The Witch
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
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Remember a time when Robert Eggers was just the new kid on the block of the horror film bandwagon of the 2010’s (a much needed decade to make up for some of the horrendous Japanese horror remakes, poor excuses for blockbuster horrors, and other faux-pas from the 2000’s)? The Witch felt like a festival darling of a film that made its rounds when publications like IndieWire were trying to insist that this guy is the real deal. Well, The Northman is easily one of the most awaited films of 2022, and it’s only Eggers’ third feature (after the manically brilliant The Lighthouse: one of my favourite films of 2019, and a picture I was happy to give a perfect score right after it melted my brains). So, what do we know about Eggers already? Well, he has a very keen attention to detail when it comes to replicating the locations and time periods he is capturing, on a Jane Campion and Julie Dash level of accuracy. Clearly a fan of history and geography, Eggers’ films transport you thanks to how realistic they feel before things turn frightening. That’s the second half of this equation: Eggers is a master of slow dread, without resorting to cliched jumpscares or useless gimmicks. If anything, I feel like The Witch was kind of polarizing with its audience upon release because of how much it refused to play by the rules of horror.
Well, looking at The Witch six years later, it’s the kind of retrospective look that can mess with you. A onetime newcomer named Anya Taylor-Joy now has the world at the palm of her hand, and yet looking back, she’s as strong of a thespian as she’s regarded now; where has this memory of a new face gone? Eggers has only released one film since, but rewatching The Witch similarly feels like an “of course” kind of reflection, as if we’re so familiar with his style already (these are the kinds of sensations reserved for someone with a wider filmography, and yet Eggers is already set in stone). This has nothing to do with having seen the film before and knowing what’s going to happen (where the source of the sinister powers within this Puritan colony are coming from, for instance). This is a film made with such certainty of one’s own capabilities as if Eggers was prepared for this moment his entire life.
The Witch is a slow burning horror film made with extreme certainty.
Eggers has taken the one-by-one murder works of Agatha Christie and turned it on its head to tell a story that’s a little more like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Enter New England in the seventeenth century: any signs of madness, possession or unorthodox thinking will result in mass hysteria. Maybe Eggers was trying to comment on the fickleness of society. I wouldn’t tag him as a man afraid of cancel culture or any other sort of asanine claim. Eggers is far too concerned with the intricacies of folklore and the history of humanity to be jaded about trivialities. His work has already demonstrated a much deeper understanding of our inner-workings, and anyone insisting otherwise doesn’t get Eggers whatsoever. He has this opportunity to carry on the evil side of fables and tales to a whole new, unassuming audience. That’s exactly what The Witch is. Maybe you can find your own connections to the film, but Eggers is a history and mythology buff through and through.
As the film progresses and its overarching questions get more complicated — what or who is causing these ghastly occurrences and why — the thickness of Eggers’ mystical storytelling gets revealed. I feel like I’m stuck amidst a bulky fog watching The Witch without any geographical orientation or knowledge of what will come next. I don’t feel a narrative lostness, but rather a moral confusion and a lack of foresight. Eggers achieves this without going overboard on the horror tropes as if he knew exactly what spice to use in his signature dish (rather than trying a dry rub concoction with a hope and a prayer that it will work out). The Witch doesn’t feel like it progressively gets darker, at least outside of its human element; the players here get more and more insane in an otherwise stable environment, which really sells the notion that so much of this is internalized fear combatting the unknown.
The climax reveals a whole new side of the film, elevating this paranoid horror to the level of greatness.
All of this paranoia leads to the passively obsidian finale, as if Robert Eggers doesn’t believe in fireworks. There’s no massive explosion or final twists (I don’t consider the “revelation” to be a twist as much as it is just new information being offered) to try and sell The Witch to you. Instead, Eggers just allows his conclusion to exist, and it’s far more effective. You’re hypnotized and assimilated into these ending images, almost like this is a cause for celebration (when you’re staring the deepest horrors of the film head on by this point). You’re a part of the darkest woes of an entire civilization (and, as Eggers reminds us, complete moments in history). How does it feel? To me it feels like an occultist dream: a gateway towards being the nightmares of millions for just a short while. Mass hysteria is what drove an entire colony insane here, and yet we’re a part of our own version of a hive-mind collective (the antithesis, actually). It’s a dirty trick that Eggers pulled on us, and it’s an everlasting one: Black Phillip goat merchandise still gets sold, The Witch’s reception only gets stronger over time, and its lingering effects on the jumpstarting on Eggers and Taylor-Joy’s careers still resonate. It feels nice to be a part of the horror within a horror film, and maybe feeling so connected to it is perhaps its greatest fright of all.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.