The Witch (2016 horror film)

I enjoyed it. It's the difference between a suspenseful film filled with terror vs. one that is a straight horror film.

Well made and creepy.

 

I watched the blu-ray today twice, once regular and then with the commentary track. There is some CGI in the movie, but I don't think its in the scene you are referring to. There are at least five instances the director mentioned:

1) The naked witch at the very beginning wasn't actually naked. She was wearing a skin colored pair of shorts that was altered to make her look naked by CGI.
2) Similarly, when Caleb returns and is standing naked in the rain outside the barn, he was in skin colored shorts, and a naked bare ass was created with CGI.
3) When Kate (the mother) cuts Caleb's temple with a knife to "bleed out the madness" afflicting him, that blood spurt is all CGI.
4 & 5) There are at least two instances where the sheep playing Black Phillip had to be physically held by the horns by wranglers as he was not very cooperative and wouldn't stay where he was supposed to. Their arms or more were in frame and were CGI'd out.

So there you go. In a few of the wider outdoor shots of the cabin, there is a mist above the house that I thought might be CGI, but the director said it was from the fog machine that was blowing fog out of the chimney to simulate smoke. If it had been running for awhile, they found it created a natural mist/fog over the area that looks just like regular fog/mist. I could tell the smoke was real, as CGI smoke is one thing that usually looks awful. Like CGI fire.

Until the third time I watched the movie, I never noticed that Kate's silver cup reappears just before she sees the visions of Caleb holding Samuel (the missing infant).

Someone printed the words to the rhyme the twins Jonas and Mercy were singing to Black Phillip early in the movie, which was cool. But there is a second rhyme sung only by Mercy later in the movie. I wrote down the words to put here:

Black Phillip is a merry merry king,
He rules the land with mirth.
Black Phillip has a mighty mighty sting,
He'll knock thee to the Earth.

Sing bah bah King Phillip the black
Sing bah bah bah bah bah
Sing bah bah King Phillip the black
He'll knock thee on thy back!

 

Excellent rundown. It has to be the transfer/look of the DVD on my television then for the outdoor shot of the cabin that I thought was CGI.

Spoiler: Spoiler

When I saw that, I immediately thought that was a dream/hallucination signifying her descent into madness. I thought it was also kind of a motif for when Thomasin "wakes up" and goes to talk to Black Phillip since it had a similar feel.

 

Spoiler: Spoiler

When I saw that, I immediately thought that was a dream/hallucination signifying her descent into madness. I thought it was also kind of a motif for when Thomasin "wakes up" and goes to talk to Black Phillip since it had a similar feel.

Yeah, that section is obviously a hallucination. It's just that I never noticed the brief shot of the silver cup on the shelf when she gets out of bed before she turns around to see Caleb holding baby Samuel. It's interesting that when the devil appears to Kate, it does so in the guise of Cale her dead son, but when it appears to Thomasin, it's still the goat and then turns into a handsome man. Thomasin was always more into pretty things. Remember her reminiscing about how pretty the glass windows were at their home in England, and she's bothered that Caleb doesn't remember it.

 

Finally saw it last night and loved it. Great vibe throughout, very unique. The music score reminded me of The Shining.

As usual I find it humorous when you look at sites like RT and see that the critics most definitely "got it" (91% positive) while a good portion of the general public were like "huh?" (55% positive). That seems to be the norm for art-house horror films.

 

Finally watched it and loved every minute of it. I'm sure the Academy awards will go to something more uplifting or inspirational, as they very mistakenly do, but I'll be surprised if I see a better movie this year. So many things I loved about it from the acting to the outstanding use of sound and even the way scenes cut to black sometimes with an extended pause. For a good part of the movie I was pestered by conventional questions like "is this supposed to be real?" regarding "unnatural" occurrences. Or are these the results of hallucinatory hysteria brought on by the crushing stresses of tightly wound religion and the unforgiving reality of life in the wild? After it was over and the afterword by the writer/director of this being an amalgamation of historical documents, diary writings, etc it sunk in as a work of fiction. That seems so obvious it's dumb not knowing throughout it's fiction but that's how intense and realistic the acting is that I was pulled into its reality. Wow, what a feat! This will be for me a 21st century classic horror film.

 

The increasingly intense chopping of wood reminded me of The Amityville Horror. Also those twins were shown in such a way I kept thinking of Diane Arbus' photography. I'd love to read some of what the writer/director Roger Eggers read in compiling his "folktale".

 

Here ya go;

How Robert Eggers Wove the Nightmares of The Witch Out of Historical Documents »

 

Thank you, that was a good read. I do my best to avoid information before a film but that actually would have enhanced the The Witch without giving anything away. Love it when a director puts that amount of research and effort into the work.

 

Any Canadian want a free iTunes code for this movie? It came with my steelbook, but its only for iTunes Canada. Drop me a line, and its yours.

 

how about "all work and no platy makes jack a dull boy" from the shining

 

Very definitely. I can't remember if I thought of them at the time but those twins have a vastly higher profile than some obscure Arbus photo.

 

We watched this movie last night at home and realized within 30 seconds that we needed captions. They are essential to understanding the dialogue.

We really enjoyed this movie.

 

as a fan of folk horror (please see my dedicated thread) I really enjoyed it. A slow-burner with few thrills, but incredibly atmospheric.

 

I really liked this movie - I'm glad I started it with subtitles on. I can usually pick up on odd language or accents, but the dialogue in this one is tough.

I had some real problems with that ending, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it. I will just say, the point it was making could have been made with a lot more subtlety, and it especially did not need that last minute or so.

It's a beautiful film to look at - well, I mean if you like GLOOM by the bucketful, but, hey, its supposed to be gloomy - so it gets an A + in that department.

Acting is excellent across the board. Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasina got most of the press and attention, and for good reason, but I thought Harvey Scrimshaw was even better as her brother Caleb.

One of the best things this movie does is it does not screw around like a lot of artsy horror films, it lets you know very quickly that this isn't a bunch of psychological BS, there's some real evil at work.

 

I wanted to like the film more than I did. I agree with you entirely on this point. I also thought the build up to what was happening might be more gradual and play on their warped belief system but the actuality of it hits you in the face almost as soon as they arrive in the wilderness.

 

I agree here. And from the starting gate the grim soundtrack hits like a 2X4. I thought of comparing this to "The White Ribbon" (better film IMHO).

 

Absolutely!

 

Don't get me wrong. I like the film and I love the atmosphere that's set up. I actually wanted it to be more subtle.

 

No, I got ya. This film succeeds on many levels. I just wanted the tension to be ratcheted up more gradually. Lots of praise for the goat. No love for the hare???

 

You mean like you wanted the supernatural elements to be left more ambiguous? I could understand that.

 

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Not even that. I guess it's not the same movie, but what appealed initially was the idea that this family with very strict religious views - even more strict than those in the main settlement (and let's face it, we're talking about fairly extreme fundamentalist views - bigoted, one might say with considerable justification) were surrounded by wilderness inhabited with strange animals and Indians on whom they were dependent, but with whom they must have disagreed on pretty basic issues and who they felt superior to yet afraid of. I just wanted it to kind of float around those ideas before the visual confirmation that you get very early on in the film. After that, there's no doubt and I would have liked the superstitious/religious aspects dragged out to increase the tension before it was definite. When I saw the trailer, I assumed it had contracted the time between the baby disappearing and the game the girl was playing, thereby giving rise to more possibilities.

 

I needed the subtitles for this film, too much accent (as already discussed), but I liked the movie. I thought the ending was brilliant. In those circumstances, what else was the poor girl going to do? Wasn't the whole symbolism of the movie about the power of her approaching womanhood and sexuality anyhow?

 

I usually like offbeat slower films that build tension, but ultimately I found this boring. The sets where great, acting good. Didn't like the characters and couldn't wait for the mother to get killed. And I truly hate it when a family turns on each other, its probably the last thing I want to see.

As other have mentioned, I had to use subtitles, can't imagine seeing this in a theater, mumbling in old-English, ouch!

 

Atmospheric, disturbing, boring.