The Witch (Robert Eggers)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/) / Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_(2015_film))

http://cdn2-www.comingsoon.net/assets/uploads/gallery/the-witch/thewitch_online_teaser_01_web_ large.jpg

[Henry Gale]

Now this is fucking good. (Saw it the day after Zoolander 2 with little sleep in between, and what a deliciously weird movie combo they made.)

Only recommendation other than to definitely see it would be to skip as many trailers and TV spots as you can, since going in cold and then afterwards seeing just how much of the imagery the main U.S. trailer featured wasn't surprising considering it's elegant, classically slow pace an unnerving mood, but disappointing since everything was a gorgeous discovery.

All else I'll say is that I'm not quite sure how often you get a cast turn in such uniformly excellent performances in a horror film like this. Everyone is very, very good. Especially one of the kids I thought was on the shaky, monotone side here and there early on, who singlehandedly takes over maybe my favourite scene of anything so far this year.

If this gets a wide release, expect people who it isn't for to hate it, but you'll know if it's for you very early on. This is old-fashioned, arthouse horror, and it's fiercely compelling and in its own way audaciously modern for that alone.

[Henry Gale]

Okay, it's out. Go see it!

Just truly a stunning, piercingly haunting piece of work that demands the immersive presentation, lack of interruption and inescapable atmosphere of the theatre. (Though a couple of walkouts foiled both of those points in my viewing..)

[Mal]

My coworker absolutely hated it- so I knew I was going to enjoy it. And I sure did. Apparently Eggers is from my area? Really jealous of this guys talent right now... can't wait to see what he does next.

[Skitch]

Rave reviews from my friends who work local arthouse theater. Looking forward to it.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Liked this much more as a period-accurate melodrama about guilt and repression than as a...

frightening fantasy. The acting was stunning, the attention to detail incredible. Some sequences carried undeniable tension, two of them surrounding that young actor - his lonely trek in the woods and his final moments in the prayer circle). But the folkloric imagery in the ending felt airless and rote, and certain story points (the kids' faux-coma and hysterics, the girl's eager "I signed the Devil's book" fabulism) felt more torn from the pages of history than built up by the characters' personalities. They occur, and I guess they occurred because that's how things occurred way back when.

[number8]

My god, surely it is way too early to declare a year favorite, but this is going to be hard to beat for me.

[Watashi]

Any day now Disney is going to reach out to Eggers for their live-action Black Cauldron remake.

[Spinal]

You guys, this movie is terrible.

[dreamdead]

Oooh, conflict.

There are a few dull spots during this one, mostly leading up to Caleb's vomiting spell, but after that moment it ratcheted up and maintained an absurd tension. Largely because I didn't peak at this thread and didn't know about the poster animal and thus was taken aback and it became more prominent. The film's coda is probably the least developed point--Eggers needed to develop Thomasin's belief of what opportunities would await her as a woman in that time-frame who survived those experiences, so that her independence here can more easily act as impetus for her decision. As it stands, her decision comes about inorganically, even though it's well directed within that sequence.

[Watashi]

Black Phillip > Spinal

[Spinal]

OK, so this movie is something of a disaster, more suitable for being laughed at than anything else. The adult actors are game but are saddled with a screenplay that has ludicrously bad dialogue and little ambition to do much more than repeat the same beats that have been covered in better movies to less effect. The child actors struggle with the language so much that they are frequently incomprehensible. The film sidesteps the whole moral failure of the witch craze era by treating witchcraft as literal truth, an entirely offensive notion considering the violence done to women during this time. The film might be successful if it committed to being frightening or exploitative. Instead it aspires to be art and comes at the subject matter with a modicum of research and a dearth of intellectual curiosity. Day of Wrath, Witchhammer, these are movies that get it right. This film doesn't.

EDIT: I don't want to beat a dead horse, so I'm not making a new post. But the Village Voice (http://www.villagevoice.com/film/satan-yawns-the-witch-is-creepy-beautiful-and-a-shrieking-mess-8275237) nails it with this quote:


For all its genuflections toward history, The Witch offers the same cheapjack lesson field-trippers get when they visit tourist-trap museums in today's Salem, Massachusetts. Every condemnation of witch-burning fools is matched by some shivery spook-out, a promise that we'll never know just what evil might have romped among the Massachusetts pines. The Witch purports, at times, to confront ignorance and hysteria, but in the end, for horror thrills, Eggers's film sides with the preachers and executioners. It literalizes the fevered terrors of our God-mad ancestors — and then brags that it's all steeped in research. It's like if, a couple of centuries from now, the latest holodeck true-crime horror flick is a West Memphis Three story that wraps with the boys high-fiving Lucifer.

[Spinal]

Black Phillip > Spinal

#Spinalsowhite

[Mal]

Evil takes many forms. Chaos reigns.

[Ivan Drago]

I literally can't give a complete review of this at the moment because I watched it between fingers for at least 20 minutes, and I say that without hyperbole.

This movie was absolutely terrifying and can only be watched in theaters when the sun's out.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I am surprised by the idea of the film being terrifying. It engaged, but I was "scared" maybe twice.

When those two moppets were sing-chasing the goat, and when the mom nurses the crow, although that was more of an "oof" than an outright scare.

[TGM]

Yeah, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit and appreciate the craft behind it, though truth be told, haunting as some of the imagery may be, I was never actually at any point scared, or even felt even the slightest bit tense, even during the movie's most intense of scenes. I can easily see some people finding this to flat out boring in fact, seeing as it's such a slow burn of a film. But I liked it still, though mostly from a dramatic and filmmaking perspective.

[dreamdead]

I see what Spinal is saying with regard to the reality of witches, and thus the undercutting of the factuality of women and girls who were wantonly sacrificed for malicious purposes. It seems odd, though, to pick on a horror film for suggesting a fundamental horror behind a crisis. That dismissal seems predicated on an ideological holding that a film can't represent that era and those conditions if the film doesn't also condemn the notion of a witch as anything other than a cultural construct for rejecting and denouncing all "heretics." And, again, I see how Spinal is getting to this point, but I think the film holds its vision for over half the film to suggest the hysteria and witchhunt atmosphere prevalent in the era that it can, in the final act, segue out of the historically-bound reality to explore more fantastical terrain without sacrificing its indictment of the reality.

In related news, only check out this glorious twitter handle (https://twitter.com/blackphillip) after you see the film.

[Pop Trash]

This was alright. Maybe I just had too high of expectations, or maybe there is just some first feature film jitters here by Eggers, but it was a little underwhelming. I don't think it's of the level of It Follows or The Babadook (two films it's oft compared to), even if I forgive the guy for not exactly being Kubrick or Friedkin either.

The goat was cool, I'll give it that. Also is this the first satanic/devil/witch movie to incorporate a goat(s) to this extent?

[Henry Gale]

The goat was cool, I'll give it that. Also is this the first satanic/devil/witch movie to incorporate a goat(s) to this extent?

Drag Me To Hell comes to mind. (But I guess as much as I wish the talking one in that movie was as much of a key player in its ensemble as this one, no, not to the same extent.)

[MadMan]

A big fat meh. That goat was cool I guess.

[Kirby Avondale]

I hope if we remember this in the years to come, it's as V-vitch, ala Se-seven-en.

[KK2.0]

So, you liked this movie? Do you know who else liked it?
http://cdn.pastemagazine.com/www/articles/snl%20dana%20carvey.jpg

i loved it

[Ezee E]

It's good in the respect that Eggers is going to be a terrific filmmaker, and looks to promise that he'll have even better movies in the future. It makes me want to look into the history of the witches as far as the animals, end go.

Lots raved about the end, but I thought it was the worst. Going literal was kind of a dumb move in my mind. The nightmares induced over the night with the stable, the raven, etc were all so well done, that I was wondering if Thomasin would return to town, be indicted for murder, and hung as a witch.

Well, hit and miss. But some neat imagery and score for sure.

[number8]

I don't think the film works at all if it's not literalized. It's a story about her freedom to make her own choices. There has to be a coven for her to join at the end for that to be fulfilled.

[Henry Gale]

I mean.. I guess you can call this the "We're re-releasing it, so we don't care about spoiling everything for people who didn't see it the first time, but reminding those who did of all the big moments" trailer. But I can see why they went with "The Horror Sensation"..


https://youtu.be/97OQ7MQC5Ck

[Lazlo]

This is a very weird plan. Are there people out there who wanted to see this that didn't? If so, wouldn't they care about spoilers? Re-watch audience has to be super low. And also they're still kind of misrepresenting the movie in the tone of the advertising, which is part of what bit them in the first place.

[Ezee E]

Saw this only two weeks ago, and there were only four others in the theater.

[megladon8]

This was...wow.

Haunting.

I was totally gripped from minute 1 right to the end.

I don't understand those calling this "a horror film in the loosest sense of the word". It was horrifying.

[megladon8]

"Would you like to taste butter?"

*heart drops into feet*

[Dukefrukem]

This was alright. Maybe I just had too high of expectations, or maybe there is just some first feature film jitters here by Eggers, but it was a little underwhelming. I don't think it's of the level of It Follows or The Babadook (two films it's oft compared to), even if I forgive the guy for not exactly being Kubrick or Friedkin either.

The goat was cool, I'll give it that. Also is this the first satanic/devil/witch movie to incorporate a goat(s) to this extent?

Greta comparisons. The sense of dread is so much heavier in It Follows and Babadook... until the 3rd act rolls around in The Witch. This is due to the audience not knowing what the fuck is going on in both of the former movies. What's a Babadook? Why are people running away from the camera in It Follows? The title of The Witch already assumes fear that it is already known. Those are the tiny differences in why The Witch could feel a bit underwhelming.

But Jesus that Raven scene got me good.

[TGM]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMBUNwu1Xcc&feature=youtu.be&a

[Winston*]

Thought this was really interesting. It's like a survey history of beliefs in witchcraft in that time and place delivered in a form that forces you to empathise with those that believed them. Cool movie.

[Grouchy]

Yeah, this was fantastic. A nerve wracking experience. I think Spinal is missing the point here. The directors know most audiences would be expecting a revisionistic film and what he delivers is something completely different and unique.

[Peng]

Almost 10 years later I can see the stylistic traces from these mid-2010s horror films that would very soon be subsumed into "elevated horror". But this still, um, rises above that tag from its sense of propulsive narrative momentum and Eggers' commitment to the time period that renders his style as immersively genuine. Plus the film's particular rising intensity remains transfixing and freaky to me after all these years. 8/10