(May Contain Spoilers)
A spooky, haunting folklore tale set in 17th-century New England about a family excommunicated from a Puritan community over religious differences. The family move to the forest and are haunted by the witch of the wood, a wicked creature who steals the hearts of young children. Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) plays peekaboo with her youngest sibling Samuel, until he is stolen. Troubling imagery follows as the witch (Bathsheba Garnett/Sarah Stephens) cuts up the baby’s body and baths in its blood, restoring her to her youthful self.
Katherine (Kate Dickie), Sam’s mother, cries over her missing son, while William (Ralph Ineson) the father of the household goes hunting with his oldest son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) where it is revealed William exchanged a silver cup for the hunting supplies. Katherine later confronts Thomasin about the missing silver cup, already resenting her for the disappearance of her baby and trying to find another excuse to punish her. Katherine and William discuss sending Thomasin to serve another family and become a wife, but Caleb doesn’t like this and thinks that if he can fetch the family some food from the hunting traps, he could save Thomasin from leaving. Thomasin finds Caleb in the morning and goes hunting with him in the woods, but after a bewitched hare throws Thomasin off a horse and the dog follows the hare, Caleb follows the dog and Thomasin in knocked unconscious.
Caleb finds the witches cabin in the woods and is enticed in. Katherine and William worried about the two go searching, Thomasin emerges from the woods and Caleb is missing. This is the second child that has gone and looks like Thomasin is the cause of it and a lot of Katherines grief. However, Caleb naked and feverish collapses in Thomasin’s arms as she goes to feed to goats. Caleb is possessed by a witchcraft spewing up a bloody apple, the family begin to pray, attempting to exercise Caleb, however the two young twins are possessed. William tries to get Thomasin to confess her sins of witchcraft, but she refuses, and William locks her and the twins away in the shed.
The witch comes to the shed and feeds off the twin’s souls. William is stabbed by Black Phillip’s (Daniel Malik) goat horn. After the subsequent deaths of all of the family, Katherine finding Thomasin at the scene of the crime again tries to kill her and blames her for all the family’s tragedies, Thomasin, however cleavers her in self-defence. Now alone Thomasin urges Black Phillip to speak to her as the devil himself, he does and gets her to sign his book promising her a delicious life. Thomasin naked and bewildered follows Black Phillip into the forest and joins a coven of witches alike.
The Witch is a memorising tale of religion and folklore, wrapped up with paranoia and supernatural events. Robert Eggers’ directing horror debut is a tantalising watch that leaves you disturbed after the credits have rolled. I would only say that I didn’t go much on Harvey Scrimshaws performance and it took me out of the story a bit, as well as the old English dialect was sometimes hard to swallow. However, the performances of the rest of the cast held the piece together nicely. I felt the story did well to hold up considering the horror didn’t feature a massive amount of blood, jump scares or any other typical horror trope. I was worried when Black Phillip started talking because I thought that this moment could easily be laughable and let the whole piece down, but the seductive undertone and deep voice from Daniel Malik worked. A troubling tale of worship and the paranormal.
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