‘The Witch’: To say it’s scary is an understatement

By Keith Ariaz

I first heard about “The Witch” during last year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it received an overwhelming number of positive responses and was quickly named “one of the scariest films ever made.”

When I first began reading early reviews, I was excited to see a horror film get such a good response from a top-notch film festival, but I also found myself rolling my eyes whenever someone mentioned just how “scary” it was.

You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that not only was “The Witch” a terrifically well-made film, but it was also absolutely terrifying and caused my skin to crawl with goosebumps so big you could have popped them like zits. To say “The Witch” is scary would be an understatement. “The Witch” is like sitting on a boat ride that is slowly drifting its way toward your darkest nightmares that will have you feeling uneasy long after you’ve left the theater.

Set in the 17th century, “The Witch” tells the story of a deeply religious Puritan family that’s banished from the village to live a life of isolation deep into the woods. One morning Thomasin, the oldest daughter, is playing with her newborn brother when he suddenly goes missing.

Soon after his disappearance, strange things begin to happen: the crops die, goats produce blood instead of milk and the youngest children speak about a witch in the woods who stole their baby brother. At first, the family disregards the children’s claims, instead choosing to believe he was snatched by wolves, but eventually they begin to realize there is something else happening to them that they can’t explain. The family members accuse each other of witchcraft and their journey into madness begins to overtake their lives.

One of the many things that worked so well in this film is the setting. The entire movie takes place on a small acre of land surrounded by trees, which makes the characters seem cut off from the rest of the world. When things start to go badly, you realize how helpless the characters are because they’re abandoned. All they have is one another, which makes it even worse when they start to turn on each other.

Also, setting the film in the 17th century rather than in modern time really helped a lot. You take away cell phones and everything else you find yourself using each day and you’re left with nothing but the characters. It forces us to get to know them whether we want to or not. It also helps the situation feel more hopeless as the movie progresses.

I’d like to touch on the way writer and director Robert Eggers chooses to scare us in this film. “The Witch” isn’t the kind of horror film that relies on an excessive amount of jump scares. In fact, the film has exactly THREE jump scares and they don’t come till the last 15 minutes of the movie. Also, aside from a highly disturbing scene early in the movie, there isn’t much blood or gore.

What makes the “The Witch” so scary is it makes you sit in a constant state of tension before finally pulling the rug out from under you in the final few minutes. The entire movie I could feel my stomach turning and heart beating because I was genuinely so afraid of what might happen. By the end I was praying for a jump scare just so my body could finally relax and settle down.

The last thing I’d like to praise is the cast. They each did a tremendous job making the audience believe we’re watching a real family go through this extremely terrible event. What makes it even more impressive is that most of the cast is made up of children. Both Kate Dickie and Ralph Ineson do a splendid job as two parents trying to keep it together for the sake of their family while also still grieving the loss of their newborn child.

The real stars of this movie, though, are Anya Taylor-Joy and Harvey Scrimshaw as the two oldest children, Thomasin and Caleb. For being such young and relatively new actors, they perform like they’ve been doing this for years. Anya Taylor-Joy’s really carries the weight of the film on her shoulders as the central character and does a fantastic job telling her character’s story even when she isn’t speaking.

Harvey Scrimshaw, while not as central as Taylor-Joy, still does an impressive job with what he’s given. There’s one scene in particular which takes place after he encounters the witch and during his family’s prayer where his talent really shines and will easily be one of the best performances I’ll see on screen all year.

I honestly can’t find a single flaw with this movie. From the dialogue, setting, performances and even Mark Korven’s fantastically haunting score, everything about this film is perfect. The bottom line…if you can turn off your popcorn brain and step out of your mainstream audience shoes, then you will be rewarded with one of the most beautifully made movies you will ever see that will scare the hell out of you long after you’ve left the theater.

By Keith Ariaz

—keithariaz1@gmail.com