Review of The Witch (2016) by Sebastian H — 21 Dec 2016

Unless you're into experimental gorefests, you might want to skip this one.

Minor spoilers.

I decided to watch this because it has a score of 91%, so you'd think it'd be a great move. it's not. The first five minutes seems fine, the atmosphere indicates a slow build into mounting supernatural phenomena ultimately leading to some frighting scenes (just about what I like in a horror movie), though the soundtrack is a bit to obvious and overbearing (a bit of subtlety would make this movie potentially much more frightening). instead, after the first five minutes, this film goes from possibly scary to simply gross, as out of nowhere, what I presume to be "the witch" is carving up a baby and then dancing around in a circle while covered in it's remains. which is repulsive, sure, just not at all scary or the least bit tasteful. with the stage now set, I can assume that the rest of this movie will be just as gross and just as un-scary. and I am assuming, because I didn't watch the rest. I guess it's my own fault. If I'd have read the "critic consensus", I'd have known that this movie is "thought provoking" and "deeply unsettling" (but not scary). as for "slow building", I'm not sure the critics understand the definition. carving up an infant within the first five minutes is not "slow building horror", it's jumping straight into grotesque.

This movie represents an aspect of what is wrong with horror today. it's cheap. it doesn't employ an interesting scenario (when it could), it doesn't draw the audience in (when, with some subtlety, it could), and instead of creating a slow building sense of dread with an ultimate climax into complete and utter terror, it immediately tries to wow the audience with a disgustingly gruesome scene, apparently believing that revulsion is synonymous with fear and terror (it's definitely not). This is either not an attempt at a horror movie (it's a gore piece and maybe an analogy for madness or something), or an example of a bad director who has completely misunderstood what makes a horror movie worth watching.

Aside from the content of the movie, I can say that the setting isn't bad, but that the quality of the acting seemed mixed. granted, I didn't see much, but by mixed, I'm referring to the girl, who got the most screen-time for the part that I watched. When praying, she seemed very sincere, and I could definitely believe that she was hyper-religious, god fearing settler (I'm assuming of an early united states colony), and would have fit well in an historical drama. In fact, this setting would have worked well as an historical drama, using religious disagreements and other conflicts to drive the plot (which could have employed believable and reasonable human cruelty, and not random baby carving madness, and could have been actually thought provoking). but this setting, or at least the way it's used, does not make for satisfying horror. From what I've seen, the supernatural, the unknown, the genuinely creepy and viscerally unsettling (rather than simply nausea inducing) aspects of horror, those things which make good horror, take a sideline in this movie, as does any realistic expectation of human behavior (hence a baby being stolen and carved up by a lunatic for absolutely no reason at the very beginning of the film). back to my point about mixed acting, when playing peekaboo with the baby, the acting seemed very forced, and there was no conceivably good reason for her to be literally yelling BOO!! as loudly as she did, and the baby definitely would not have been laughing if that scene had been recorded the way we're expected to believe it played out. I simply can't suspend my disbelief (not to mention we're supposed to believe that within a span of the about 3 seconds that the girl had her eyes covered, the "witch" managed to approach, in a large clear area, more than 30 yards from the woods, without being heard, snatch the baby from literally right in front of the girl, and retreat all the way back into the woods, without being noticed. the directer really couldn't have had the girl turn her back and do something else for a minute or two? I mean, it would be very believable to have her splitting time between managing the baby and doing some chores or something. in the time period of the move, these people couldn't exactly go to a supermarket for food or other supplies, and didn't have appliances, so she could've been doing some laundry or gardening or something). I'm almost positive that the noticeably bad acting in this scene was the director intention, believing that the unlikely loudness of the scene would add to the scare factor, unnerving the audience. Imo this was a poor choice, along with probably most of the scenes in this movie (including the baby carving/bloody dancing).