A24’s The Witch is easily the best film of 2016 so far, as was announced by AD’s editor Ryan Adams in an email to me earlier today. Since we’ve not yet seen any of the films out of Cannes, we’ll have to leave those aside for now and instead can praise a film that is just recently out on DVD.
The debut feature of former production designer Robert Eggers is compelling from first frame to last, and not just because he brings a designer’s eye to the film, though it is no surprise that it looks the way it does. Eggers chose production designer Craig Lathrop to design this film, but it still seems to have the look of a full-blown concept of a singular artist, almost like a live action comic book with perfectly chosen actors that draw you into their deceptively storybook world.
The Witch is one of those films that leaves you with one impression, and as you ruminate on it and watch it again, you might discover a different impression. At first, it seemed to me a straight up horror film about the idea that witches might have been real after all way back in the day. But thinking on it later, it began to reveal itself as a story about how women are often assigned blame for society’s ills, likely stemming from a fear that within them is a kind of power that can only be described as having to do with witchcraft.
Finally, though, I settled on a different meaning entirely and probably because it reflects my own world view, and that’s how The Witch is really about how nature might have fought back once the Europeans tried to tame it. This is sort of in keeping with The Revenant but is even more specific, what with evil rabbits and goats.
The witches here are of the forest, of the wild wood, of the blood and earth. They are part of the magic of the forest – it is the regular humans who are not wanted. I could be way off with this interpretation but thinking about it made me really begin to love and value The Witch beyond its surface greatness as a horror film.
Anya Taylor-Joy is just magnificent as the young star of the film, but the entire family of actors are great. The Witch is one of the first films I’ve seen in a long time that made me afraid to go to sleep afterwards. It isn’t that it’s scary like the Exorcist is scary. It’s that where it takes our thoughts leads to darker thoughts.
I would hope that the film will be rewarded for its production design, at the very least, but I’m not holding my breath on that.
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