The Witch

William: There's evil in the wood.

Roger Eggers' The Witch is perhaps best described by its subtitle, A New England Folktale. It's the world as Puritans understood it. Witches are real, the Devil walks among us and the strength of the community is the only way to weather the trials of life. This is the story of a family that has been cast out from the community and now lives on an isolated, struggling farm on the edge of the forest. When the baby disappears under the care of oldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), the fragile peace the family has achieved begins to crumble. The mother Katherine (Kate Dickie) succumbs to despair and anger. The father William (Ralph Ineson) struggles with his own growing feeling of inadequacy as he struggles to protect and provide for his family. Thomasin is overwhelmed by guilt while her brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) worries for the baby's unbaptized soul and the young twins (Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson) are lost to their own delusions. With the family consumed by sin and weakness, the invasive evil of the witch quickly tears them apart in this smart, atmospheric horror film.

Like all the best films, the story works on two levels. The supernatural elements are convincing and integrated into the plot but it's the characters' own failings that lead to their ultimate downfall. In many ways, this plays out as a Puritan morality tale. The Puritan values of community, faith, honesty and public confession are presented early on as the ideals for which they strive and had they abided by them, they likely would have overcome the evil in their lives. The film opens with Thomasin's confessions, a list of sins ordinary for a girl her age that we can easily dismiss as worries caused by her over-exacting religion but when they are tested we see how these seemingly trivial sins become the seeds of disaster. We see a father with much love but weak virtue and a mother with virtue but little love. Even without the witch, this was a family doomed to failure.

With the realistic dialogue and the inclusion of historical culture, it feels very much like a lost Hawthorne story. Don't come to this hoping for jump scenes and gore. This earns its place in the horror genre by insinuation and disturbing situations. The Witch is a must for not only people interested in the supernatural but also fans of early frontier life and family drama. It's definitely one of the best movies of the year thus far.