'The Witch' Casts a Spell

January has barely passed, and yet 2016 has already seen the release of two critically acclaimed, brutal movies about early America: “The Revenant” chronicles a fur trader’s harrowing quest for revenge on the man who left him for dead, while “The Hateful Eight” depicts a series of bloody conflicts between snowed-in bounty hunters. In his debut work, “The Witch,” director Robert Eggers continues this trend. Though considerably lower profile and more genre-horror in tone than the other two, the movie nonetheless explores the viciousness of colonial America with at least as much nuance and stylistic grace. In weaving together visual horror, family drama, and historical meditation, “The Witch” proves itself a thoughtful folk tale of bone-chilling beauty.

The drama centers on a small Puritan family in 17th century New England, who have just been banished from their plantation home under unknown circumstances. Driven by religious fervor, the close-knit group start their own farm at the edge of a vast forest. All the usual frontier torments—hunger, loneliness, poverty—push the family to their limits, but all seems bearable until darker, stranger things begin to happen. Slowly, the family members turn on one another, eventually ostracizing their adolescent daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) as a witch while their farm becomes a version of hell itself.

As the nightmare unfolds, the film’s craftsmanship remains consistently enthralling. Each shot is inventively, expressively arranged: Disorienting verticals layer against each other, figures stand dwarfed at the bottom of the frame, and audience members often find themselves suggestively breathing down necks. The very composition of each image contributes to the sense of omnipresent evil. This visual precision extends to the color palette, too, which adeptly moves from stark blues and grays to hellish golden firelight in an expression of the family’s vulnerability and internal anguish.

The compelling visuals also become the movie’s primary means of disturbance. Unlike many modern horror films that rely on either manipulative jump scares or the cheap suspense of the unseen, “The Witch” holds its elegant terrors in plain sight: A possessed boy’s naked body bends slightly the wrong way, a black door slowly consumes the screen, a goat’s udder spurts blood, and animals betray unsettling intelligence in their stares. Even Satan himself makes a subtle appearance, and the result is real, impressively daring scariness.

The central horror of the story, though, might have less to do with the supernatural evil that engulfs the farm and more to do with the distrust that erodes it from the inside. The strong set of actors all succeed at creating devout, loving people with their own private sins and aches and eventually make the subsequent spiral into madness likewise complex and believable. Taylor-Joy does effectively subtle work as young Thomasin, though the two adult actors—Ralph Ineson as William and Kate Dickie as Katherine—nonetheless stand out in their wrenching portrayal of a pair caught between love, fear, expectation, and religious belief.

This internal ideological and emotional war anchors the film’s captivating historical musings as well as its domestic aspects. Why, the film seems to ask, would a settler imagine witches or want to become one? Total vulnerability and loneliness are clearly part of the answer—the film’s forest-dwelling witch often seems to be an expression of the horrifying power of the wilderness—but societal structures also become relevant. Eggers thoughtfully investigates the stark, restrictive social world of the Puritans and in particular the heavy burden of Calvinism: Continuous hard work and loss, coupled with the assurance of a sinful nature and the possibility of hell, drive all the characters to the edge of their faith, particularly middle brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw). The pressure eventually seems sufficient to make anyone step out of their bodies and sign their names in Satan’s book. The freedom of evil, it seems, can be too much to resist.

Given the general scope and nuance of the film’s thinking, though, one omission seems odd: “The Witch” largely avoids the gendered elements of the witch myth. Most literature on the subject frames oppressive female social roles and fear of feminine sexuality as central components of historical witch-fear; however, Thomasin’s plight never seems particularly female-specific, and her family includes her younger brother in their suspicions. The film briefly considers Thomasin’s pubescence and Caleb’s emergent sexuality, but ultimately it relegates both to peripheral concerns. On the whole, the brief flashes of sexual awareness lack any of the charge you might expect in a film about witches. But this absence hardly detracts from the overall quality of the movie: As is, “The Witch” offers visceral and intellectual shivers to spare.

Staff writer Charlotte L.R. Anrig can be reached at charlotte.anrig@thecrimson.com.