The Witch
The Witch (stylized as The VVitch, and subtitled A New-England Folktale) is a 2015 folk horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his feature directorial debut. It stars Anya Taylor-Joy in her film debut, alongside Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, and Lucas Dawson. Set in 1630s New England, its plot follows a Puritan family who encounter forces of evil in the woods beyond their farm.
An international co-production of the United States and Canada, the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 27, 2015, and was widely released by A24 on February 19, 2016. It was a critical and financial success, grossing $40 million against a $4 million budget.
Plot
In 1630s New England, English settler William and his family—wife Katherine, teenage daughter Thomasin, preteen son Caleb, and young fraternal twins Mercy and Jonas—are banished from a Puritan settlement over a religious dispute. They build a farm near a large, secluded forest, and Katherine bears her fifth child, Samuel. While under Thomasin's care, Samuel abruptly disappears. It is soon revealed that a witch has stolen and killed Samuel to use his body to make a flying ointment.
Devastated by the loss, Katherine spends her days crying and praying. William takes Caleb hunting in the woods, where Caleb wonders if the unbaptized Samuel went to Heaven. In response, William discloses that he secretly traded Katherine's prized silver cup for hunting supplies. At the farm, the twins play with the family's billy goat, Black Phillip, who the children say talks to them. Katherine blames Thomasin for misplacing her silver cup and holds her responsible for the loss of Samuel. That night, the children overhear their parents arguing about their possible starvation, and making plans to send Thomasin away to serve another family.
The next morning, Thomasin and Caleb sneak into the forest to check a trap. Their dog Fowler chases a hare, with Caleb in pursuit; the hare frightens their horse, which throws Thomasin to the ground and knocks her unconscious. Caleb becomes lost and discovers Fowler's disemboweled body. Delving further into the thicket, he discovers a hovel from which the witch, disguised as a seductive young woman, emerges and kisses him. Thomasin awakes and finds her way home by following William's voice. As Katherine berates Thomasin for taking Caleb into the woods, William defends Thomasin by reluctantly admitting that he sold the cup.
That night, Caleb returns to the farm naked, delirious, and mysteriously ill. Katherine suggests that Caleb has fallen victim to witchcraft and prays for him. The next day, Caleb goes into violent convulsions and passionately proclaims his love for Christ before dying peacefully. The twins accuse Thomasin of practicing witchcraft, but she in turn accuses the two of them for their supposed conversations with Black Phillip. Angered by his children's behavior, William locks them in the goat house.
In the middle of the night, the twins and Thomasin awake to find the witch drinking the blood of a nanny goat. In the house, Katherine has a hallucinatory vision in which Caleb and Samuel have returned. In her dream, she takes Samuel and nurses him, but in reality, a raven is pecking at her breast. At dawn, William finds the goat stable destroyed, the goats eviscerated, the twins missing, and an unconscious Thomasin with bloodied hands. As she stirs, Black Phillip gores and kills William. An unhinged Katherine blames Thomasin for everything that has happened and tries to strangle her. In self-defense, Thomasin tearfully kills her mother with a billhook.
Now alone, Thomasin enters the goat house and urges Black Phillip to speak to her. The goat responds in a human voice and materializes into a handsome, black-clad man. He tells Thomasin to remove her clothes and sign her name in a book, promising the life she has always wanted. Thomasin, accompanied by Black Phillip as a goat, then enters the forest nude, where she finds a coven holding a Witches' Sabbath around a bonfire. The witches begin to levitate, and Thomasin joins them, laughing or possibly crying as she ascends above the trees.
Production
Although Eggers wanted to film the picture on location in New England, the lack of tax incentives meant he had to settle for Canada. This proved to be something of a problem for him, because he could not find the forest environment he was looking for in the country. He eventually began scouting "off the map" and found a suitable location (Kiosk, Ontario) that was "extremely remote"; he said that the nearest town "made New Hampshire look like a metropolis."
The casting took place in England, as Eggers wanted authentic accents to represent a family newly arrived in colonial Plymouth.
Filming
To give the film an authentic look, Eggers shot only "with natural light and indoors, the only lighting was candles". He also chose to stylize the film's title as The VVitch (with two "V"s instead of a "W") in the title sequence and on posters, stating that he found this spelling in a Jacobean-era pamphlet on witchcraft, among other period-texts.
In December 2013, costume designer Linda Muir joined the crew, and consulted 35 books in the Clothes of the Common People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England series to plan the costumes, which were made with wool, linen, and hemp. She also lobbied for a larger costume budget.
A troupe of Butoh dancers played the coven of witches at the end of the film, creating their own choreography.
Release and reception
The film had its world premiere on January 27, 2015, at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. It was screened on September 18, 2015, in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 and DirecTV Cinema acquired the film's distribution rights. As it received very positive reactions in advance screenings, the studios decided to give the film a wide theatrical release in the United States, which occurred on February 19, 2016.
Writing in Variety, Justin Chang commented that "A fiercely committed ensemble and an exquisite sense of historical detail conspire to cast a highly atmospheric spell in The Witch, a strikingly achieved tale of a mid-17th-century New England family's steady descent into religious hysteria and madness."
Ann Hornaday wrote in The Washington Post that the film joins the ranks of horror films such as The Exorcist, The Omen, and Rosemary's Baby, saying that The Witch "comports itself less like an imitator of those classics than their progenitor", which is "a tribute to a filmmaker who, despite his newcomer status, seems to have arrived in the full throes of maturity, in full control of his prodigious powers."