The Witch
donthitpause

Review by donthitpause

The Witch 2015

★★★★★

Watched Oct 26, 2022

American theology and spirituality has an intriguing and somewhat inspirational appeal about it. Not enough appeal to make me enquire too deeply, but enough to muse and ponder over it with a measure of wonderment.

America has birthed several religions and systems of belief throughout its turmoil filled history, with the aforementioned turmoil being one of several precursors to the birth of new religion, new faith, new belief, however you wish to frame the emergence of new systems and structures of codified morals based on the belief of right and wrong, of reward and punishment.

For myself, Eggers' The Witch gives an albeit somewhat fictional glimpse into the fascinating dichotomy between the stoic religions of early British Pilgrim settlers and the pagan witchcraft practiced by community outliers who no doubt traversed with them at some juncture. What intrigues me the most regarding our family of doomed homesteaders is at what point between leaving the community and the film's final scene did their system of belief actually unravel, if in fact it was ever sincerely strong at any point.

It's a pointless consideration really, as I hold no adherence to the beliefs of christendom or to the practices & rites of the earth-mother goddess worship of pagans & occultists. But the destruction of the family unit in this film is what I find fascinating, compelling even, and the true horror lies in seeing the breakdown of William's entire world, physically and spiritually, as his faith is stripped away (if it was even really there) and his greatest fear is revealed before him.

For a directorial debut, Robert Eggers has indeed crafted a fully believable world, cold, rigid, stripped of color, emotionally strangled, with characters and lives as bleak and lifeless as the seemingly cursed earth around them. The Witch, despite its surface level story focus on mythology, religion, and folklore, has a captivating tale of the destruction of the family & its values at the film's core that invites revisit after revisit. Magical shit for real.

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