Review: Creepy Puritans and "The Witch"

Though we'd already seen The Witch at festivals I sent a friend to see it this weekend, a non-horror guy, to see if he'd like it. Meet Eric Blume. - Editor

The Witch debuted last January at Sundance and finally got a wide release via A24 this weekend.  It’s borderline shocking that this movie is being treated like a Hollywood horror movie, because it feels more like a foreign film, with the same essential disdain of fanatical religiosity that’s usually reserved for something like Cristian Mingiu’s great 2012 film Beyond the Hills.  And in tone, it’s thoroughly austere:  we’re thrown into the 17th century setting with as much reverence and severity as we are into the 19th century world of The Revenant. I read somewhere that the latter was tough to shoot… The Witch must have been so, too, with everyone making a lot less money to be miserable.

The plot centers around a Puritan family who is banished from their community and forced to move to an area bordered by an ominous-looking forest.  In the movie’s first ten minutes, the family newborn is snatched up by something living in that forest, and the family unravels from there.  It’s a contained universe from which Eggers gets maximum tension, putting a slow squeeze on you from the start and never quite letting go.  

The film plays beautifully off of how incredibly creepy the Puritans were.  But Eggers doesn’t stop there and also harnesses what's creepy about the woods (specifically, their insulation); farm animals (their seeming placidity); and twins (everything).  He even conjures memories of how creepy Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is.  The Puritanism is the front-and-center text, but the puritan (small p) is the subtext, and Eggers puts the characters’ guilt, shame, confusion, and marriage to sin into a continuous wash cycle.  The family dynamics feel true and perverse, and the performances he captures from all six actors are whoppers.  Lead Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays the oldest daughter, has the baby/sinner face of a young Michelle Williams and carries the movie with complete authority.

Visually, the movie looks as one might expect, with the drained-color palette that’s popular in non-Puritan horror movies.  But early in the picture, Eggers and his cinematographer Jarin Blaschke use streaks of daylight on the actors that due the period costumes occasionally recalls a Vermeer painting, without being self-conscious about it.  The filmmaking team seems to have made The Witch with their hearts in their throat, and their full-throttle approach gives the movie a genuine force.  It’s not a major picture, but the debut of perhaps a major talent.  Eggers comes at the film not just to scare you, but to make you feel dread in the best sense.  The culmination at the end, while true to its horror roots, has a release with a surprisingly exultant comic edge to it.  Eggers has a nice sick streak.

Did you see The Witch this weekend? Sound off in the comments. (Previous posts on The Witch)

Box Office As Told By Animal Emojis

01. $55 million (cumulative $235.3)

02. $12.5 million (cumulative $117.1)

 

03. $11.8 million (new!)

04. $8.6 million (new)

05. $8.2 million (cumulative $31.7)

06. $7.2 million (new)

07. $5.5 million (cum. $23.7)

08. $3.8 million (cumulative $921.6)

09. $3.8 million (cumulative $165.1)

10. $2.6 million (cumulative $26.1)

What did you see this weekend? I went to The Witch again and it was just as good as I remembered from TIFF.

But let's go from the great to the terrible. When was the last time you chanced upon something truly awful? I ask this because last night, bone tired, and flipping channels I came across The Crow: City of Angels (1996) in its opening scene. I had never seen it and for a minute I mistook it for The Crow: Salvation (2000) which I have also never seen and thought to myself  'Self, hey, watch a few minutes since Kiki Dunst is in this' About 20 minutes later, I turned it off, jaw long since acclimated to floor. Every single scene was worst than the last. It was truly incompetent and absurd and mine eyes had witnessed some of the most atrocious acting ever committed to celluloid.

Strike a Poster

It's always boggling to consider how many people's noses a poster has had to pass under in order to get approved, and how they still are often more abysmal than you could have imagined. The floating head syndrome, men with their back to the camera, or a couple back to back are the usual unimaginative posters that fly by. But this week we seem to have been treated to three posters that have gone above and beyond the call of duty to be really really stupid.

Three disasters for three genres (horror, fantasy, dance) after the jump...

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Jóhann Jóhannsson Picks Ten Scary Scores

Glenn here. Was it just me or was Jóhann Jóhannsson’s nomination this year for his original score to Sicarioone of the highlights of the lot? That film didn’t quite take off the way many, myself included, thought it ought to have, but its three nominations are nothing to sneeze at in all honestly for such a prickly, devisive film. Jóhannsson’s nomination, however, sticks out. Not necessarily because of the quality of the work – although, clearly, it’s quite an accomplishment – but because Jóhannsson’s work in the Denis Villeneuve thriller marks such a diversion from his work on The Theory of Everything for which he was also Oscar-nominated. He probably even came close to a win for that on his first try (he did take out the Golden Globe).

It can sometimes get a bit tiresome when the same composers appear year-in-year-out for work that is remarkably similar to their own work. For instance, it was what made the difference between Alexandre Desplat’s The Grand Budapest Hotel being a wonderful nomination and Alexandre Desplat’s The Imitation Game being a bit of a shrug. Let’s be honest, there’s not much to compare within the lush orchestral arrangements of The Theory of Everything and the bone-crushingly intense soundscapes of Sicario and that makes both of his Oscar nominations exciting and makes me anticipate his next work. One hopes that if this Icelander keeps getting high profile gigs that he continues to be as eclectic as these two suggest he can be.

If you have seen the film and heard his work to Sicario then you will guess Jóhannsson knows a thing or two about scary scores. You don’t compose “The Beast” (or the rest of that movie's score for that matter) and not get to boast about that. So when I came across a list of “the best 10 scariest soundtracks” compiled by Jóhannsson, I knew I should share it. There’s horror disco, sinister synths, and legends of the craft. I have included a few of his choices after the jump, but check out Dummy Magazine for the rest as well as his own thoughts on the music.

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Silence of the Lambs Pt 5: The Nightmare Finale

Team Experience tag-teams a revisit of 1991's Best Picture The Silence of the Lambs for its 25th anniversary. And now... the finale. 

Part 1 The case. The players. An FBI "errand" 
Part 2 Buffalo Bill's next "Special Lady"
Part 3 Clarice & Lecter's "Quid Pro Quo"
Part 4 Monstrous escape. Gruesome realizations.

pt. 5 by Timothy Brayton

Jose left us in the wake of a most repulsive discovery, and Agent Starling is beside herself with ragehorror.

01:31:55 "And he c- he can sew, this guy, he's very skilled-" Jodie Foster is so amazing in this brief little exchange. Pacing back and forth jabbing her hands in the air with anxious fury. It's such a perfect extension of the arc she's built all movie: she's horrified and disgusted, but funnels all of that into hyper-professionalism.

01:32:09 Starling's frenzy in the homey little suburban bedroom is sharply contrasted with the Tom Clancy-thriller interior of an FBI plane, a sleek masculine space that is one of the conspicuously "lit" spaces in the film. Here is where Jack Crawford informs her that all is well, and the boys are riding in to save the day. He is, of course, wrong.

01:33:11 Ah, the famed mountain valleys of Calumet City, just outside of Chicago.

01:33:26 In the pit of horrors, Catherine Martin has struck upon an idea: using food scraps to trap Buffalo Bill's – make that Jame Gumb's – precious pet dog. It's a great reminder that the film would rather give its primary victim strength to draw on than just make her a bundle of nerves. [More...]

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