The Witch (2016 horror film)

Where's mine?

 

But that was exactly what made this an excellent movie- you were able ( or at least my wife and I were able) to see it as literal , semi-literal , symbolic , semi-symbolic and metaphoric at different levels.
And if you are specifically referring to what the daughter witnessed and joined in at the movie's conclusion , I am quite certain her background and upbringing would have come into play as to what she would envision as happening such as witches cavorting nakedly around a fire and a book awaiting her signature. That movieviewers also saw it does not mean the vision was a true one.
We also initially saw other things in the movie which were later depicted as not what actually happened.
Actually , it isn't even necessary to accept that the infant vanished as the daughter experienced it.

 

I am sure a large horned goat will soon arive to lead you to the fields of rot.

 

Been there....

 

And were the young ladies cavorting nakedly around a big bonfire ?
They were last time I visited.

 

actually, yes...

Clearly I wandered off from the Grateful Thread....

 

I know..right?

 

Absolutely. So many layers. That damn baby-stealing witch at the beginning set the tone. Had the director wanted us to think it was another "witch hunt," he would not have provided us with what could be a genuine witch. But an old hag stealing a baby is still in the realm of reality. Black Phillip turning into Mr. Satan is another thing.

 

Since we, the audience are shown an actual witch killing the infant - something which no character in the movie sees or knows about, there is no question but that this is meant to be literal. I appreciate that people find different things to like about the film and interpret it, but this particular point can't really be argued.

 

But he DID show the witch - twice. And only the audience was shown.

 

Sorry, in the above post I meant to quote KeninDC's post a bit further up.

 

I agree, but I wish he'd held it back a while. I love the atmosphere the director creates of a strict, religious (fundementalist, even) family living in a wilderness that's totally alien to them.

 

Personally, I think the only literal aspect of this movie is "a family in the wilderness". There's so much symbolism that it's almost camp. Her name: Thomasin. Thomas was the Apostle that doubted Christ's resurrection and, ultimately, his sin (Thomas' sin) was to not believe the word of his "spiritual" father. Thomasin (in the movie) did not believe (doubted) her material father and it opened her up to the dark side.

St. Thomas More was martyred for not accepting the current path the church was taking, in England. Thomasin's father (perhaps a fan of Thomas More, so much that he named his first born after him) exiled his family for the same reasons.

This movie is a thinking man's horror flick where the wilderness transforms good into evil as adeptly as a Nathanial Hawthorne story where every person you meet in the woods, at night, are not who they represent themselves to be during the day.

 

Agreed. I watched this with the understanding that all of the supernatural elements were embellishments. From what I understand after watching several features on this movie (and it's been some time, so I may not be remembering 100% accurately), it's an adaptation of some witch folklore from around that period, and these embellishments frame what occurred in a way that benefits the dominant belief system of the authors. "Why did this family perish? Because they strayed from the true path," seems to be the main point to the audience that would have originally read this material. When really, what you're watching is an ostracized family being overcome by harsh nature; on top of which their own internalized belief structure sabotages any chances they have at survival. In reality, there was no witch(es) and no devil, only what was in their own minds - both the family's and the village elders that exiled them.

 

Interesting, but in this take, who kidnapped the baby?

 

Could be a "what," in terms of an animal. Or, could be a "who" such as the mother who's suffering from a massive bout of depression, or an accidental death covered up by whomever was responsible. On the other hand, the baby may have died from malnutrition, disease, or some other environmental cause. Maybe it was a combination of several things. What I take the movie to be showing us is what happened to this family as the folklore/myth describes. This family had no contact with anyone outside of their own settlement for quite a while. Essentially no one knows what really happened to them all except for what limited forensic data would have been left behind should someone have stumbled across the scene at some point afterwards.

It's like that movie Perfect Storm. No one really knows what happened on that boat during that storm, but a myth/story is fashioned that shows what we think happened or wanted to have happened (in that case, valiant deaths at the hands of mother nature - but the truth about that event could be far from what the movie represented). The Witch however has the undertones about the reality underneath the myth, which I don't remember the Perfect Storm having. Those teases of reality are what made this movie interesting.

 

I love that fact that, after all his years of directing, Robert Altman's request to actors come down to exactly this. He would tell them: "Show me something I haven't seen before." That's the ultimate challenge, isn't it? And the reason 90 percent of all movies most bore me. Thank god for the 10% of artists out there not doing it just for money.

 

Wha? Where did this come from? So they imagined someone stole the baby and all the disaster that followed? I think not. And when we cut away to the baby being slain? Cutaways don't happen in hallucinations.

I think it's about witches and the Devil, myself.

It is a horror movie.

 

I'm starting to be convinced by you Occam's razor people.

 

I think this a very interesting interpretation. It hits home for a lot of reasons. It’s certainly got me thinking.

 

Hmmm.... interesting for sure, but then I guess showing us the daughter and baby very moment when he disappears would be... well, a weird plot decision to say the list. If the accident happened off camera, then I would like your take for sure.

 

I read some review of this movie around the time that it came out that introduced this as an aspect of the film. I can't remember where though as I'd link it if I could. It goes into why the intra-family rivalry gets worse and how it stems from their extreme seclusion.

Perhaps there was a crazy old hermit woman in the woods who took the baby. Certainly plausible. Whether she was a witch or not no one would really know, nor would they really know if she ground up the baby and melted it into liniment oil. The film definitely works for me on one level as a horror film, where what is shown is what is actually happening. But the director said his aim was for the film to work on different levels, which I think he pulled off successfully. Another level would be removing the Puritanical myth and taking it at a material level, which I think works much better. At the horror level, the devil character is essentially an idiot as his actions would only result in strengthening the Puritan's spiritual position (this is the worst part about the horror level to me as it reduces the main culprit's stature). At the material level you recognize that spiritual chauvinism overlay for what it is - inserted myth/folklore elements that illustrate this particular society's fear of the unknown, fear of empowered women, fear of nonconformity, etc. And that still makes it a good movie...even better IMO. Instead of a horror movie you've got a taut psychological thriller.

 

While I can't speak for @KeninDC I think the claim of ergot may have come from this interview with the movie's director: All The Witch’s Most WTF Moments, Explained: A Spoiler-Filled Interview With the Director

 

Looks like he threw the ergot in for fun. My wife - a college professor who is smarter than me when it comes to movies/literature - first brought up the starvation/hallucination thing when we were discussing the film right after seeing it. We were in "was that actually the Devil?" mode. But as noted above, there are too many scenes where there is no character who could be hallucinating in the scene to go with a simplistic "oh they were tripping their collective arses off" route.

 

Just watched this moofie on Netflix (with subtitles on). I knew nothing about it before viewing (purosely avoiding all spoilers for years) and thought it was great: a witch hunt story with actual witches!

To me the intent of the story was quite obvious (and has been mentioned in this thread aleady) and I will probably not get much sleep tonight as I think about it some more.

--Geoff