CREDIT : USA TODAY .COM
A little magical foresight would be needed to see this coming: The first great film of 2016 is a horror flick with Puritans , possessed kids, naked forest women and a haunting goat named Black Phillip.
Writer/director Robert Eggers unleashes a exquisitely made, thought-provoking and deeply disturbing first feature with The Witch (***½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday), which takes moviegoers back to New England circa the 1630s, grabs them with an emotional tragedy and doesn’t let them go as it takes an innocent family spiraling down into hellish despair.
After their family is banished from their village following a run-in with church elders, William (Ralph Ineson ) and Katherine (Kate Dickie ) are forced to a rural area for the farming life. Tensions are high, however: God-fearing William seemingly is only good for chopping wood, the eldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), is full-on hitting puberty and feeling the desires that come with it, and younger kids Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) and Mercy (Ellie Grainger) spend way too much time with the obsidian-colored family pet, Phillip.
When baby Samuel is taken by an unseen force during a fateful game of peek-a-boo with Thomasin, everything around this unfortunate clan falls down. Thomasin feels guilty and shoulders a massive amount of blame from mom, another child goes missing and comes back changed, and most everybody is accused of witchcraft as what’s truly wicked worms its way into their lives.
Eggers’ devotion to historical detail in creating the right mood and look in The Witchis top notch. Jarin Blaschke’s cinematography is awash with a shadowy gray touch to lessen any hint of lightness to the story, and Mark Korven ’s screechy strings score never lets up in creating an atmosphere of constant discomfort .
Taylor-Joy has a breakthrough role as a girl who never fits in with her clan, even though she desperately wants to be loved. Her character arc is a marked one, as Thomasin later doesn’t even look for acceptance but instead seeks to survive.
Ineson and Dickie also have heartbreaking turns as two parents who can’t handle loss, and their performances sell The Witch as a family thriller rather than just an average horror flick. The movie creates the same sense of foreboding asRosemary’s Baby and The Shining where, as the plot progresses, there is less and less hope for these loved ones to make things right.
For those who like the scary stuff, though, there is plenty. Black Phillip is a frightening dude who catapults to the top of the creepy-animal charts, and Eggers creates a nightmare out of the central witch through thoughtful camera work and keeping her a mystery for most of the film. (She also does some particularly heinous stuff, though you’re left to wonder what’s real and what’s in the characters’ minds.)
There’s a bit of schlock and awe by the end, and the finale flirts with undoing the realism courtesy of over-the-top imagery and a devilish twist. It winds up working as a ominous climax, however, and you’re left wanting to avoid any and all farm animals for a while — which for this excellent piece of filmmaking is high praise.
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