about a family who are sent to live next to the woods, away from a town in New England because the father has too much pride to accept his wrong doings. Looking after 5 children isn’t easy, especially when the crops aren’t growing and after the youngest child goes missing, the mother (Kate Dickie) breaks down and the family’s luck gets worse and worse and with a very creepy witch living in the woods things can’t end well. You might be advertised a lot of crazy scary stuff but this movie really is a family drama at heart, there’s a lot of scary, unsettling things happening but the witch doesn’t get much screen time and it’s all about how the family deals with it and who they can or can’t trust. I like the story. It’s pretty simple but allows a lot of room for drama and scary happenings
Our main character Thomasin, played by Anya Taylor-Joy is the oldest of the siblings and she always seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and she has to deal with a lot of grief and blame and she does a pretty good job with it, acting wise, a little more stress would have been perfect but she does a great job with bouncing off the other siblings. The mother played by Kate Dickie seems to spends most of the movie crying but it’s understandable if you watch it, in any case, she does a great job as a sympatric mother with some really passionate moments. The father (Ralph Ineson) is good but even though he’s a big character there isn’t too much to say about him, he spends his time looking down and feeling guilty but he tries bless him. Black Phillip is a big black goat, he’s pretty cool too. The rest of the kids serve their purpose but Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) has a big part which was pretty well done considering his age.
The Witch is well directed and very effective, after the first sickening scene the rest of the film is uneasy, the atmosphere just makes you feel dirty and it’s not very often the imagery in a horror film actually makes me uncomfortable throughout. The issue is with the dialog but it’s not that it’s bad but being heavily based on the family, the constant 1600’s English chatter is pretty gruelling and not the easiest to listen to. Actually if you’re British like me you might even hear the chavy tone the characters sometimes spout. I give them credit for working all that language in there, couldn’t have been easy to write but it’s not the nicest on the ears. The movie is very slowly paced and the payoffs won’t impress everyone and I think a lot of audiences will be put off, luckily I wasn’t.
A big praise I can give to the movie is the witch herself. Being a big fan of folklore I was happy to see how the witch was presented and how well the source material was used. If you’re into the occult, demonology or folklore then this movie probably feels like it’s made for you, The Witch defiantly feels aimed to a certain audience.
The Witch is such an effective and uneasy movie, the source material is well integrated, the imagery is horrible and I’m really happy with the cast. Unfortunately, if you’re not like me you might feel excluded from the film and if you’re not a fan of slow burns or graphically off-putting horror and lean towards the more in your face horror or at least horrors without so much character screen time then this is not your movie.
Rating ****
Better than > The Conjuring Worse than > It Follows
Main pros
-Cast
-Sickening imagery
-Uneasy atmosphere
-The actual witch
-Folklore roots
-The ending
Main cons
-Dialogue
-Super slow
-Accessibility
As an example of the audience exclusion, I saw this movie with my girlfriend who is very different from me. I really enjoyed it and she said, and I quote: “It was shit”
P.S. You can follow Black Phillip on Twitter, it’s pretty funny: https://twitter.com/BlackPhillip
While you're at it, you can follow me too: https://twitter.com/TheBranMan788
