Now, I say this as a fan of horror movies, The Witch is not for the faint of heart.
I can already hear the indignant shouts of slasher fans, shouting that “I can handle gore! All the time!”
Allow me to rephrase: The Witch is a psychological period horror piece based on a New England folktale, which caters more to cinemaphiles than passive movie watchers who are in for a good scare.
What Hollywood has done with horror movies is make them all based around adrenaline and ‘scary’ visuals. This results in disgustingly blase films such as The Nun (2018), La Llorona (2019), which grab the attention of hormonal teenagers looking for a ‘fix’ of wanting to almost piss themselves in a theater around other equally disappointingly disappointed figures.
The Witch is something I first watched maybe a year ago, alone with my dog when it was available on Amazon Prime Video for free. I remembered hearing reviews on it on my then-favourite radio station, and the commentators seemed suitably rattled. Looking immediately back on the film five minutes after the credits stopped rolling (I was NOT about to stand up), I was so glad that I decided to watch the movie with the lights on, and during the daytime.
Now, on the artistic side of it, The Witch is fucking gorgeous.
Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, who had also worked with Eggers on The Lighthouse (2019) and a series of short films, commented that The Witch was filmed mostly with available and natural light, which adds to a sense of eeriness, as the light tends to be harsher and less-polished, a leading factor in most films being produced with an intensive lighting crew to fully manipulate how the characters appear. Natural and available light is the opposite: there is a certain degree of control when it comes to the times that the film is shot, but this is the same type of control that those who practice watercolour have to get used to: a lack of control is the only truly constant factor.
Another reason why this film is so effective is in how the movie itself deviated from typical horror films. Being labeled on IMDb as Drama/Horror/Mystery, this movie is being separated from conventional horror films as it is so remarkably apart from what Hollywood has been churning out as cash-grabs. This film is a horror film absolutely devoid of jump scares.
The bastard son of genuine fright and cheap tactics.
In The Witch, the horror itself comes from the creeping sense of unease present throughout the entire film, and the disturbing visuals capitalise on that by bringing this unease to a new level. This is probably a leading reason as to why it got a 6.9/10 on IMDb, but 83% on Metacritic, and 90% Rotten Tomatoes. This movie definitely appeals more to those who appreciate the cinematic aspect of horror films, but can still be ruthlessly enjoyed by those who are more inclined towards psychological thrillers.
“Did ye make some unholy bond with that goat?”
An interesting thing about The Witch is the dedication to keeping the movie period-accurate. The dialogue throughout is entirely based on writings from the time (the movie is set in 1630 New England), and is shot on an unconventional 1.66:1 aspect ratio (width to height of the screen the movie takes up).
Another seemingly small detail that I found rather enticing was that the majority of the movie is shot in 24 fps (frames per second), but when supernatural encounters occur, this changes to 27 fps. The 24 fps has become standard for films, with outliers more recently turning this into a ‘low’ fps rate, so the use of 27 fps adds to a very very slight understanding and more clarity of scenes. This is so implicitly done that the audience can barely pick up on why those supernatural scenes were interpreted by their brains differently.
It is an amazing feat of the crew that made The Witch so haunting, but the impressive aspect comes also from the actors, most of which are so young. I would recommend looking into some of the behind-the-scenes AFTER seeing it yourself.
Then again, a reason I’m here is to watch movies so you don’t have to :)
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