The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015)

It's fitting that the last two films I was compelled to write about were It Follows and The Babadook. It wasn't in any way planned, but of the films I've seen in the last few years, those two have the most in common with The Witch (IMDB page), the film I now feel compelled to write about.

When it was released, The Witch found a favorable reaction, and for good reason. There will be spoilers after the jump, the short version of this review is simple and straight forward. See it. It's extremely well made. The writing, cinematography, performances, costume and set design, sound design, and extremely limited practical effects all come together to produce something unusual in its perspective, entertaining, thought provoking, disciplined and excellent in its overall quality. Horror fans who lean toward more of an appreciation for the gory and graphic will be disappointed. Outside of that subset of the horror genre and its devotees, anyone who can appreciate great film craft should be able to enjoy The Witch.

It's definitely the kind of film that will be more effectively for people who don't know too much going in. Letting it unfold without preconceived ideas of what's going to happen will give it the best chance to have a more significant impact. Not everyone is apt to see a film based solely on either my humble opinion or the opinion of the many critics who've praised it. Below is the trailer, following that, the full review, with spoilers will begin:

 

It's almost impossible to tell whether or not The Witch is attempting to recreate the kind of supernatural folk tale early American settlers were telling each other and their children or if it's a sly, smart allegory about the dangers of superstition, zealotry and arrogance. Possibly the most interesting part of attempting to unravel that question is whether or not one of those old folk tales could be committed to the screen in a way that was earnest and faithful to them without it being obvious that superstition, zealotry and the arrogance that is so often the foundation to both is plain madness.

From the start, The Witch seems to purposefully call to the cultural connection it has to the likes of Grimm's fairy tales, the many stories myths like The Bell Witch, and the popular understanding of The Salem Witch Trials. What it does differently than so many of the other films of this general variety is take it's subject matter and the perspective of its characters with deadly earnestness and attempts to show both in a way that doesn't mock them. It could genuinely be just a film attempting to portray one of these stories as faithfully as possible or it could be a smart, ambitious and incredibly disciplined way of showing how people with the degree of religious zealotry in the film interpret reality to support their beliefs and the pressures of what that existence means. 

The Witch never apologizes for the taking the perspective of it's characters seriously. The small cast makes every second and every line feel real and immediate, and they are given incredible support by the rest of the film making team. The design of the set and costumes are extremely spare, as they should be given the time period and the characters, but are still given the attention and detail that give this reality a strong foundation. The cinematography is beautiful in a way that doesn't glamorize the nature of living in the time period it portrays. It all helps to create a morbid atmosphere that contributes to the feeling of creeping, invisible dread that permeates every frame. 

Related to the cinematography, only the most fantastical moments of the film have any real feeling of warmth or color. Everything else, is presented in stark, cold light. This is part of what makes the exact perspective the film has on it's own story is. Those fantastical moments, in part because the change to those warmer, more color drenched moments have a dream like, fantastical feeling where the rest of the film is so determined to feel as if it were actually recorded in colonial North America. The introduction of deep color, soft focus, dream like composition and editing are things that have been a very long used way for film makers to express that the perspective has shifted from the "reality" of the film to imagination of one of it's characters. All of the most fantastic moments in the film definitely recall this cinematic device, and it's impossible to be sure if this is a choice by the film makers to give the kind of visual, subliminal cue that these particular moments aren't part of the films actual reality or just how the character in the scene is perceiving it or just what the popular imagination of the time would have understood. 

Anyone with an interest in the history of witch trials in Europe and North America is probably going to have a hard time discerning whether this is a simple horror story, told in an attempt to make it as creepy and unsettling as possible or if it instead is a an allegory about how those witch trials happened, how the hysteria spread, and what kind of belief it takes to go through with something that has become one of the darker stains on the fabric of human history. Are those fantastical scenes the imagination of the characters filling in what they their fantastical beliefs require in order for the characters to continue holding those beliefs and what they need to believe to save themselves from dire degradation in light of their circumstances or are they meant to represent the lure of the occult and the forbidden for people who live such stark lives, and the occult aspects of the film are actually "real" within the films reality? Is it portraying that old belief in sensualism as sin and the path to evil or is it using the stark difference between reality and fantasy as a way to portray just how ridiculous beliefs like this are without being directly mocking?

The non fantastical or non magic moments are as dedicated to creating something as close to realism as Saving Private Ryan was about its opening battle scene feeling real, so the shift in tone feels abrupt when it happens, and considering the level of discipline at work in every other single detail of the film, it's hard to think this detail somewhat wasn't purposeful. It's almost of if Eggers is actually just putting both the reality and the fantastical aspects of historical witchcraft in front of us and asking which of these things seems like absolute madness to believe in a literal sense. In presenting the more fantastical aspects in a way that is as respectful in attempting to keep them real, but acknowledging what is real and isn't in the choice to wash those fantastical aspects in sensual color and lighting, he's not mocking it, but it does become a clear distinction. 

There's a deftness to the storytelling that is admirable too. It's 92 minutes long, but feels somewhat like a slow burn, without ever being slow. It dispenses with any unnecessary details, but doesn't feel rushed or curt either. What it leaves to the imagination is best left to the imagination and it shows just enough to feed the imagination, without getting into the kind of territory where it seems to be reveling in it's own genius or technical acumen. 

With It Follows, The Babadook, and The Witch, there have been some horror films that are calling back to a different variety of film that were popular in the 1970's. They are as much about the relationships between the characters as they are about the supernatural events taking place. It's exactly what makes these films different than the majority of horror films being released in the last decade or so.