Review of “The Witch” (spoilers)

* * C

The Witch is a period piece horror film about a puritan family who are shunned by their village and leave to live in a homestead on the edge of a forest. The mood is creepy, the pace slow. The main character, Tomasin (

Anya Taylor-Joy), is the eldest child of her devoutly religious parents. When her baby brother is snatched from her care, her mother can’t forgive her. Slowly, things go to hell as the family’s crops fail, and their horse, gun, and eldest son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) are lost in the woods.

After the boy encounters a woman who lives in the woods, his sister finds him naked outside the house. Her two youngest siblings accuse Tomasin of being the witch. Caleb wakes, coughs up an apple, has a vision of Christ, and dies. From there, things descend into madness. Tomasin’s father locks her and the children in the goat shed. The mother is visited by her dead children. In the morning, the shed is rent apart, the children are gone, and the female goats dead.

The Witch is too slow paced, and I didn’t find it at all frightening. While the mood is creepy, the ending was a bit of a poor fit for the rest of the story. I won’t spoil the ending for you, but can’t recommend this as a good film.

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