Such authenticity goes a long way towards selling the supernatural hokum that drives its hysteria, at first understated but eventually brought to a boil – a supernatural hokum rooted in fact, as the historical persecution of accused witches in real-life Salem implies. One of the film's scariest moments isn't the revelation of a naked crone performing a bizarre ritual in the forest, but the treatment of a sick child by the now-defunct medical procedure of bleeding, the camera tightly focused on the small rivulet of blood flowing from his brow into a bowl.
Eggers challenges us on all levels, superficially and subtextually. "The Witch" comes to life in its thematic ambition, and in a sense, it's a frightfest to satisfy the extremes of its audience. It adheres to the orthodoxy of the genre with standard jump-scares that satisfy in the theater, although troublesome questions – about faith and morality, or grief and suffering, or the rebellious feminism at coven's core – bub ble up from the cauldron after you walk out.
The narrative opens with a shot of actress Anya Taylor-Joy – a charismatic young talent, riveting here – in close-up, kneeling in prayer, playing Thomasin, who in many ways is a typical and familiar teenager, restless in the confines of her family's rigid structures. Her father, William (Ralph Ineson), is insufferably pious, and makes Ned Flanders look like Aleister Crowley. By his lead, the family of seven accepts exile from their plantation due to philosophical differences with the rest of the English settlers. They suffer in the cold and dark their first night away, which sets a precedent for the many days following, even after they've built a cottage and barn on the edge of a dark woods. A dark, forboding woods. A dark, forboding woods that all but moans death for any who might peer too deeply within.
Thomasin's infant brother disappears into those woods on her watch, and the camera follows the child's cries as a red-cloaked kidnapper scurries through the forest. The mother, Katherine (Kate Dickie), crumbles into despair, weeping and praying as the family dog whines in eerie harmony. When their boy Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) disappears into the forest and reappears naked and feverish in a rainstorm, William and Katherine follow the absurdist "logic" of their extreme fundamentalist faith: it must be witchcraft. And Thomasin is the scapegoat, possibly along with a literal goat, amusingly dubbed Black Phillip, who shares mutual affection with the family's set of creepy fraternal toddler twins, Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson).
And oh, that goat, that dead-eyed goat. Black Phillip is also the subject of long, unsettling close-ups, as is a sinister rabbit, which appears as a warning sign of imminent weirdness. Eggers knows how to craft a scene for maximum psycho-manipulation: Ghostly firelight on a praying figure, a fateful p.o.v.-game of peek-a-boo with a child, a knife blade slowly lowering into the frame, a low angle on a mysterious woman in the wood, all lips and bust and red hood, a towering figure of sin in the flesh. He nourishes tension with a mesmerizing pace, an intent slowness building methodically, almost seductively, to a highly effective, extraordinarily provocative climactic sequence.
At times, the audience with whom I screened "The Witch" seemed either restless and impatient or nervous. I was jittery, and enthralled, and amused – the film is endorsed by the Satanic Temple, after all – sometimes all at once. Horror movies hinge on the susceptibility of their audiences, and some are more persuasive than others; Eggers' rigorous eye and ear for detail and emphasis on suggestion over lucid explication are the strongest weapons for a salesman of such supernatural silliness.
Yet most provocative is Eggers' depiction of one extremity as recourse for another. William and Katherine are so consumed by their faith, they suffer almost endlessly as a result of their humility, which they wear as a point of pride – the ironies loop and circle around each other, don't they? In their crude cottage, they eat the dry bread of misery and the clotted cheese of suffering as their goats bleat in their pen and the earth around them produces nigh-petrified, inedible corn. They woefully ponder whether their presumably dead child, unbaptized due to their exile, is in hell; William proposes giving away Thomasin because of her apparent wickedness. For this family, an innocent white lie is a small sin leading down a spiraling whirlpool of shame and pain, of mournful confessions to God, or perhaps just to the cold, unforgiving air. Pleasure is reserved for the afterlife. This family covets absolution, and wasn't living the well-balanced life. Sometimes, mysterious forces co me from within.
John Serba is film critic and entertainment reporter for MLive and The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at jserba@mlive.com[2] or follow him on Twitter[3] or Facebook[4].
References
- ^ "The Witch" (www.imdb.com)
- ^ jserba@mlive.com (www.mlive.com)
- ^ Twitter (twitter.com)
- ^ Facebook (www.facebook.com)
