the witch horror movie review

'The Witch' Review: One of the Scariest Horror Films in Years

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A good horror film isn’t terribly easy to create. Sure, you can make audiences jump with loud noises or the sudden appearance of a character, or you can make them long to find out the rest of the mythology behind a particular bad guy/book/object of questionable mystic qualities before all curiosity falls away once it’s revealed. But it’s tough to craft something in the genre that stays with people once they’ve left the theater. With writer/director Robert Eggers ’ feature film debut, The Witch , however, that rare, memorable and affecting horror film has arisen. Opting for dread and mood over jump scares or deep mythology, Eggers delivers a seriously terrifying and deeply unsettling “New England folktale” set in colonial America that is intensely disturbing and wholly unforgettable.

Set in 1630 New England, a generation before the Salem witch trials, the film revolves around a small family that has been excommunicated from its plantation due to father William’s ( Ralph Ineson ) outspoken objections to what he sees as the community’s lax religious principles. William welcomes the chance to leave the plantation and practice his strict adherence to the Lord on his own, moving his family to a remote cabin near the foreboding woods.

Early in the story, daughter Thomasin ( Anya Taylor-Joy )—verging on becoming a woman herself—is playing peek-a-boo with the family’s baby near the treeline when, all of a sudden, she opens her eyes to see the boy is gone, with no trace of where he went. The audience is then introduced to a cloaked figure running with the baby through the woods—the titular witch—and what happens next is unspeakable. Suffice it to say, Eggers conjures the film's physical antagonist in such a way that you’re left both wanting to see more of her and never wanting to see the character again.

What follows is the crux of the film’s conflict: the family struggles with the disappearance of the child while attempting to maintain their faith in God in light of such a tragedy. Moreover, things keep getting worse, as their harvest of corn goes bust and, without the safety of the plantation, the family is in danger of starving to death during the winter.

The faith of the individual family members—which also includes mother Katherine ( Kate Dickie ), pre-teen son Caleb ( Harvey Scrimshaw ), and two young, rambunctious twins Jonas ( Lucas Dawson ) and Mercy ( Ellie Grainger )—alternatively wavers and stays strong as they question original sin, the afterlife fate of the young baby, and whether they themselves have been redeemed in the eyes of God. Is it possible to go to heaven if you’ve sinned? Can we know for sure that God forgives? What does it mean to invite sin into your life, and what do those consequences look like? These questions are pondered by the individuals of the family, namely Thomasin, William, and Caleb, and begin to weigh on their hearts, turning their tension and doubt on each other. Someone must be to blame for their poor fortune, and if not God, it’s surely one of them.

And throughout all of this, there’s the encroaching dread of the witch, which the family may or may not believe exists. Instead of crafting a villain whose face the audience comes to see as familiar and iconic, Eggers knows that the true power in this kind of film is what you don’t show. The audience is constantly left in question of just exactly what the witch looks like, and at the same time the brief glances we do get are absolutely chilling. This tease of just enough but not too much is executed to perfection, which not only increases the tension surrounding the witch herself, but keeps the story’s main focus on the family. The key to The Witch is that Eggers deals in dread, not scares. Aided by a striking score from Mark Korven that owes a debt to Stanley Kubrick ’s The Shining (many times a shot will linger just a little too long as the music grows louder and louder, becoming more and more terrifying), the audience is constantly watching in trepidation, not sure where the film will go next. Jarin Blaschke ’s bleak yet hauntingly beautiful cinematography adds yet another layer to the film’s atmosphere, fully engrossing the audience into the secluded, colonial setting. And the performances, especially young Taylor-Joy, are quite effective, selling the sense of isolation, regret, and deep-seated tension amongst one another.

The movie does deflate a little bit in the middle section, which drags a tad as dread gives way to despair and the inner turmoil of the remaining family becomes somewhat monotonous. For a moment it seems like The Witch is poised to switch its focus to becoming a sort of prequel to the Salem witch trials (some of the dialogue was pulled straight from Salem-era journals), but then Eggers delivers a third act that, quite simply, scared the living hell out of me and will be ingrained in my mind for a very long time. Brain, meet nightmare fuel. While the horror genre has never really lost its prevalence over the years, it feels like a lot of “scary” movies these days are simply going through the motions, offering up the cinematic equivalent of junk food—it may taste good in the moment, but it’s not necessarily fulfilling or all that memorable. The Witch is not only an incredibly well-crafted horror film, it’s a good movie period. Eggers announces himself as a talented filmmaker to watch, with a knack for blending genre elements with larger, more thoughtful questions, which in the case of The Witch consider sin and inherent goodness. That the film will most likely find you wanting to watch with one hand covering your face is just a bonus.

Kate Dickie

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The Witch Reviews

Elevated symbolically with Eggers’ commentary on how fanatical faith is impossible to live up to, and how that churns out something evil, despite its good intentions. All of that is delicately crystallized in the final moments of The Witch...

Full Review | Aug 8, 2024

The Witch has been aesthetically compared to that of The Shining and The Crucible, and it is easy to see why. But that fails to give enough credit where credit is due: Eggers has a unique direction style...

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jun 17, 2024

…finishes on a few memorable flourishes, even if it ends roughly where one might have hoped that it would start. Nevertheless, the slow burn is effective, and Eggers deserves credit for ploughing a fresh furrow in the annals of witchcraft film-making…

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 10, 2024

Robert Eggers' directorial debut is an exercise in restraint. That's his most terrifying asset and it pays off...

Full Review | Apr 20, 2023

It chilled me in ways I am not even sure I was meant to be chilled. The language was very historically accurate, the environment felt isolated and hopeless and I loved how dug in the film was to documented cases of witches.

Full Review | Sep 15, 2022

It’s impossible to leave “The VVitch” and not feel you’ve seen something unique.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 21, 2022

It remains a beautifully atmospheric and creepy masterpiece of period horror

Full Review | Jul 22, 2022

Eggers has made an unforgettable film that leaves us eagerly anticipating what he'll do next.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 22, 2022

An incredible debut for Anya Taylor Joy. Haunting, thrilling, and accompanied by a strong score.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 25, 2022

A chilly horror film that'll nibble away at your nerves...

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 8, 2021

I thought the soundscape was amazing in this movie... I felt like if it didn't have that soundscape going along with the images it wouldn't have been as scary as it was.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | May 11, 2021

Eggers' meticulousness, no doubt honed in his former job, is the source of this film's strength.

Full Review | Apr 13, 2021

Like any good horror film, The Witch is rife with opportunity for allegorical interpretation, and one of the most compelling narratives bubbling beneath surface is the origin story of America itself.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2021

The kind of horror film that is not content to simply say "Boo!" There are few, if any, jump scares in the film. Instead, it's the kind of puritanical folk tale that slowly burrows itself into your brain, leaving you queasy and uneasy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 3, 2021

Filled with memorable imagery, from the cleverly shot, heart-stopping game of peek-a-boo to the stunning final few moments, The Witch is a haunting must see.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 11, 2021

Visually, it rules, and is well worth a watch, even if you're a weenie who is worried about intrusive night thoughts.

Full Review | Aug 25, 2020

The Witch is a totally messed up movie, in a good way. By the very nature of the story, the film begins at a simmer that slowly builds and builds until it's boiling over with insanity.

Full Review | Jul 18, 2020

Where bad horror movies settle for lazy tricks and easy outs ... The Witch is in a class rarely visited.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Jul 13, 2020

Steeped in the religious conviction and paranoia of 17th Century New England pilgrim life, this is more dirt-smudged tension and distrustful atmosphere than jump scares and monsters hiding around corners.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 3, 2020

Those that patiently - and bravely - sit through The Witch will find an unsettling movie, loaded with tension that keeps escalating until the film's final frame.

Full Review | Mar 30, 2020

Cast & crew
User reviews

An isolated Puritan family in 1630s New England comes unraveled by the forces of witchcraft and possession. An isolated Puritan family in 1630s New England comes unraveled by the forces of witchcraft and possession. An isolated Puritan family in 1630s New England comes unraveled by the forces of witchcraft and possession.

Robert Eggers
Anya Taylor-Joy
Ralph Ineson
Kate Dickie
1.4K User reviews
596 Critic reviews
84 Metascore
43 wins & 72 nominations

Trailer Commentary: Robert Eggers, Director of 'The Witch'

Top cast 36

The Witch, Young

Black Phillip
(as Wahab Chaudhry)
Lead Coven Witch
(as Vivien Moore)
Coven Witch
All cast & crew
Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

Trivia The spelling of the title "The VVitch" is how the word was written in the story's period because the letter "W" was not yet in common use at the time.
Goofs One mistake in the dialogue is the incorrect usage of the personal pronouns "Thou" and "You." During the 17th century, "You" was reserved for formal situations, and when one was addressing someone of higher status/rank. "Thou," on the other hand, was used in personal/informal settings and between peers and close relations (similar to the French Tu vs. Vous). Throughout the film, the characters use thou and you interchangeably; however, a close-knit family such as theirs would not have likely addressed each other with the formal "You."

Thomasin : Black Phillip, I conjure thee to speak to me. Speak as thou dost speak to Jonas and Mercy. Dost thou understand my English tongue? Answer me.

Black Phillip : What dost thou want?

Thomasin : What canst thou give?

Black Phillip : Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?

Thomasin : Yes.

Black Phillip : Wouldst thou like to see the world?

Thomasin : What will you from me?

Black Phillip : Dost thou see a book before thee?... Remove thy shift.

Thomasin : I cannot write my name.

Black Phillip : I will guide thy hand.

Connections Featured in Film '72: Episode #45.3 (2016)

User reviews 1.4K

As good as psychological horror gets.

punishable-by-death
Oct 20, 2015
How long is The Witch? Powered by Alexa
During the exorcist scene, is it the boy talking or is it the witch?
What is The Witch and what is it about?
February 19, 2016 (United States)
United States
United Kingdom
Official Site
Official Site - A24
Kiosk, Ontario, Canada
Parts and Labor
RT Features
Rooks Nest Entertainment
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$4,000,000 (estimated)
$25,138,705
Feb 21, 2016
$40,423,945
Runtime 1 hour 32 minutes
Dolby Digital

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Review: In ‘The Witch,’ a Family’s Contract With God Is Tested

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By Manohla Dargis

Feb. 18, 2016

A finely calibrated shiver of a movie, “The Witch” opens on a scene of religious wrath. On a New England plantation, around 1630, a true believer, William (Ralph Ineson), and his family are facing a grim assemblage. The setting is a kind of meeting house crowded with men, women and children, a congregation whose silence and unsmiling faces imply disapproval or perhaps fear. Whether they’re standing in judgment doesn’t matter to William, whose arrogant faith in his own notion of Christianity is as deep and darkly unsettling as his sepulchral voice. It’s the sort of soul-and-earth-quaking voice you can imagine one of the biblical patriarchs having, the kind that Abraham used on God and Isaac alike.

Anatomy of a Scene | ‘The Witch’

Robert eggers narrates a sequence from his film..

Written and directed by Robert Eggers, “The Witch ” takes place in an America that in its extremes feels more familiar than its period drag might suggest. It’s set a decade after the Mayflower landed in Plymouth and tracks William’s family as it leaves the plantation to settle down alone at the edge of a forest. There, the family members build a farm, grow corn and commit themselves to God, a contract tested by a series of calamities that turn this story of belief into a freak-out of doubt. As the wind stirs the trees and the children taunt one another with talk of witches, you may remember that the movie’s subtitle is “A New-England Folktale.” Something wicked this way comes?

Mr. Eggers knows how to dress a room beautifully and establish a mood quickly. He has a background working on sets and costumes across the arts (his credits include “Sesame Street” and the theater group La MaMa), and the world he and his team conjure in “The Witch” is meticulous and immersive. From the start, with antiqued detail, naturalistic lighting and tightly packed bodies, he signals the claustrophobia of the plantation, where religious fanaticism meets groupthink. Within minutes William’s family is on its lonely road, an exodus that — underlined by the image of the colony gates closing — instills a tremor of anxiety. With a gentle rap-rapping, Mr. Eggers intensifies the shivers with art-film moves, genre shocks and an excellent cast that includes a progressively rowdy menagerie.

At first, these creatures skitter around the edge of the story, their baaing and barking creating a homey cacophony with the giddy squeals of the family’s children. From afar the farm looks as pretty as a needlepoint sampler, with its belching chimney, stacks of corn and quaintly dressed figures. Closer up, though, the scene appears harder, tougher, and so do William and his wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie), a pair of Grant Wood prototypes. Their pinched and planed faces make a graphic contrast with that of their eldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), whose peaches-and-cream complexion looks too insinuatingly succulent for a world of such punitive austerity. Even when their corn blackens — William and Katherine prove to be terrible farmers — Thomasin remains in bloom.

Movie Review: ‘The Witch’

The times critic manohla dargis reviews “the witch.”.

The story of the New England Puritans is itself a folk tale that’s been told, retold and fought over through generations of Thanksgiving school pageants, endless productions of “The Crucible” and historical revisionism. Mr. Eggers has looked elsewhere for inspiration, including period accounts like those of Cotton Mather , the Boston minister who influenced the lethal 1692 Salem Witch Trials that Arthur Miller turned into McCarthy-era theater. It wouldn’t be surprising if Mr. Eggers was also familiar with “The White Ribbon,” Michael Haneke’s 2009 film about God and patriarchy, authority and domination in Germany before World War I. There are gods and fathers in “The Witch” as well, even if this movie finally settles into a specifically American story about a catastrophe of faith.

Good horror movies make fright palpable, which Mr. Eggers does with dependably spooky stuff like abrupt edits that fall as heavily as William’s ax and shifts in sound levels that fill silences with a choral caterwauling. But Mr. Eggers’s sharpest decision, what makes you and the movie jump, is that he stays inside the characters’ worlds and heads, all disastrously close quarters. These are people who fervently believe both in the Devil and in God, and for whom witches are as real as trees; it’s no wonder that their inability to tame the New World blurs with their fears. The finale is a trip, but Mr. Eggers suggests that when crops and sanity each fail it misses the point to ask if the Devil exists. Of course he does — just read Cotton Mather or talk to the scene-stealing goat called Black Phillip.

“The Witch” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian) for toil and trouble. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes.

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