The Witch

Am Anfang sieht The Witch als ein Spin-off von Shyamalans The Village - Das Dorf aus, aber dann wird er zu einem Horrorfilm, der keine Genre-Schablonen befolgt und in gar keinem Fall ein nächster Der Fluch der Betsy Bell sein möchte. Der Film hat ein altes britisches Englisch (das ohne Untertitel vielleicht auch die Briten selbst nicht verstehen). Er versucht, die Zeit authentisch zu erfassen und die Mentalität der Figuren darzustellen. Ihr Verhalten und ihre Reaktionen führen aber zu einer unbefriedigenden Lösung von den Situationen. Zu den Figuren, die von dem Glauben so verblendet sind, hysterisch beten und die sich anschreien (anstatt normal miteinander zu reden), kann man keine Beziehung aufbauen oder ihnen die Daumen drücken, dass sie sich davon befreien. Im Gegenteil – ich habe mir gewünscht, dass ihre Schicksale endlich besiegelt werden. In der zweiten Hälfte konzentriert sich der Film nämlich mehr auf ihre unkontrollierbare Psychose als auf die Drohung der Hexe selbst. Die Ereignisse und ihre Begründung wurden im Film nicht durchdacht. Es handelt sich um ein Werk mit einer seltsamen Logik (vielleicht einer Hexenlogik?). Die Stimmung ist aber dicht und die junge Anya Taylor-Joy, welche die einzige normale Figur darstellt, ist eine hoffnungsvolle Newcomerin. (06.08.2015)

Unique. It's as if the cameraman had been transported back several centuries in a time machine and filmed the feelings of a family in isolation in the middle of the dark woods. Everything is subordinated to these feelings of the time – the archaic language, the great piety that permeated every individual back then, the fear of the unknown, the fear even of the forest next to you, where evil, evil spirits and witches were believed to reside. Because faith in Christ and fear of the powers of hell was everything at that time, the whole film is permeated with pious talk, prayers and irrational behaviour, which – as it seems from the reviews here – the dull-witted population, without knowledge of the historical context and dumbed down by the mainstream, will not appreciate. The rest of us give it a thumbs up, because such period parables, where the author drew from written sources of the time, bringing to life the witch trials and the mindset of pious people, are a rarity in today's cinemas. It's just a shame about the overly suggestive ending, if the author had had the balls to drive it through the simple "psychosis" of one frightened family, I would applaud even more. And Anna Taylor-Joy? You’ll be hearing a lot about her, trust me! (31.07.2016)

(50th KVIFF) As a horror fan I don’t put most of the genre films at the top of the rankings, modern horror doesn’t usually reach the levels of quality, budget and depth to compete with films from other genres. The Witch, however, is really one of the best three films, if not the absolute best film of the 50th Karlovy Vary Film Festival, even if it might not fully correspond to what some drunken viewers were expecting in the midnight section. Such a perfectly directed horror film is something that you only see once in a blue moon. The Witch is not fun, it’s dark, terrifying, and depressing. The amazingly convincing setting of 17th century New England, with the characters and the way they speak, or, rather, what they speak about, and the almost tangible fear of the unknown hidden in the forests, of the witches and the devil’s helper, who threaten the family and drive them into madness. Eggers shows the witches very rarely, but when he does, in short but impressive sequences, it is quite something. Ew! He dedicates more time to the father, the mother, the daughter and the son and shows how the clash with the supernatural has affected their relationships, with insecurity and suspicion creeping among them. The sequence of the agitated father chopping wood in the middle of the night is, thanks to Eggers’s craftsmanship, as terrifying and unpleasant as the one of the witches performing a ritual with a helpless infant. During the scene of Caleb’s cure, I shuddered nervously in my seat and felt a chill running through my spine. Unlike many other horror movies, this one fortunately never stumbles, even in the end, which is very satisfying. After the screening I realised that this is the horror film I’ve always wanted to see even though I didn’t know it. 100 % (08.07.2015)

After the trailer, I was hoping to be delighted by The Witch. In the end, it is only rather inconspicuously, mildly concerning because of the excess of religion and one established witchcraft cult in New England. The movie actually doesn’t contain anything innovative and so there is only one thing which can entice you. And that is the atmosphere. The atmosphere is definitely brutal, but it doesn’t make up the whole movie. Unfortunately. (25.05.2016)

These a few dozens of seconds were completely unnecessary, without them it could have been the best horror of recent years. But we cannot do anything about it and their presence is even a bigger letdown because the problem is not what they show but how. Anyway, otherwise it is pretty good. You can find here everything what a real old school horror movie should contain; disturbing atmosphere, graduating psycho tension within a closed community (in this case a family in the middle of the woods), exposing carefully written characters, fears, evil and prejudices hidden in us, disturbing scenes... I am completely happy about that; especially when you add the impressive camera à la Dutch masters and acting performances of the whole family, which are worth highlighting, including the children. I can't remember when four children played such a complicated characters so well. Perhaps Eggers will make more horror movies, because a similar approach to this genre has been missing in recent years. (12.07.2015)

Eggers has a brilliant way of building atmosphere. The Witch is thus an unobtrusively absorbing film that is completely devoid of cheap genre techniques and formalistic devices. Eggers captures the terror and awe on the part of the pilgrims coming from the world of god-fearing civilization to the world of the wilderness in the seventeenth century and facing psychological decay in a hopeless situation. But in addition to that, it makes viewers experience the same feelings. After the disturbingly relieving climax, you suddenly realise that you are totally wound up and that you never want to go to the petting zoo again. The upcoming The Lighthouse focuses on macho hierarchy and shapes its characters in relation to their pasts as something that they want to escape from. In his debut, The Witch, Eggers carefully maps the dynamics within a family that finds itself in a situation of existential distress, where the past conversely becomes both a delightful myth and a burden exacerbating their situation. Furthermore, Eggers brilliantly captures the essence of witchcraft as a bogeyman, a stigma and a form of liberating relief in a society bound by fanatical devotion to belief. (12.11.2021)

Ein etwas anspruchsvolles Stück für das Publikum. Nicht jedem wird der starke religiöse Ton gefallen, mit dem die Charaktere unbeirrt ihre Dialoge über den Glauben an Gott, den Teufel und seine Versuchung vortragen, besonders wenn dieser fast den gesamten Film ausmacht. Wenn Sie jedoch darüber hinwegsehen können (und das wird keine einfache Aufgabe sein), erwartet Sie eine der beängstigendsten Begegnungen mit einer Filmhexe. Durch ihre vielen Erscheinungsformen tritt sie im Film zwar nur in wenigen Fällen auf, aber ihr mächtiger Gestank durchdringt alles. Angst und Gefahr kommen nicht nur aus den Wäldern und von den Tieren, sondern auch von den Mitgliedern der eigenen Familie. Niemand entkommt dem Wahnsinn und dem abschließenden, recht bizarr anmutenden Gemetzel. Auf Gore können Sie vergessen - die rohe Atmosphäre wird hauptsächlich durch Kamera und Musik geschaffen, deren scharfe Streicherriffs Ihnen keine Ruhe lassen. Ach ja, und passen Sie auf die Ziegen auf! Sie sind genau das, wofür sie gehalten werden. (70%) (19.07.2015)

The Witch is a return to the foundations of the genre, whose cinematic form crystallized in the 1930s, thus a return to careful work with atmosphere. We can observe a gradual uncertainty and loss of support shaping the spiritual and physical world of immigrants to the New World in the 17th century. Suffering leads to the breakdown of the family, which we tend to consider as the basic building block of society. At that time, the community was most important. Outside of it, there was only struggling and in the long run, zero chance of survival in the wilderness. The key to the film is the opening scene of excommunication from the church and the community, the cruelest possible punishment, harsher than the death penalty. What follows is a logical descent into darkness and ruin. Just as shamanic magical rituals are a reality for tribal natural cultures, witches are a reality for people shaped by beliefs and early modern religion. The clash of devoutness, the depth of which secularized Europeans cannot imagine tainted by science and modern technology, with freethinking and hedonism of sinners, is precisely what makes the film so impressive. The Witch is not a flashy and expensive film, but it is meticulously shot with knowledge of the subject and awareness of what the filmmaker wants to achieve, and last but not least, it is characterized by a refined sense of detail. Some of the popcorn-eating viewers may feel deprived of some jumpscares, but for me, the film is an exemplary example of what a horror film should be, and if Eggers had refrained from a too unambiguous interpretation of events at the end, the film could have received a perfect score. Overall impression: 85%. (31.12.2021)

Wenn ein Film zu Ende geht und ich Lust habe, ihn bald wieder zu sehen, ist es ein gutes Zeichen. Und es ist völlig egal, dass der Film eine fast unerträglich bedrückende Stimmung hat, dass in ihm die fanatischen Figuren unbarmherzig und so abstoßend dargestellt werden, wie es bisher wahrscheinlich nur im Film Die Hexenjagd gelungen ist, und dass es einen fast stört, sich all das anzusehen, weil es voller Hoffnungslosigkeit ist. The Witch ist einfach so fesselnd, dass mich trotz all des Schreckens interessiert hat, wie sich die Handlung entwickeln wird. Und ich habe die Hoffnung nicht aufgegeben, dass wenigstens eine der Figuren zur Vernunft kommt. Das Finale hat mir – im Unterschied zu vielen anderen Usern – das Filmerlebnis nicht verdorben, obwohl ich lange darüber nachgedacht habe, ob es gut ist, dass es so explizit war. Ehrlich gesagt – nach den intensiven und aufwühlenden Erlebnissen der vorigen achtzig Minuten hat es mir einfach gereicht, dass der Film irgendein Ende hatte. (24.05.2016)

The Witch feels like a film from another planet, or better said, a media from a completely different time. While it accepts contemporary genre tropes and draws its surface tension from the popular formula of a group of people – a cabin, the surrounding forest, and a supernatural evil, internally it sharply defines what we consider common and therefore actually correct in modern horror. The plot focuses not on the true nature and character of the evil, but on the psyche and behaviour of its victims, which, hand in hand with their religious fanaticism, spreads the already terrifying threat into their own ranks, and the viewer can no longer be sure who is the victim and who is the hunter (as the scene with the dog and the rabbit makes clear). It's true that it's hard to sympathise with such irrational characters, but the painstaking work of evoking the period, the orders of life at the time and the Old English language itself add to the naturalism and authenticity in an overwhelming way, so that we actually feel like we're in another reality, even though we're told at the outset that the story is based on an old folk tale. Though the attempt at added historical value may hurt the expected horror content a bit, the formal side is flawless. Sudden edits matched with the hauntingly unmelodic music cut every scene precisely at its climactic moment, so that its effect cannot be diminished, while the setting is used to great effect thanks to slow camera runs and carefully staged shots, without any image that would feel cheap or predictable. We are not forced to be afraid, as we know in today's "scary" ghost stories, but the fear is omnipresent and insistent. In a nutshell: horror that is different, more honest, and better. 80% (27.03.2016)

The Witch is definitely not a typical horror film, if only because the viewer doesn't have much chance to get scared during it, but the film still offers some very rough scenes that will undoubtedly stick in many people's minds. The fact that the film is somehow lacking in scares is not entirely a bad thing, as I think that the aim here was more to build up the atmosphere of the time, which it did – from the gloomy production design, to the depressing music, to the performances (I was particularly impressed by the child roles). I have to admit that I might have expected a bit more from a film that has been graced with more than one praising review, but it's still worth a watch. In short, an unconventionally conceived horror film that benefits particularly from the degree of authenticity and the performances of the small cast. (08.04.2016)

A film with such a dense atmosphere, where there are no silent moments, is not seen every day. "The Witch" is a movie that some may not classify as a horror, but probably only because it is not a slasher or a film full of jump scares that they imagine when they think of horror. I had such unpleasant feelings from this movie, which I haven't experienced in a horror film for a long time, but which I would like to experience often with it. A very unpleasant film. Unpleasant, but great. (18.05.2016)

Das war ein weiterer Trailer und sonst nichts. Das ist das erste Mal, dass ich im Kino war und gebetet habe, dass der Film zu Ende ist. Dies ist definitiv kein Horror oder Thriller (wie die Tatsache beweist, dass ich und andere Kinobesucher über die spannenden und gruseligen Szenen gelacht haben...), es ist ein spiritueller Psychofilm, der abgesehen von ein paar spannenden Momenten durchweg langweilig ist und von nichts handelt. Das Drehbuch war unglaublich nervig, das einzige Plus sehe ich in den schauspielerischen Leistungen, den Kulissen und der Musik, aber da enden alle Vorteile. Ein wirklich schlechter, schlechter Film... (30.03.2016)