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The Witch

McAvennie

McAvennie

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Mar 13, 2003
Messages
3,998
Saw this this afternoon, was good, unlike most modern horrors. A lot more psychological and grounded in reality. Probably won't go down well with modern audiences, but if you like more 1970s vibe films it is worth a watch.

Not sure I liked the ending but I'll say no more on that. Some great performances from the cast and a couple of good jumps without the need for CGI.

7/10

 
Watched it yesterday. Agree with everything the OP has said. Really enjoyed the atmosphere. The performance of the twins was unsettling too. 4/5
 
I saw it twice in the cinema. This is what I thought about it:

The Witch: Intriguing film. Was this about the literal appearance of Satan and actual Witches in thrall to him? Or could it all be the result of ergot contamination of the crops causing hallucinations? I'll be mulling this over for a while to come.

A religious zealot and his family are forced to leave a New England colony in 1638 and set up a homestead on the edge of a forest. A newborn baby disappears while in the care of her adolescent sister. We "see" a witch making off with the infant and sacrificing him but the father insists a wolf was responsible.

More strange occurrences and the blame continues to attach to the the young girl. Echoes of The Crucible here in the behaviour of her two youngest siblings.

Wonderfully filmed in a bleak landscape, with attention to historical detail.The diction and grammar used is that of the 17th century and at times may be difficult to understand. 9/10.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/
 
That ending will likely become the main bone of contention among viewers who either love the whole thing like me and the good Dr did, or see it as a step too far in an otherwise credible picture.
ramonmercado said:
I saw it twice in the cinema. This is what I thought about it:

The Witch: Intriguing film. Was this about the literal appearance of Satan and actual Witches in thrall to him? Or could it all be the result of ergot contamination of the crops causing hallucinations? I'll be mulling this over for a while to come.
Click to expand...
There are layered meanings. Worthy of repeated viewing, certainly, if for nothing else than to decipher some of the ye olde phrasing. I'd say the ergot theory is unlikely as all the characters are, with the possible exception of the wife, entirely lucid and reasonable right up their rapid decline at the end. Also, what then happened to the infant?

I think its worth going into why they were cast out in the beginning. Therein lays a possible primer for the rest of the events. Watch closely as the man and his wife arrive - it is as though they recognise this place way out there in no-man's land, and rejoice like it was a homecoming.
 
Some brief interviews with cast and Eggers here: https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/video-what-happened-to-the-set-of-the-witch/

Some interesting insights into Eggers' motivation here: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/07/17th-century-horror-drama-the-witch
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/07/17th-century-horror-drama-the-witch
I like how he states that you can ask really big questions with the past that you can't do as well with a contemporary setting. I think this is really true of film.

I'll be looking out for more of Eggers' stuff. Some brilliant young directors on the rise. I rank him with Michelod and John Michael McDonough.
 
I was rewatching this on Blu-Ray recently and noticed something flash up on the screen in the scene when Caleb chases after the hare:

2ce4xi0.jpg


003J

I can only assume it's something that shouldn't be there, rather than some sort of subliminal Easter Egg, but it's strange that the director, editor or anyone else working on the film failed to notice it where I did.

I don't know if this is interesting but I didn't have anyone else to tell who would care.
 
The trailer for this freaked me out to the extent that haven't watched it despite it being exactly the sort of horror film I like. It just burrowed straight into the reptilian part of my brain and stayed there. This may be a legacy of being one of the few people I know genuinely traumatised by The Blair Witch Project, almost every one I knew saw it at the time saw it and most people complained it was "boring" or whatever. In some cases that may be bravado, I recall a tension and silence in a packed cinema that I've rarely encountered before or since.
 
captain_bats said:
I was rewatching this on Blu-Ray recently and noticed something flash up on the screen in the scene when Caleb chases after the hare:

View attachment 15494

003J

I can only assume it's something that shouldn't be there, rather than some sort of subliminal Easter Egg, but it's strange that the director, editor or anyone else working on the film failed to notice it where I did.

I don't know if this is interesting but I didn't have anyone else to tell who would care.
Click to expand...

There's a two year old Reddit thread, but it comes to no conclusions.

My first thought was that it's the number plate of an abandoned car, accidentally caught in frame. The film was shot in Kiosk, Ontario, so I Googled and - of course! - there's a Wikipedia article on Ontario license plates. It seems, however, that none of the examples match the one caught on film, either in format or even in font.

I'm left thinking that the typeface used seems to be a reasonable match with older UK plates, so I'll tentatively suggest that it's a UK-origin vehicle, first registered between 1.8.70 and 31.7.71

maximus otter
 
It's not so clear from the screenshot, but in motion it's very obviously something on top of the image, rather than something physically in the environment.
 
I think an artifact from whatever post-processing software they used.
 
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