Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Witch Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 11, 2016

We reviewers have learned the hard way that it’s often dangerous to review a film with any religious leanings whatsoever, as it’s virtually certain you’re going to end up offending or alienating someone who either doesn’t agree with the religion being portrayed, or how a particular reviewer reacts to that portrayal. And so let me just begin this review by apologizing to any and all Puritans who may read it and who are probably already taking umbrage that anyone would deign to assess elements of their faith, at least in how it’s portrayed in the riveting if intentionally small scale The Witch. This pastoral horror story, given the subtitle A New England Folktale, reminded me in a way of The Wicker Man, with an atavistic, agrarian society attempting to ferret out signs from the Divine in the workings of Nature, not always to felicitous results. The Witch plies a somewhat familiar 17th century environment, albeit with a spooky supernatural air wafting through the misty woods, and that “folktale” element tends to (perhaps ironically) give the film a rare feeling of authenticity, as if some long ago banished history had suddenly sprung to life and been reenacted for the edification of the audience. The Witch doesn’t really traffic in standard horror tropes like jump cuts, booming LFE or even outright signs of graphic gore (there are a few disturbing images in the film, but they’re relatively restrained, at least within the context of much contemporary horror cinema). Instead, much like The Wicker Man, there’s a slow but steady accretion of angst that ultimately creates a very discomfiting mood, one that becomes increasingly hard to shake as the intentionally minimalist story proceeds.

Many if not most of us who grew up in the United States were inundated with probably unrealistic views of the pioneers who initially settled our nation, with the Pilgrims and other initial settlers coming off as freedom fighting revolutionaries who escaped religious persecution to forge a new life in a land that held promise but also immense difficulties. As writer-director Robert Eggers mentions in the commentary included on this Blu-ray as a supplement, it’s probably instructive to remember that many of the first settlers to come to the New Land were in fact Puritans. And while, yes, they had sought to escape religious persecution (or at least religion defined by others, which they may have perceived as persecution), they weren’t exactly a bunch of free thinking folks, allowing heterodoxy at every turn. In fact, the Puritans were, well, kind of uptight about things, something that plays into the increasingly ominous subtext of The Witch.

There’s an overt reference to liturgically towing the line (in a manner of speaking) from the very first moments of The Witch, when William (Ralph Ineson), his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) and son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) are exiled from a Puritan community (the film is perhaps just a little light in the backstory element in this regard). The family ends up finding a new “nesting” place next to an ominous forest which may remind some of a similar sylvan environment in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village. In another elision which is initially a bit dijunctive seeming, there’s suddenly a new baby boy named Samuel on the premises, and in a horrifying moment, he disappears while Thomasin has her eyes covered playing hide and seek with the newborn. The Witch doesn’t dally around with ambiguities, choosing instead to overtly display a witch snatching the child and then sacrificing it ritually to provide an “unguent” that will transform an everyday branch or stick into a flying object. The “folktale” element obviously plays into this depiction, but since everything is shown more or less “realistically”, there doesn’t initially seem to be any kind of psychological undertone where what we’re seeing might “just” be a vision of sorts.

That said, there is most definitely a psychological element to what plays out after Samuel’s disturbing disappearance. The family begins to fray, and suspicions arise, leading to a weird, almost hallucinatory, ambience where Katherine’s increasing hysteria may or may not be leading William to assume nefarious activities. Once again, though, The Witch is commendably free of “mind games”, with none too subtle but still impeccably powerful symbols like a hare (shades of The Wicker Man again) and (more saliently, given the demonic side of things) a goat being used, both of which suffuse the film with almost Jungian levels of meaning. The “intrusion” of the supernatural, whether perceived or real (not that The Witch is concerned with that aspect), into the everyday is what continually gives the film its almost hypnotic aspect.

More traumas of course accrue around the family, and in the film’s final act, William seems about to go Grand Guignol on his (surviving) children. Once again, though, the film is almost weirdly restrained in its depiction of an all enveloping terror subsuming the family. (There are some brief and scattered shots showing things like disemboweled animals, but a surprising overall lack of “blood and guts” in this film.) There’s an argument to be made that the film’s final “reveal” hints at something duplicitous in one of the major characters, but, again, The Witch seems to be less concerned with any “hidden meanings” than in an almost cold and calculating portrayal of some Early Americans who were confronting something more than simply an unknown land. The film benefits from an austere but seemingly historically accurate production design, along with a generally tamped down performance style that creates mood rather than outright shock.

The Witch Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Witch is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1, a kind of retro aspect ratio that may subliminally help to achieve an "old school" ambience. The IMDb lists this as having been digitally shot with the Arri Alexa, and the image boasts the typically sleek, smooth and often beautifully detailed look of this capture technology. There's some really interesting color grading going on in this presentation, with quite a few scenes both desaturated and also skewed toward cool blue and/or gray tones. It's a striking presentational approach which tends to highlight details like pores or strands of hair while also tending to cast backgrounds into more of a hazy, less precise looking, appearance. There are a number of nice shots establishing the surroundings (despite Eggers' complaints about a few of them not being "expansive" enough), offering good depth of field and no resolution issues in things like busy branches or foliage. The desaturation when combined with sometimes low contrast and darker filming environments can lead to some scenes offering relatively little in detail and shadow definition. Eggers and cinematographer Jarin Blaschke frame things in an almost painterly manner a lot of the time, offering tableaux that struck me on occasion as almost Vermeer-like.

The Witch Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Don't expect any ear shattering effects in The Witch's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 presentation, which is not to say that there's not some good low end and very evocative use of the surround channels in helping to aurally detail a seemingly possessed landscape. When the kids get out into the woods on a couple of occasion, there's some really well done immersive elements, especially as their imaginations (perhaps) take over. This is a subtle mix for a horror film, though, one which creates its spookiness out of seemingly mundane elements like breezes wafting through the trees or the plaintive cries of farm animals. While there's no fidelity issue with regard to dialogue, occasionally actors can be a bit hard to decipher, which may cause some listeners to opt for the optional subtitles.

The Witch Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Director Robert Eggers


• The Witch: A Primal Folktale (1080p; 8:28) is an above average EPK with some good interviews.


• Salem Panel Q&A with Cast and Crew (1080p; 27:59) features Robert Eggers, Anya Taylor-Joy, Brunonia Barry and Richard Trask. Observant credits readers will know that only two of these qualify as cast and/or crew.


• Design Gallery (1080p)

The Witch Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is a film where things don't exactly go "bump" in the night, tending to whisper menacingly instead. That means those wanting a gorefest with horrifying imagery, jump cuts and shock LFE are going to be mightily disappointed by what is a remarkably "quiet" feeling horror film. For those attuned to The Witch's almost dreamlike (and/or nightmarish) ambience, though, the film offers a completely unsettling mood, along with fantastic production design and some very naturalistic performances, especially given the built in "folktale" element of the story. Technical merits are strong and The Witch comes Highly recommended.