The Witch

Writer-director Robert Eggers's debut feature is a study in religious paranoia that creates a deepening mood of unease and dread. The Witch begins at a Puritan plantation in 17th-century New England, where exiled farmer William (Ralph Ineson) leads his family—wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), elder daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), adolescent son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and twin urchins Jonas (Lucas Dawson) and Mercy (Ellie Grainger)—out into the wilderness to build an isolated homestead on the edge of a dark, ominous forest. Soon, Katherine gives birth to another son, Samuel. Evil lurking in the forest strikes when Samuel is snatched away (possibly for a satanic ritual) while in Thomasin's care— a loss that throws Katherine into a paroxysm of grief and recrimination against Thomasin. Matters deteriorate further when Mercy and Jonas, who have developed an odd attachment to the family's sinisterly rambunctious goat, come to believe that their sister is a witch. The pious Caleb, meanwhile, struggles to meet his father's high expectations while resisting the temptations of the flesh. As the family members descend ever further into a mixture of fear, indignation, and emotional paralysis, the question of whether it's the work of Satan or of mindless hysteria comes to the fore. Boasting a remarkable physical recreation of the period—an era that also witnessed the notorious Salem witch trials—this creepily effective film is highly recommended. (F. Swietek)