Much like mummies, witches are woefully under-subscribed within the modern horror canon. My first thought for why this is the political minefield a writer enters, when they create a narrative in which witches genuinely exist, thus implying the historical witch hunts are at least semi-justified. More likely though, I think we don't get to see these stories because producers prefer to bank on safe demonic possessions, bland white yuppies in a haunted house, or zombie apocalypses.
The Witch, or The VVitch as the movie spells it, offers something of a breadth of fresh air in that regard. Yes, we are introduced to a bland looking family and yes they are moving into an isolated house, but the movie immediately bucks genre within the first two minutes, particularly in regards as to who the monster attacks first. It's not the house that's the problem you see, it's the creepy-as-hell-even-in-the-daytime woods immediately adjacent to the family house, and obviously the witch living somewhere in it. The horror in the movie comes in two flavours; what said witch seems to be doing to the family, and what paranoid projections this devoutly puritanical family make on one another.
Unfortunately that breadth of fresh air gets exhausted within the first half hour. Religious horror in the proper traditional sense hasn't been in vogue for a while now, and it turns out it is much harder to relate to a family which speaks almost exclusively in bible quotes or religious condemnations of one another. On top of that, the family has lots of annoying, screaming, and evilly singing children in it. They get so irritating after a while that you end up siding with the witch, who presumably just wants a bit of peace and quiet.
The witch herself, and her surroundings, are appropriately spooky, weird, and often genuinely horrifying. The witch follows the model of the traditional, folklaw accounts, complete with the cannibalism, satanic pacts, and shape-shifting. Unfortunately, to enable the paranoia angle to work in this story, she barely gets to feature - instead choosing to be a malevolent outside influence who only occasionally turns up to toss a curve ball at the family. This movie gives you something tantalising, but you have to make do with the family instead; a dull watery gruel. It does finally come to a suitably bleak finale that acts as a kind of female empowerment allegory, but it comes a little too late to save this from ultimately being an often obnoxious, and occasionally effective movie.
The V Vorst V Vitch
Much like mummies, witches are woefully under-subscribed within the modern horror canon. My first thought for why this is the political minefield a writer enters, when they create a narrative in which witches genuinely exist, thus implying the historical witch hunts are at least semi-justified. More likely though, I think we don't get to see these stories because producers prefer to bank on safe demonic possessions, bland white yuppies in a haunted house, or zombie apocalypses.
The Witch, or The VVitch as the movie spells it, offers something of a breadth of fresh air in that regard. Yes, we are introduced to a bland looking family and yes they are moving into an isolated house, but the movie immediately bucks genre within the first two minutes, particularly in regards as to who the monster attacks first. It's not the house that's the problem you see, it's the creepy-as-hell-even-in-the-daytime woods immediately adjacent to the family house, and obviously the witch living somewhere in it. The horror in the movie comes in two flavours; what said witch seems to be doing to the family, and what paranoid projections this devoutly puritanical family make on one another.
Unfortunately that breadth of fresh air gets exhausted within the first half hour. Religious horror in the proper traditional sense hasn't been in vogue for a while now, and it turns out it is much harder to relate to a family which speaks almost exclusively in bible quotes or religious condemnations of one another. On top of that, the family has lots of annoying, screaming, and evilly singing children in it. They get so irritating after a while that you end up siding with the witch, who presumably just wants a bit of peace and quiet.
The witch herself, and her surroundings, are appropriately spooky, weird, and often genuinely horrifying. The witch follows the model of the traditional, folklaw accounts, complete with the cannibalism, satanic pacts, and shape-shifting. Unfortunately, to enable the paranoia angle to work in this story, she barely gets to feature - instead choosing to be a malevolent outside influence who only occasionally turns up to toss a curve ball at the family. This movie gives you something tantalising, but you have to make do with the family instead; a dull watery gruel. It does finally come to a suitably bleak finale that acts as a kind of female empowerment allegory, but it comes a little too late to save this from ultimately being an often obnoxious, and occasionally effective movie.