Spoopy season is among us and what better way to celebrate than to watch a spoopy movie?
This Movie Monday, we’re highlighting The VVitch. This film is the directorial debut of Robert Eggers. It was released by A24 on February 2015. This studio is responsible for films such as Hereditary, Moonlight, and Lady Bird. The film takes place in the 1630s Puritan New England and follows a Plymouth Colony family that has been exiled over a religious dispute. The family is forced to leave the colony and move into the woods. In these menacing woods, they start to encounter evil forces that may or may not be real.
This movie is very fascinating and incredibly immersive. The immersion begins with the way in which language is used. They speak in Old English, just like people used to speak back in the day. Eggers decided to go with this style after finding a Jacobean Era pamphlet about witchcraft and reading many period texts. Eggers only used natural lights and in the night, the scenes were illuminated by candlelight. The fil’s almost voyeuristic nature allows you to feel that you’re peepign through a window, that you’re there, watching the menacing events unfold.
When it comes to making horror movies, directors are discouraged from working with children or animals, and what did Eggers do? Work with children and animals. This could have easily gone very wrong, but it didn’t. It simply added to the chilling atmosphere of the film. The film had plenty of space to go wrong, especially since it deals with a lot of religious aspects and how beliefs can be challenged when things that don’t fit into your worldview happen.
Still, it was very interesting how historically accurate the movie is and how the subject is dealt with. Robert Eggers received a lot of critical acclaim for his directorial debut, even winning the award for Best Director at the Sundance Film Festival. The success of The VVitch has caused his sophomore movie, The Lighthouse, to be one of the most anticipated movies of the year and it has already received rave reviews when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Festival, and many more. Everyone has been saying that it makes The VVitch look like a conventional horror movie, and I don’t know about you, but that has me more excited about it.
The VVitch has a very shocking opening scene that should be considered one of the greatest in modern horror, obviously, I will not spoil it because everyone deserves to experience that shock for the first time. There is a lot of disturbing imagery throughout the movie, and if that’s something that you don’t like, then you should think twice before checking this one out. As the family descends into madness, it gets creepier and creepier and it makes you uncomfortable because even though you might know what is happening, the characters don’t and they’re completely helpless and all you can do is sit and watch everything going down while hugging a pillow. There are many analyses to be made about this movie, starting with what does the titular witch mean, if the family was really under siege by her or if it was something that they hallucinated and made up to hide the truth. I love that it leaves the door open for any questions.
It’s disturbing and not for everyone, but I think it’s a perfect movie to watch during spoopy season if it’s something that you think you might enjoy. If you really liked it, feel free to give me your comments through Twitter!