FAMOUS MONSTERS: April 2016

The Witch

Every so often along comes a film that breaks away from the usual cliches and stands somewhat alone in a category of its own. We are talking A Field In England, or even The Witchfinder General. 

The Witch (2015) is a fine debut film from director Robert Eggers with a plot that follows a Puritan family encountering forces of evil in the woods beyond their New England farm. Based upon 17th century accounts of witchcraft The Witch (2015) sports no Hollywood spookery or OTT CGI witchery and has had some reviewers claiming it's not a horror film at all! HitFix writer Chris Eggertson summarized that the film "got under my skin profoundly, but it did not have the moment-to-moment, audience-pleasing shocks that moviegoers have become accustomed to..." Horror authors Stephen King and Brian Keene both reacted positively towards the film; King tweeted significant praise for the film, stating, "The Witch scared the hell out of me. And it's a real movie, tense and thought-provoking as well as visceral", while Keene, on social media, stated "The Witch is a gorgeous, thoughtful, scary horror film that 90% of the people in the theater with you will be too stupid to understand." 

The Witch film was partially based on Eggers' childhood fascination with witches. After unsuccessfully pitching films that were "too weird, too obscure", Eggers realized that he would have to make a more conventional film. He said at a Q&A, "If I'm going to make a genre film, it has to be personal and it has to be good."

The Guardian's Alex Godfrey writes, "You wouldn’t necessarily expect a 17th century-set horror story about about Puritans and diabolical possession to be so personal but The Witch, Eggers’s first film, was a demon he needed to expel. Dripping with dread, it’s a very troubling affair that has little in common with the jump-scare thrills of the Paranormal Activities, the Conjurings, the Purges and Insidiouses. Witchcraft aside, it instead concerns itself with more domestic terrors. And rather than giving you short, sharp shocks, it’s a 90-minute exercise in anxiety. You will leave the cinema gathering what nerves you have left and locking them away in a box for safekeeping." 

Above all, though, The Witch is a tremendously creepy, immersive horror piece. Eggers claims not to be a big horror fan, other than an obsession with The Shining, a key inspiration for The Witch in terms of tone and atmospherics. He wanted The Witch to be “like a Puritan’s nightmare was being uploaded” into our brains. As a result, he spent the four years it took to get it funded undergoing Kubrickian levels of research in pursuit of authenticity. He met with 17th-century agricultural experts and colonial historians and pored through religious diaries, letters and Puritan prayer manuals from the time, often using bits of dialogue verbatim for the script. 

Accuracy was key: the clothes in the film were made from authentic, antique hand-woven cloth, 17th-century musical instruments were used for the soundtrack, and period tools were used to construct the farmhouse. The mist is palpable, and the film was almost entirely shot with natural light and flame, further refining the reality. “I think there is a kind of magic in the authenticity,” Eggers explains. “Especially as I’m appropriating other people’s words without their permission. Everything needed to be done carefully and respectfully – to the Puritans, to the past, to the witch archetype.” Indeed, what he really wanted to do was communicate what witches meant to these people; how they feared them. It was important to Eggers to “discover what was important about the witch archetype and why she was powerful. In the early modern period, you had this belief that these evil witches really were stealing children,” he says, “cutting them up, flying on sticks, and if you believe in that reality, that is something really primitive, and really terrifying. So my obsession was to recreate the 17th century in order for the witch to be real again for people, and for her to be powerful again.” 
“For me, good horror is taking a look at what’s actually dark in humanity, instead of shining a quick flashlight on it and running away giggling,” says Eggers. “And also just trying to build tension and mood. I had a lot of guilt and anxiety as a child, and would spend months in terror, with a weight on the back of my head, for almost no reason. And I really wanted to try to capture that feeling in the movie.”

Yohana Desta of Mashable stated that The Witch is a "stunningly crafted experience that'll have you seeking out a church as soon as you leave the theater".. Perfect!