Review of The Witch (2016) by Quinnton U — 06 Aug 2017

Subtitles would be a great addition....

After seeing the trailer for this film, I found myself very anxious to see the eerie, quiet and disturbing moments that made this film so appealing. I must say this film certainly delivered in the disturbance market, wasting no time to shed its first horrifying image to the audience. However, I find the biggest flaw in this film to be the story itself. Albeit I am not a fan of spirit/demon based horror movies as they have a tendency to rely on cheap scares and unusual moments of horror that fall flat and do nothing to develop the story. That being said, I must commend this film for not relying on any jumpscares and gave us direct terrifying occurrences to the characters. This film places a lovely bit of a "who's who" between the family for a short while that really builds the tension, not to mention the AMAZING performances pulled from all these actors whom I hope this film at least serves to show their extraordinary acting ability. But I certainly felt as though tension builds to a disappointing climax, offing characters with no explanation and ultimately leads to a drastic change in motive for one of the main characters that only served to leave a lazy "evil wins" taste in my mouth that many horror movies choose as their closing shot. Ultimately, this movie is extraordinary in its visuals, beautiful performances from even the youngest characters, truly terrifying scenes, but fails in an effective plot that ends any different from most other spirit/demon horror movies.