When The Witch came out, I was in the middle of my history degree and had tried out a bunch of sub-areas. I wasn't exactly sure where to narrow it down though, and was stressed out because I wanted to be able to focus on something specific and not feel like I spread my expertise too thin.

Most other movies that focus on this period or focus on witchcraft tend to be okay but not that impressive. I'm not exactly sure what it is those films miss, but this movie has it in spades. From the very first scene and throughout the runtime, the lighting does an incredible job of capturing light and darkness and communicating the unspoken undercurrent through that. We don't need to be able to 100% understand the words being spoken because we already feel it through the values and tones on-screen.

And the words themselves, I don't know if I can name a film of this period that sounds this incredibly natural. Each spoken word felt like it was penned by an actual 17th-century scriptwriter, and seemed like it was ripped straight from the colonial letters I was transcribing for my professor.

I'm definitely glad that this film has gotten the retrospective respect it deserves, but I do remember at its release there was quite some online backlash against it due to how silly or non-scary it was. While I don't think it's necessarily a conventional horror movie (in the same vein that Hereditary, Get Out, and It Follows aren't), I was extraordinarily impressed with how Robert Eggers translated the very real fear that people had in the existence of witches and the devil. It doesn't really matter what's "real" or not, rather it's much more important what people think is real.

Is the fear of the dark not silly? How about flying in airplanes or domestic terrorism? You know these things are nothing to truly worry about, yet you might fear them still. While witches and devilry may not be in vogue as current anxieties, it's incredibly important to understand why people used to be afraid of them, as it tells us a lot about their lives and culture.

By the time I watched this I had already taken a few medieval history and Christianity classes and was generally leaning that way, but seeing this in theaters really solidified that decision. I know the historical things I mentioned have already been touched on by a lot of reviewers, but for what it's worth I can finally use my goddamn degree and say yes, this movie knocks it out of the park and might be one of the few that actually captures the spirit of what late medieval fear was like.