Robert Eggers – Bitch Flicks

‘The Witch’ Will Transport You to Another World — A Beautiful, but Terrifying One

‘The Witch’ is proof that when a film is made with utmost care down to the last detail, one can still be transported by it to another world — though, in the case of ‘The Witch,’ it is a downright creepy and unpleasant world, and one that I am grateful, as a woman, to not have to live in.

This guest post written by Lee Jutton originally appeared at Medium and appears here as part of our theme week on Women in Horror. It is cross-posted with permission.

When was the last time you felt truly transported by a film? In a world where people’s social networks are so important to them that they can’t resist lighting up a dark theater with their iPhones, and where theater announcements asking you not to talk or text during the movie have begun to resemble desperate threats, it’s pretty hard to completely abandon the world around you for that of the film you are watching. My personal worst experience at the movies was last winter, when I went to see The Theory of Everything at the Lincoln Square theater on New York’s Upper West Side. The theater was packed — including a large group of teenagers who sneaked in, sat down in the aisle alongside my seat and proceeded to talk, text and laugh out loud for the entirety of the film. There were also two women sitting directly behind me who had to keep loudly explaining the film to each other (complete with loud gasps at Stephen Hawking’s ALS diagnosis, which was apparently news to them), seemingly forgetting that they were not watching it in their living room but in an auditorium full of strangers.

It takes a very special film to overcome the distractions inherent in the modern moviegoing experience and swallow you up with its story. Fortunately, writer-director Robert Eggers’ debut feature, The Witch, is such a film. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where Eggers took home the directing award, The Witch is a beautifully researched, written, and photographed horror film about an isolated Puritan family struggling to eke out an existence. I saw it on a Saturday evening at the Court Street theater in Brooklyn; naturally, as the opening shots begin to roll, numerous voices continued to rumble throughout the theater, only to be repeatedly and emphatically shushed by other moviegoers, which was equally distracting. Yet only a few minutes later, I was no longer aware of the people around me and whether they were still chatting, texting, and crumpling popcorn bags with the force of Sergeant Terry Jeffords on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. They could still have been doing all of these things, but I was so enraptured by the film that I was no longer capable of noticing. The Witch is proof that when a film is made with utmost care down to the last detail, one can still be transported by it to another world — though, in the case of The Witch, it is a downright creepy and unpleasant world, and one that I am grateful, as a woman, to not have to live in.

As The Witch begins, William (Ralph Ineson) and his family are exiled from their Puritan community because of William’s pride and forced to start again on a small plot of land at the edge of a forest, where their crops keep failing. When the baby of the family disappears under the watch of eldest sister Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), paranoia begins to seep into their tiny, closed-off world. Mother Katherine (Kate Dickie) spends her days and nights crying and praying, stopping only to shoot poisonous barbs at Thomasin, blaming her for the family’s loss. When another member of the family disappears, with Thomasin again the only witness, the fraying bonds holding this desperate, lonely band together tear apart in an increasingly violent manner. The young twins Mercy and Jonas (Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson, quite possibly the creepiest set of siblings on-screen since The Shining) accuse Thomasin of being a witch. In such a religious, superstitious world, it’s not difficult for William or Katherine to believe such a tale. Trapped on this claustrophobic plot of land more than a day’s journey from civilization, all Thomasin can do is repeatedly say that it is not true, which isn’t enough proof of her innocence — not even for her own parents.

The most terrifying thing about The Witch is not the threat posed by Satan or his witchy minions, but the one posed by Thomasin’s own family as they increasingly suspect her of having signed a pact with the devil. That’s not to say that the supernatural elements of the film are not spooky in their own right; they are deliciously creepy, from the repeated sightings of a bold brown rabbit lurking among the family’s livestock to the blood inexplicably squirting from the teats of a goat when Thomasin tries to milk it. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke frequently shoots the characters from behind to make one feel as though you’re helplessly bearing witness to something evil sneaking up on them; it’s an old trick, but one that has not lost any of its potency, especially when paired with the frantic, distorted strings of the score by Mark Korven. Despite a low-contrast palette comprised mostly of shades of gray, the film looks beautiful. Blaschke relies on natural light, which gives the film — mostly shot outdoors under the bleak sky or inside the dark cabin — a stark, realistic feel. Also adding to the realism is Eggers’ script, with dialogue that was heavily researched and in some instances taken directly from historical records. The frequently unfamiliar words and stiff cadences of this Puritan speech could potentially sound goofy, but the perfect cast manages to make it work. It still sounds unnatural compared to modern speech, but in a way that only accentuates how removed this world is from our own.

While newcomer Taylor-Joy, who gives a striking performance, does have the peachy complexion and flowing blonde hair of an ingénue, there is also something slightly alien about her wide eyes, and the rest of the actors in the film have equally distinctive and unfamiliar faces. In short, they all look like they could have walked right out of a painting from that time period — especially Mercy and Jonas. Like many children one sees in art from that time, the twins look more like tiny elderly people than children. When they dance around singing about their beloved goat Black Philip in their shrill little voices, you can’t help but feel chills run down your spine. These subtle, psychological horrors — moments that just feel off for a reason one can’t explain — are the best moments in the film. Unfortunately, Eggers frequently decides to go one step further and show us much more explicit examples of evil. For instance, the audience learns the fate of the missing baby almost immediately after his disappearance. Seeing what happens to him actually removes some of the film’s foreboding, as opposed to adding to it. It’s not that these scenes are excessively gory or disturbing; they’re just not necessary. I can’t help but think of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, and how much more impact that film’s aliens had when one saw merely a hand or a shadow, as opposed to the full creature. Similarly, The Witch thrives when the audience feels as helpless and lost for answers as Thomasin and her family.

While The Witch’s ending is not particularly surprising or frightening in and of itself, by the time the lights came on, I was relieved to be back in my modern world — annoying audience members and all. It is a great little horror film that provides the escapism one seeks at the cinema, even if that escape is to a terrifying and dark corner of the world.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

The Threat of Feminine Power in The Witch

The Witch and Legitimizing Feminine Fear

The Witch and Female Adolescence in Film

Lee Jutton has directed short films starring a killer toaster, a killer Christmas tree, and a not-killer leopard. Currently a staff writer at Film Inquiry, her writing has also appeared in publications such as Bitch Flicks, Bitch: A Feminist Response to Pop Culture, TV Fanatic, and Just Press Play. You can follow her on Twitter @leiladaisyj for more opinions on movies, pictures of cats, and ramblings on German soccer.

The Threat of Feminine Power in ‘The Witch’

Recognizing the witch hunts dotted throughout the U.S.’s early history as a feminist issue, Robert Eggers smartly constructs his film to be a power struggle between the two main female characters, each representing a different conception of femininity. … By rejecting motherhood, the witches reject their feminine role in the patriarchal Puritan society.

This guest post is written by Josh Bradley. | Spoilers ahead.

Judging it against other modern horror films, a lot is surprising about Robert Eggers’ outstanding debut, The Witch. It’s not a slow build like so many others in the genre, as one of the very first scenes shows us a witch and is as horrifying as anything I’ve ever seen in the first 10 minutes of a movie. It manages to be deeply unsettling and creepy without resorting to jump scares, a staple in the genre sometimes leaned too heavily upon. And it fully commits to its ending without going the ambiguous route that many have come to expect from this type of story.

The ending that the film ultimately commits to also illuminates another surprise: the eponymous witch alluded by the title may not be the hooded figure from the first 10 minutes or the bewitching woman in the woods who curses Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) in the second act. It could just as easily refer to the protagonist, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Sure, Thomasin’s climactic decision indicates this may be the case, but so does Katherine’s suspicion and treatment of her daughter. And that’s the biggest surprise: the film presents a family-vs-witch situation as the main dramatic conflict, but the fates of the characters show that – from a narrative standpoint – Thomasin is the definitive protagonist, and the antagonist is actually her mother, Katherine (Kate Dickie). Considering some of the heinous things done by the witches in the movie – and the fact that Satan himself is a literal character – revealing Katherine to be the ultimate antagonist is quite the statement.

Recognizing the witch hunts dotted throughout the U.S.’s early history as a feminist issue, Eggers smartly constructs his film to be a power struggle between the two main female characters, each representing a different conception of femininity. Katherine, a middle-aged woman and mother, believes her power comes from her ability to give life, from her ability to have children. This fits nicely into the patriarchal Puritan society of the time, as women were relegated to be mothers and caregivers. The disappearance of her infant and the untimely death of her son compromise her caregiving abilities, leaving her powerless without her children (visualized by the nightmare image of her breastfeeding a crow, laughing maniacally as it gores her breast).

Unlike Katherine, the witches – who live outside the patriarchal Puritan society – at least partially draw their power from their sexuality, giving them (potentially) even more power than men. It’s no accident that Caleb’s demise stems from his male (hetero)sexual curiosity, as a witch takes the form of a young, attractive woman to lure him in and curse him. It’s also no accident that Caleb takes particular note of Thomasin’s developing chest (unbeknownst to her), around the same time Katherine announces to her husband, William (Ralph Ineson), that Thomasin needs to be sent away to work for another family now that she “begot the sign of her womanhood.” Now that Thomasin is a woman – with youth, beauty, vitality, sexuality, and fertility – she’s a threat to Katherine’s power.

In her final scene, Katherine, who is quick to blame all of the family’s hardships on Thomasin and her blossoming womanhood, attempts to strangle her scared and crying daughter to death. After Thomasin cuts her, Katherine bleeds all over Thomasin’s face, as if trying to insist that she (Katherine) still has the womanly power too (blood being “the sign of her womanhood”). But she doesn’t.

Directly contrasting Katherine, the witches in this world reject motherhood in the most drastic way imaginable, as evidenced by young Samuel’s fate. Eggers has mentioned in interviews that the macabre scene involving the infant was inspired by legends of witches using the entrails of an unbaptized babe as a “flying ointment,” hinted at by a blurry image of the witch floating in front of the moon directly after rubbing the… “ointment”… all over herself. Following the above metaphor, the witches are literally stealing Katherine’s source of power (her children) to further their own.

By rejecting motherhood, the witches reject their feminine role in the patriarchal Puritan society (although they still seem to follow a male leader). And that is what makes the witches so scary to the family in the film (and to the Puritans in general); they refuse to use their feminine power in the service of the patriarchal family, which threatens the patriarchal family. Add this to William’s inability to either protect or provide for his family – i.e., the man’s traditional source of power – and Thomasin’s feminine power becomes even scarier to them.

In a symbolic final act of desperation, William locks Thomasin away with her young siblings, as if attempting to force her to be with children (perhaps as indirect punishment for her failed moment of motherhood, where her infant brother was stolen from under her nose). Instead, the witches – and Satan – rescue her from this prison of mandated maternity. Ultimately, Thomasin decides that she has no use for the societal structure (or pious religion) that her family tried to confine her in, and she leaves it behind in order to embrace – and fully realize – her feminine power. As a witch.

See also at Bitch Flicks:

‘The Witch’ and Legitimizing Feminine Fear
‘The Witch’ and Female Adolescence in Film

Josh Bradley is a literal rocket scientist who spends most of his free time with his YouTube channel, watching the Criterion Collection, or staring at a blank Final Draft document. You can follow him on Twitter @callme_Yosh.

‘The Witch’ and Female Adolescence in Film

This blame, fear and guilt are heaped upon Thomasin right as she starts to blossom into womanhood… This may be why ‘The Witch’ so strongly resonates.

This guest post written by Maria Ramos. Spoilers ahead.

One of the most chillingly spooky suspense films released this year, The Witch uses ancient superstitions and fears within a feminist critique that rings as true today as in the pre-Salem time period in which the film is set. The parents in the film utterly fail to protect their children from the wicked witch in the woods, especially the obstinately pious patriarch, while turning the blame on their teenage daughter. Religion warps into destructive superstition as the family tries to root out the cause of their ill fortune.

Though the trouble really starts when the male head of the family (Ralph Ineson) gets them expelled from the safety of town, it isn’t until the youngest child is kidnapped that the family really starts to break down. The fact that this happens while the baby is under the care of big sister Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), immediately turns the spotlight onto her. Her age and intelligence only makes her more of a target. Mothers — and babysitters by extension — are expected to keep children safe, so the disappearance of a child is not only a tragedy in itself, but represents a failure at motherhood. Losing a child paints Thomasin as unfit to mother, in a certain way, and therefore also unfeminine by the mores of the time.

This blame, fear and guilt are heaped upon Thomasin right as she starts to blossom into womanhood, something director Robert Eggers plays upon skillfully. Failing crops, illness, animals who behave strangely, and, worst of all, a missing baby — the parents interpret all of these signs as supernatural and ungodly. Who’s to blame, though? This is a time when society views women, as the descendants of Eve, as inherently sinful at the best of times. The label of suspected witch was quickly earned but hard to shed. Therefore, it is easy to believe when the misfortunes the family faces are placed at Thomasin’s feet. Intelligent and sometimes too quick to speak, she is a natural target.

Nor are we so far past that time today. Young women are still expected to behave and conform to social norms more than young men. In a world where “boys will be boys,” girls who step out of line are often said to be asking for trouble. When a young woman survives rape or assault, her outfit, behavior, and sobriety are questioned far quicker than those of her assailant, due to rape culture. We may not call girls witches today, but there are a long list of other names almost every teen girl has been called at one point or another. This may be why The Witch so strongly resonates. Adolescence is hard at the best of times, whether a girl fears being being called a slut or a witch. If the wardrobe was updated and the religiosity toned down, it would be easy to set it in today’s world. The film, produced by A24 Films and DirecTV, draws clear parallels between the victim-blaming of today and the more extreme version endured by Thomasin.

Not that Thomasin is the only character who shines in the movie. Harvey Scrimshaw plays the second oldest child, Caleb, and excels in his role. He also becomes the catalyst for the accusations of witchcraft. Close to his sister and, as a preteen himself, Caleb is also intrigued by Thomasin’s recent transition away from childhood. When he also disappears, and then returns seemingly raving and possessed, the two youngest children are quick to point the finger at their elder sister, even manufacturing some additional evidence of their own. Scrimshaw dominates this scene and hypnotizes the audience with his performance, one in which the suffering Caleb unwittingly puts the final nail into his sister’s coffin.

Eggers wrote and directed a supernatural horror film set hundreds of years ago, yet the themes translate clearly to today’s society. Though the father causes the family thrown out from the safety of the town, and the parents together failed to keep their children safe once in the wilderness, the blame in the end falls squarely onto Thomasin. A scapegoat was needed and she was both vulnerable and, as a girl, the most expendable. Though the film’s creepiness builds upon the horror the family endures, perhaps what remains the most frightening element is how closely the characters’ behaviors mirror reality.

Maria Ramos is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy. You can follow her on Twitter @MariaRamos1889.