Visually beautiful in its too-realistic depiction of Puritan period homesteading, this film nevertheless left me feeling "politically troubled."* Like that "other" indie art house horror hit "Antichrist," Robert Eggers (writer and director) "The Witch" had me feeling more worried about what it "suggested" than frightened by what it portrayed. Yes, the purpose of this film (so says Eggers) was to gather together various aspects of actual colonial New England tales of witchcraft and bewitching into a single storyline. Done. This is a horror film that is not for the squeamish, though like me you may at times be wondering: Why?
The trope of the witch as cannibal and killer of babes is what starts the film rolling, but it is by no means the sole focus of horror. There is the bewitching of children, but like the Salem trials we cannot be sure what is real and what is child's play. A talking goat may be a child's fantasy, or it might not.
But the murderous witch/hag craving blood is real, and her presence throughout the film is a source of horror. More discomforting is the use of the hare as a an image, not of trickster-mischief, but of evil.
The old Euro-Christian fear of the forest as the barren playground of the devil is there, with the notion of a cursed land that can yield only blighted crops. (Fortunately the director leaves the tribal people out of this, excusing us from the old nonsense of "the devil's children" that the Puritans so sincerely believed in.)
Perhaps the strongest element of horror in "The Witch" is the one that is still happening all around us today: the inculcation of children with the spiritual doctrine of "natural born sin." In a heartbreaking scene, father William (played with great artistry by Ralph Ineson) and his son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) walk in the woods, the boy reciting the self-hatred inherent in the Puritanical (today's fundamentalist evangelical) creed of sinfulness.
Into the horror of a witch slowly advancing into the unguarded homestead of the family Eggers has added other powerful dramatic contests: the desire Caleb feels for his sister Thomasin (Anna Taylor-Joy); the cowardice of William as his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie) grows harsher in her condemnation of his choices; the resentment--even hatred--hatred of a mother toward her eldest daughter. This all-too-human setting leaves the family vulnerable to the increasingly unsubtle attacks of the witch in the woods, although her methods and reasons of harassment are confusing.
Here is where I leave the film feeling "troubled," as it ends with the suggestion that the Devil "wins" not by turning "believers" against their faith--which is actually achieved through the early loss of mother Katherine's faith with the disappearance of her infant son--but by persuading "the last girl" to join his flock of black sheep. Well, black goats. The denouement of "The Witch" suggests that Satan's young female disciples will go out into the world to "taste butter" and wear fancy dresses. There is the root of my distress, the notion that the only way for women to become successful, rich, and powerful is to sell their souls to the Devil. On second thought, why does this disturb me so much? Men and women in the GOP have been doing just that ever since Reagan was president. .
*A swift search of major film reviews of Robert Eggers' (writer and director) story of a family cast out of a New England colonial plantation for religious "differences" left me even more confused by the critics' seeming unwillingness to address both the supernatural and the horror elements of the film.)
Trailer:
http://youtu.be/iQXmlf3Sefg
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