But he's also careful to leave us with the thought that the witches might be seen as evil mostly because they stand for feminine power.Īt the center of The Witch is the family's eldest daughter, a young woman named Thomasin ( Anya Taylor-Joy), whose coming of age is even more fraught for taking place in a secluded wilderness with only her family around. In a world with literal witches, such tremendous faith might be the only way to can keep the darkness at bay. When not executed well, it can pull the audience out of the story entirely.Įggers's trick is that he doesn't once argue that the family is wrong to believe what they do. First it has to get you believing one thing then it has to convince you of the exact opposite.
For witch it stand movie#
But it's also just the sort of thing most movie genres struggle to depict, because it relies on audience whiplash. This is partly because that's an incredibly abstract idea, one that's hard to depict on screen.
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There are precious few movies about what happens when a fundamentalist belief system crumbles. This is a movie about realizing everything you think is true is a lie Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) is forced to confront some of her most deeply held beliefs. The movie's biggest scare isn't the witch it's the idea that everything you believe might be wrong. No, The Witch is a horror film that creeps up on you, spreading its tendrils slowly across the landscape of your mind. The Witch isn't a horror film where the scares come from big spooky jolts, or from gore.
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But Eggers keeps you guessing as to her true meaning and what she stands for in the context of the other characters' staunch, Puritanical morality. And by the time this happens, Eggers has so successfully immersed you in this point of view that you half believe it.īecause this is a horror movie, there really is a witch out there (as mentioned, we see her quite early on). When the family's two young children, twins, start hinting that the woods contain a dark presence, their warning is treated not as a childish game, but as a very serious accusation that carries some weight. Of course, these characters believe in witches as a matter of course.
For witch it stand code#
And to really buy into it, you have to, in essence, immerse yourself not just in Christianity, but in an outmoded form of it, with a strict moral code and ferocious religiosity that will look foreign to most modern eyes. It flirts, somewhat dangerously, with the notion that maybe those behind the Salem witch trials were onto something, since it introduces a literal witch before the end of the first act. For one thing, it means letting go of essentially everything you might hold true about religion or philosophy or even American history. Watching The Witch requires several leaps of faith. The Witch is a complete immersion into the early American wilderness Into the woods, you have to go. The devil lurks in the spaces between them. On some level, these people don't trust each other. Who knows what could be lurking out there?īut there's just as much darkness and terror right there at the fireside.
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One night they're forced to hunker down in the woods, and they huddle around a small fire, faces illuminated by its flickering light. A small family, banished from their Puritan community in 1600s America, heads out into the wilderness to begin a new life.