Quick Info
Robert Eggers’ "The Witch" is one of those horror movies that creeps under your skin before you even realize what’s happening. Set in 1630s New England, it follows a Puritan family whose isolation in the woods does them absolutely no favors. The premise is deceptively simple — paranoia and religious fervor slowly suffocate the family — but the execution is so precise that you end up holding your breath for most of the film.
The first thing that jumped out at me was the atmosphere. The cinematography is so muted and naturalistic that you almost feel the chill of the forest, hear the crunch of dead leaves, smell the anxiety. The camera lingers just long enough to make the shadows feel alive. Honestly, it makes most modern horror look like carnival rides.
What really works here is the commitment to authenticity. The dialogue is lifted from actual 17th-century sources, and while it’s sometimes hard to parse, it pays off in spades. The language makes the characters’ dread and superstition feel painfully real. Anya Taylor-Joy, in her breakout role as Thomasin, is genuinely fantastic. She balances teenage confusion and terror in a way that’s almost too believable.
The pacing, though, will not be everyone’s bag. This is a slow burn with capital S and B. If you’re looking for cheap jumps or buckets of blood, you’ll get bored quickly. But if you’re willing to let the tension smolder, the payoff is intense and pretty disturbing.
Emotionally, the story sneaks up on you. Sure, it’s about witches, but it’s really about familial breakdown and the fear of the unknown. Eggers somehow makes the mundane (a missing silver cup, a family argument) feel just as terrifying as any supernatural threat. When things spiral, it’s both shocking and kind of inevitable.
On the downside, some scenes are extra obtuse, and the heavy period language means you’ll probably miss a few lines unless you watch with subtitles. It’s not a film you throw on for background noise. But if you want to be unsettled and impressed at the same time, this is a high bar for modern folk horror.
The R8 Take
Moody, slow-burning, and genuinely creepy. If you liked Hereditary but prefer your scares ambiguous rather than in-your-face, this’ll leave you rattled for days.
