The Witch

Au départ, The Witch semble être un spin-off de The Village de Shyamalan, mais finalement il se révèle être un film d'horreur qui échappe aux clichés du genre et qui ne veut en aucun cas être juste un autre An American Haunting. Avec son anglais cruellement britannique (que même les Britanniques eux-mêmes ne comprennent probablement pas sans sous-titres), la représentation authentique de l'époque est essentiellement axée sur le comportement et les réactions des personnages, ce qui conduit à des résolutions insatisfaisantes pour le spectateur. Les personnages sont tellement accablés par leur foi qu'ils prient mutuellement de manière hystérique et se crient dessus plutôt que de converser normalement, ce qui rend impossible de leur trouver un chemin ou de leur souhaiter bonne chance pour s'en sortir. Au contraire, j'ai souhaité que leur destin soit déjà scellé. Dans la seconde moitié, le film se concentre davantage sur leur psychose incontrôlable que sur la menace de la sorcière elle-même. Le film est mal réfléchi dans ses événements et leurs justifications, ou plutôt, il a une logique étrange (soi-disant de sorcière ?). Cependant, l'atmosphère est dense et la jeune Anya Taylor-Joy, incarnant le seul personnage normal, est une nouvelle venue prometteuse. (06/08/2015)

(50th KVIFF) As a horror fan I don’t put most of the genre films at the top of the rankings, modern horror doesn’t usually reach the levels of quality, budget and depth to compete with films from other genres. The Witch, however, is really one of the best three films, if not the absolute best film of the 50th Karlovy Vary Film Festival, even if it might not fully correspond to what some drunken viewers were expecting in the midnight section. Such a perfectly directed horror film is something that you only see once in a blue moon. The Witch is not fun, it’s dark, terrifying, and depressing. The amazingly convincing setting of 17th century New England, with the characters and the way they speak, or, rather, what they speak about, and the almost tangible fear of the unknown hidden in the forests, of the witches and the devil’s helper, who threaten the family and drive them into madness. Eggers shows the witches very rarely, but when he does, in short but impressive sequences, it is quite something. Ew! He dedicates more time to the father, the mother, the daughter and the son and shows how the clash with the supernatural has affected their relationships, with insecurity and suspicion creeping among them. The sequence of the agitated father chopping wood in the middle of the night is, thanks to Eggers’s craftsmanship, as terrifying and unpleasant as the one of the witches performing a ritual with a helpless infant. During the scene of Caleb’s cure, I shuddered nervously in my seat and felt a chill running through my spine. Unlike many other horror movies, this one fortunately never stumbles, even in the end, which is very satisfying. After the screening I realised that this is the horror film I’ve always wanted to see even though I didn’t know it. 100 % (08/07/2015)

After the trailer, I was hoping to be delighted by The Witch. In the end, it is only rather inconspicuously, mildly concerning because of the excess of religion and one established witchcraft cult in New England. The movie actually doesn’t contain anything innovative and so there is only one thing which can entice you. And that is the atmosphere. The atmosphere is definitely brutal, but it doesn’t make up the whole movie. Unfortunately. (25/05/2016)

These a few dozens of seconds were completely unnecessary, without them it could have been the best horror of recent years. But we cannot do anything about it and their presence is even a bigger letdown because the problem is not what they show but how. Anyway, otherwise it is pretty good. You can find here everything what a real old school horror movie should contain; disturbing atmosphere, graduating psycho tension within a closed community (in this case a family in the middle of the woods), exposing carefully written characters, fears, evil and prejudices hidden in us, disturbing scenes... I am completely happy about that; especially when you add the impressive camera à la Dutch masters and acting performances of the whole family, which are worth highlighting, including the children. I can't remember when four children played such a complicated characters so well. Perhaps Eggers will make more horror movies, because a similar approach to this genre has been missing in recent years. (12/07/2015)

Unique. It's as if the cameraman had been transported back several centuries in a time machine and filmed the feelings of a family in isolation in the middle of the dark woods. Everything is subordinated to these feelings of the time – the archaic language, the great piety that permeated every individual back then, the fear of the unknown, the fear even of the forest next to you, where evil, evil spirits and witches were believed to reside. Because faith in Christ and fear of the powers of hell was everything at that time, the whole film is permeated with pious talk, prayers and irrational behaviour, which – as it seems from the reviews here – the dull-witted population, without knowledge of the historical context and dumbed down by the mainstream, will not appreciate. The rest of us give it a thumbs up, because such period parables, where the author drew from written sources of the time, bringing to life the witch trials and the mindset of pious people, are a rarity in today's cinemas. It's just a shame about the overly suggestive ending, if the author had had the balls to drive it through the simple "psychosis" of one frightened family, I would applaud even more. And Anna Taylor-Joy? You’ll be hearing a lot about her, trust me! (31/07/2016)