THE WITCH

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
Writer: Robert Eggers
Director: Robert Eggers

Banished from a plantation as a result of accusing his fellow settlers of being false Christians, the puritanical William (Ineson) travels out into the wilderness with his wife (Dickie) and five children. Setting up a farm, the family hopes to live off the land and uphold their devout Christian values but a nightmarish chain of events will test not only their faith but their trust in each other. And does eldest daughter Thomasin (Taylor-Joy) know more than she's letting on?

Robert Eggers' period piece may not be for those whose love of horror begins and ends with unstoppable killers appearing out of nowhere to hack up dim-witted victims. This is a slow-burner, replacing the "hand on the shoulder" shocks with an air of unrelenting unease throughout. It drips with atmosphere and the choice to use the dialogue of the time, replete with its use of "thee", "thy" and "thou", helps in transporting the viewer to a time and place where superstitions were rife and the fear of evil was all-consuming.

The Witch doesn't believe in spelling (sorry about the pun) everything out to its audience either. There's plenty of ambiguity here and ample opportunity to make up your own mind about exactly what's going on. Of course, this is going to delight or frustrate depending on how much explanation of the story you need in order to stay with it. Personally, I loved the fact that I wasn't clear as to who or what was behind the terrible happenings and found myself having genuinely no idea what was going to happen next.

The terror doesn't just spring from the fear of what might be out there, Eggers serving up some disturbing imagery including one particularly revolting moment that I have to admit took a horror fan such as myself aback (it involves one of our feathered friends but that's all I'm saying). When The Witch needs to show you it shows you but it knows that it doesn't need to rub your face in gore for it to succeed.

Ralph Ineson is terrific as the father, frustrated in his efforts to build a better life for his family but driven by a pride that may be the undoing of both himself and those in his care. Kate Dickie lends fine support as his wife, her character developing more in the movie's second half as the plot attempts to unravel the tightly-knit family unit by putting them (and the audience) through the psychological wringer.

As superb as both Ineson and Dickie are, the movie wouldn't work anything like as well if it didn't boast such marvellous work from Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, at whom the finger is pointed for the supernatural wrongdoings. Her performance is incredibly subtle, even the most innocuous of lines delivered in such a way that you'll be driven to distraction attempting to work out whether or not she's a victim or a villain.

This movie is almost certainly going to prove divisive. It's a love or hate thing from start to finish and even if you're loving it at the beginning you might find yourself hating the ending. Without giving anything away, the climax of the movie takes quite a brave turn and could very easily have descended into the ridiculous but for me it worked terrifically well and the final shot was perfect. I'm pretty sure that there will be others out there who will think the final couple of minutes ruins what's gone before and I can understand why.

So, is this the scariest film ever? How can it be and why does it have to be the scariest ever? You can't go into this thinking you're going to be scared to death because you'll be expecting something that no movie can deliver, not just this one.

A lot of people will think The Witch is not scary enough because they gauge how scary a film by the number of times they jump. Well, there are very few jump scares in The Witch (if you ask me there's really just the one, it's a doozy though) but in my opinion being startled by a sudden noise or a hand shooting into frame to grab someone doesn't compare to the almost constant feeling of dread hanging over the proceedings here. This one got under my skin and left me thinking about it long after I'd left the cinema. I've seen it a second time and, if anything, I'm thinking about it even more now. That's what I'd call a scary movie.



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