#WITCH MOVIE HOW TO#

In his inscrutable sovereignty, God predestines some to eternal life and others to eternal perdition, and he does not hear the prayers of those who are not his children. Within the Reformed (i.e., Calvinist) theological worldview of Puritanism, this is a possible interpretation of God’s inaction that cannot be excluded: Perhaps, apart from anything they have done or could do, they simply are not among those elected to eternal life.

William’s wife Katherine (Kate Dickie) fears the family is not only cursed by Satan, but damned by God. “We shall never lie open to the wicked one.” Yet their prayers seem to go unheard. “Let us pray then we need fear nothing,” William insists in a dark moment. Yet William’s family are fervent Christians who consecrate their new home to God and call upon him daily, not least in the throes of torment from their unholy attacker.

#WITCH MOVIE HOW TO#

Sometimes this reflects the filmmakers’ imaginative lopsidedness other times the characters are skeptical moderns who simply don’t know how to call on God. It’s fair to say that the powers of hell often seem more immanent in the movies than the powers of heaven demons are typically far more active forces than angels. Although I believe The Witch depicts a profoundly Christian worldview, it is far from the spiritual combat of horror films like The Exorcist and The Conjuring, where religious devotion and prayers offer at least some protection against demonic evil. What is most unsettling about The Witch is not the manifest presence of the Devil and the malevolence of his minions, but the seeming absence of God and the impotence of the family’s faith and prayers. Whatever the Devil wants for his unholy service - an unbaptized baby, for instance - the witch obtains for him no one is safe from her malice. In a bantering soliloquy of startling glibness, she describes how a witch’s spirit slips from her body while she sleeps, dances naked with the Devil, and signs his book.

When the suggestion of witchcraft arises, the eldest of William’s five children, teenaged Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), has no trouble imagining what this would mean.

One misfortune after another befalls them, each plausible yet uncanny in their consistency. It’s fair to say that the powers of hell often seem more immanent in the movies than the powers of heaven demons are typically far more active forces than angels.įrom the first shock, which claims one of the family members in a brilliantly simple yet nasty effect with a sickening payoff, it’s clear to the viewer (though not immediately to the family) that a remorseless servant of pure evil really is preying on them. They are, simply and truly, horrifically evil creatures in league with a very real Devil. Here, witches aren’t chimerical projections of fanatical moral panic or demonized outsiders indicting the hypocrisies of the patriarchy. This isn’t the New England of Elizabeth Gaskell, Nathaniel Hawthorne or Arthur Miller. (According to a closing title card, the film was inspired by period sources, including journals and court records, from which much of the dialogue was adapted.)

The Witch takes all of this with a seriousness befitting its subtitle, A New-England Folktale. One of last year’s best-made but most unsettling films, The Witch is a deeply unconventional horror film on many levels, from the authentically archaic speech patterns, formal yet plainspoken, of the Puritan era, to the equally archaic theological worldview persuasively evoked with that language, including the unreconstructed vision of witches. It’s a bit of a shock to consider later that the reverse might be closer to the truth. Hollywood conventions and cultural assumptions incline us to assume the rigidity and intolerance of the community elders and to take this contrarian as the voice of moral reason. When one of them reminds him that they are his judges, not he theirs, he says scornfully, “I cannot be judged by false Christians.” Would he be banished from the plantation, then? “I would be glad of it,” he answers proudly. 8)įirst-time filmmaker Robert Eggers’ extraordinary horror film The Witch begins with an earnest, gravel-voiced dissident named William (Ralph Ineson) boldly defying a grim-faced panel of Puritan judges. An inherited nightmare: Watching the Puritan horror of The Witch with Catholic eyes

Witch movie