The Witch (2015 film)
The Witch is a 2015 folk horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his feature directorial debut. It stars Anya Taylor-Joy in her feature film debut, alongside Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson. Set in 1630s New England, the narrative follows a Puritan family who are preyed upon by an evil force in the woods beyond their farm. In fear and desperation, they turn upon one another even when the oldest daughter is suspected of being a witch.
An international co-production of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Brazil, the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2015, and was widely released by A24 on February 19, 2016. It was a critical and financial success, grossing $40 million against a $4 million budget, and is considered by some to be one of the best horror films of the 2010s and the 21st century.
Plot
In 1630s New England, English settler William and his family—his wife Katherine, teenage daughter Thomasin, preteen son Caleb, young fraternal twins Mercy and Jonas—are banished from a Puritan settlement over a religious dispute. They build a farm near a large, secluded forest and Katherine bears her fifth child, Samuel. While under Thomasin's care, Samuel abruptly disappears. It is revealed that a witch has stolen and killed Samuel to use his body to make a flying ointment.Devastated by the loss, Katherine spends her days crying and praying. Insisting a wolf took the child, William takes Caleb hunting in the woods to find and kill it when Caleb wonders if the unbaptized Samuel went to Heaven. In response, William discloses that he secretly traded Katherine's prized silver cup for hunting supplies. At the farm, the twins play with the family's billy goat Black Phillip, whom they both say talks to them. Katherine blames Thomasin for misplacing her silver cup and holds her responsible for the loss of Samuel. That night, the children overhear their parents arguing about their possible starvation, and making plans to send Thomasin away to serve another family.
The next morning, Thomasin and Caleb sneak into the forest to check a trap. Their dog Fowler chases a hare, with Caleb in pursuit; the hare frightens their horse, which throws Thomasin to the ground and knocks her unconscious. Caleb becomes lost and discovers Fowler's disemboweled body. Delving further into the thicket, he discovers a hovel from which the witch, disguised as a seductive young woman, emerges and kisses him. Thomasin awakens and finds her way home by following William's voice. As Katherine berates Thomasin for taking Caleb into the woods, William defends Thomasin by reluctantly admitting that he sold the cup and he had first taken Caleb to the woods.
That night, Caleb returns to the farm naked, delirious, and mysteriously ill. Katherine suggests that Caleb has fallen victim to witchcraft and prays for him. The next day, Caleb goes into violent convulsions and vomits a whole apple, before passionately proclaiming his love for Christ and dying peacefully. The twins accuse Thomasin of practicing witchcraft, but she in turn accuses the two of them for their supposed conversations with Black Phillip and confronts their father on his intentions to send her away. Angered by his children's behavior, William locks them all in the goat house.
In the middle of the night, the twins and Thomasin awake to find the witch, appearing as a naked old woman, drinking the blood of a nanny goat. She turns towards them and laughs, before attacking the twins offscreen as Thomasin watches in terror. In the house, Katherine has a hallucinatory vision in which Caleb and Samuel have returned. She takes Samuel and nurses him; in reality, she has exposed her breasts to a raven, which proceeds to peck away at her body. At dawn, William finds the goat stable destroyed, the goats eviscerated, the twins missing, and an unconscious Thomasin with bloodied hands. As she stirs, Black Phillip gores and kills him. An unhinged Katherine blames Thomasin for everything that has happened and tries to strangle her, forcing Thomasin to tearfully kill her mother in self-defense with a billhook.
Now alone, Thomasin enters the goat house and urges Black Phillip to speak to her. The goat responds in a human voice and offers her the life she desires. When she accepts, he materializes into a handsome, black-clad man, tells her to remove her clothes, and sign her name in a book while guiding her hand. Accompanied by Black Phillip in his goat form, a naked Thomasin enters the forest where she finds a coven of naked witches holding a Witches' Sabbath around a bonfire. The witches begin to levitate. Thomasin joins them, laughing hysterically as she ascends above the trees.
Cast
Production
Development
Eggers, who lived in New Hampshire, was inspired to write the film by his childhood fascination with witches and frequent visits to the Plimoth Plantation as a schoolboy. After unsuccessfully pitching films that were "too weird, too obscure", Eggers realized that he would have to make a more conventional film. He said at a Q&A, "If I'm going to make a genre film, it has to be personal and it has to be good." Director Alfonso Cuarón read the screenplay in 2013, saying it made him "more than anything, curious." The production team worked extensively with British and American museums, as well as consulting experts on 17th-century British agriculture. Eggers wanted the set constructed to be as historically accurate as possible, and therefore brought in a thatcher and a carpenter from Virginia and Massachusetts, respectively, who had the proper experience building in the style of the film's period.Although Eggers wanted to film the picture on location in New England, he chose to film in Canada instead due to favorable tax incentives. This proved to be something of a problem for him, because he could not find the forest environment he was looking for in the country. He eventually began scouting "off the map" and found a suitable location that was "extremely remote"; he said that the nearest town "made New Hampshire look like a metropolis".
The casting took place in England, as Eggers wanted authentic accents to represent a family newly arrived in colonial Plymouth.
Filming
To give the film an authentic look, Eggers shot only "with natural light and indoors, the only lighting was candles". He also chose to stylize the film's title as "The VVitch" in the title sequence and on posters, stating that he found this spelling in a Jacobean-era pamphlet on witchcraft, among other period-texts.In December 2013, costume designer Linda Muir joined the crew, and consulted 35 books in the Clothes of the Common People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England series to plan the costumes, which were made with wool, linen, and hemp. She also lobbied for a larger costume budget.
A troupe of Butoh dancers played the coven of witches at the end of the film, creating their own choreography.
Music
wrote the film's score, which aimed to be "tense and dissonant" while focusing on minimalism. Eggers vetoed the use of any electronic instruments and "didn't want any traditional harmony or melody in the score"; so Korven chose to create music with atypical instruments, including the nyckelharpa and waterphone. He knew the director liked to retain a degree of creative control, so he relied on loose play centered on improvisation "so that could move notes around whenever he wanted".Track listing
Themes
According to analysts, the film's impact is delivered not through scares, but by the effect of ambience and scenography. This is stylistically represented by the film's use of expressionist lighting, the use of different kinds of camera to draw thematic limits, the editing employed to hide horror from the main sight, and the soundtrack's sonic dissonance accompanying instrumental scenes. Samuel's physically impossible disappearance at the beginning of the film introduces the viewer to the film's atmosphere.The film's plot orbits around a psychological conflict, using a repressive, patriarchal portrayal of Puritan society and the dark, murderous liberation of the witches. The main female character, Thomasin, harbors worldly desires that differ from those of her conventionally Christian family, yearning for independence, sexuality, acceptance, and power. While her father and the Christian God fail to fulfill her needs, Satan speaks personally to her, offering earthly satisfaction. Therefore, with the demise of her family and the rejection of the Puritan society, Thomasin joins Satan and the witches, her only alternative, in order to find her long desired control over her own life. Her nudity in the last scene reflects her act of casting off the bonds of her previous society.
The difference between both options, nevertheless, is rendered blurred by an evocation of equal religious extremism. This is first felt in the architecture of the family's own home, which ironically resembles an archetypal witch's cottage itself, hinting at the gradual reveal that evil is already instilled in them. On the opposite side, Satan's temptation of Thomasin also acquires traits of ideological grooming, slowly alienating her from her family. At the end, despite her newfound cause and ecstatic laugh at the coven, Thomasin has not escaped her previous religiosity, but merely changed its direction, turning to murder in exchange for freedom.
The symbolic conflict between civilization and nature is also present in all aspects of the film. The family lives next to a dark forest, a place tied to witchcraft in their culture, which underlines the conflict between their civilized, patriarchal religion and the Gothic, wild natural world that surrounds them. The forest, as well as the state of nudity, are associated with monstrosity, with the untamed wilderness where forbidden liberation and sexuality emerge. Accordingly, Caleb returns nude after being seduced by the witch, the witches themselves perform their acts while naked, and Thomasin eventually adopts this code upon joining them. At the end of the film, nature triumphs over its adversary, with the Pan-like Black Phillip goring the axe-wielding William in a metaphor for man being consumed by the wild.