The horror genre is having a bit of a resurgence in recent years. Seemingly gone are the days where every horror film released in cinemas was your standard and cliched jump scare fest with little thought or effort put into them. Small budgets, small ideas, big profits. This was the name of the game for a while for horror. But the last few years has seen this change. The jump scare filled films still exist, such as It (2017), The Conjuring (2013) and the Conjuring 2 (2016) but even those have much more effort put into them. But the genre has also seen some extremely creative ideas and new ways of scaring the audience being implemented. Films such as Get Out (2017), It Follows (2014), A Quiet Place (2018) and The Cabin in the Woods (2011) have all taken the horror genre and put a new creative spin on it and have garnered critical and commercial success in doing so. The Witch (2015) is a film that can sit alongside these films in this genre revival.
The film follows a family in 17th century New England who have been exiled from the village due to William, played by Ralph Ineson, being an extreme protestant and questioning the religious practices of the rest of the village. Shortly after leaving the village and setting up their farm, their baby son is taken by a witch and from here the family is cursed. Paranoia, envy, fear and anger all takeover the family and as the family’s tension and fear grows, so does the tension and fear within the audience.
This is not a film that relies on cheap jump scares and loud noises in order to scare its audience. It instead does the exact opposite. The film is deftly quiet, almost silent at times. The score is subtle and succeeds in not falling into the cliché of low, quite build up leading to the deafening crescendo when the scare happens. It instead creates an atmosphere to the film. It gives a sense of the time and place that these characters are in, whilst also lending a constant tone and feeling of foreboding throughout the entire film. This sense of foreboding and dread is also accentuated through the use of composition, especially through the lighting which is the strongest aspect of this film by some way. The films lighting is stunning. It is shot completely in natural light, using candlelight and fires in order to create a brilliantly scary atmosphere that runs throughout the film. It is often difficult to see due to the use of natural lighting, but this compliments the films mood perfectly. You're always concerned that something is hidden, obscured jsut out of frame, ready to jump at any time, but the evil never comes and so the dread stays with you.
In terms of performances the film is continues to be strong. The two youngest children, Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson), do not put in the strongest of performances but it is forgivable as they are children and their role in the film is limited. Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie, who plays the Mother of the family, both put in strong performances, with Dickie especially impressing in showing paranoia, grief and madness all in one. But the two stand out performances in my eyes are from Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays Thomasin, and Harvey Scrimshaw, who plays Caleb. Both put in engaging and engrossing performances which help us to identify with them as the horror continues around them. It is effectively Taylor-Joys film to carry with her performance and she does a brilliant job.
Before I saw this film, I had heard mixed reviews. One criticism that I had heard a few times was that the film was impossible to follow as the script is written in Old English. Now I don’t want to get up on a high horse, but I didn't find this to be a problem (which may be due to the fact that this film taught me old English is very similar to proper broad northern). My main problem with the film is that I just didn't find it that scary. For all the atmosphere and the tension that the film manages to create, actual scares are few and far between. Despite this I feel like the positives of the film drastically outweigh the negatives and would definitely recommend this unless you have a tendency to be scared easily.