Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

The Witch / The VVitch: A New England Folktale
2015
***
Director: Robert Eggers
Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson

Following their banishment from the Calvinist community, an English settler family sets up a farm next to a dark ominous forest. Although the family leads an extremely pious life, they are repeatedly visited by misfortune. Robert Eggers' feature debut is set in the mid-17th-century New England, and it was inspired by the fairy tales and folk tales of the time. The end result is an original and deeply unsettling but not particularly scary or gripping horror film. The visuals and the performances are very impressive, the story and the characters are not quite up to the same standard.