The Witch doesn't sport a whole lot of splatter or sadism by contemporary horror film standards, because it really doesn't need cheap frills to creep under your skin. Minimalist, slow to burn and utterly confident in its style and tone, Robert Eggers' Colonial New England fairy tale earns its chills the old fashioned way, through timing, atmosphere and skill.
Of course the devil himself can help in these matters. The specter of evil feels particularly pungent in this woodsy Puritan setting, where God is strictly obeyed and deeply feared. For William (Ralph Ineson, possessed of a gravelly, Old Testamant baritone), the patriarch of a family recently arrived from England, the community's piety isn't quite enough. He takes his brood to start a farm in the wilderness, where they can worship without restraint.
Then strange, traumatic things starts happening. It seems pride really does cometh before the fall. Maybe they shouldn't have brought that black goat.
Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke conjure a barren landscape enshrouded in a perpetual state of twilight (or "the magic hour," as cineastes like to call it), shot through with an extra touch of gray. The dry, dark woods adjacent to the family farm are rarely far from the frame, portending all manner of unseen evil. This is what the true artists of horror understand: the scariest stuff is in your head or in the dark, where it could end up being just about anything.
To The Witch's credit its suspense remains intact once the action gets more literal. This is largely due to the conviction of the performances, the sound design, which creates an unnamable and ever-shifting quality of dread, and to the stubborn retention of mystery at the film's core.
We are meant to think of Salem and the contagious hysteria that epitomizes the phrase "witch hunt" (confined, in this case, to one family unit). But we're also left to weigh the strong possibility of supernatural doings and possession. The Witch doesn't really tip its hand until the end is near. It feels real, not in a tired found footage way but in the sense that you believe what you're seeing. At 90 minutes, the film does an admirable job of getting in, doing what it needs and getting out. By then the spell is cast.
Even as it suspends disbelief, The Witch is fundamentally about belief. William and his family are as devout as they come, and aware of every small lie they tell, every misstep from the righteous path. Paradoxically, their piety seems to invite the darkness in. All the better, at least if you enjoy an artfully constructed fright.
