The Witch

Faith can be a refuge, but it can also become a cage. That is what worked best for me in The Witch: it does not need big jump scares to create fear because the real horror comes from a family trapped inside its own beliefs, unable to understand what is happening without immediately translating it into sin, punishment or demonic presence.

Robert Eggers builds the film with almost pathological patience. The house, the woods, the animals, the mud and the darkness all seem to belong to the same threat. There is no truly safe place. Even when nothing obvious is happening, the feeling that something is wrong never disappears.

The core lies in this Puritan family slowly breaking apart. Every misfortune increases guilt and suspicion, and instead of bringing them closer, it pushes them further apart. The father constantly wavers between protecting and judging; the mother is consumed by grief and faith; the children become potential suspects in each other's eyes. That religious paranoia ends up feeling almost as disturbing as anything supernatural.

Anya Taylor-Joy is excellent as Thomasin. Even here she already has that very distinctive screen presence that fills the frame without needing to do much. Her face, the way she watches, and the mixture of fear, exhaustion and defiance turn the character into the emotional center of the film. Her unusual, almost timeless beauty also fits the tone perfectly.

Ralph Ineson is very effective too. His voice, rigidity and mixture of authority and fragility create a father convinced that he must hold his family together even as every decision tightens the trap around them. Kate Dickie, meanwhile, takes anguish almost to the breaking point without ever completely disrupting the film's restrained tone.

What interests me most is the way religion stops functioning as comfort and starts acting as fuel for fear. Everything is interpreted as a sign, a sin or a test. The family prays constantly, but faith does not give them peace; it makes them more guilty, more suspicious and less able to listen to each other. That is probably the harshest part of the film.

The pace is slow, yes, and I completely understand why some viewers may find it heavy. Eggers is not looking for a string of shocks, but for an accumulation of discomfort. The washed-out photography, abrasive music and long silences make the film feel almost like a historical nightmare rather than conventional horror.

The language helps enormously too. The dialogue has an archaic stiffness that could have felt artificial, but here it strengthens the sense that we are watching a world governed by entirely different rules. Everything sounds solemn, even while the family is falling apart.

And yet, it is not a perfect film for me. There are moments when that search for solemnity weighs too heavily and the narrative can feel distant. The atmosphere is more powerful than the plot itself, and if you do not enter that state of mind, it is easy to remain outside the film.

But I did eventually enter it. The family paranoia, the weight of guilt, the constant presence of the forest and Thomasin's increasing isolation create a very distinctive experience. I do not see it as a scary movie in the traditional sense, but as a story about a family destroying itself while trying to give a religious explanation to what it cannot understand.

The Witch worked for me. It is slow, severe and deliberately uncomfortable, but it has a powerful atmosphere, an excellent cast and a very intelligent way of turning faith, superstition and guilt into genuine horror material. And Anya Taylor-Joy was already showing here why it would soon become impossible to look away from her.