Film 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.
Film A story named for a force, not a character.
A Puritan family has been exiled and starts their own farm on the outskirts of a threatening woods. Misfortune strikes the family relentlessly, and intrafamilial relationships decay dramatically, with the eldest daughter, Thomasin, struggling to be heard out and trusted after circumstance leaves her as the only visible common denominator of every witched tragedy. For there is a witch in the forest.
The film is a moody, slow, and very heavily period-themed horror drama, with costuming, dialogue, and set design all adhering to early colonial American standards. The dialogue can be a bit hard to parse, particularly with extremely baritone Ralph Ineson as the father, but it's not too hard and the film works well. There's a lot of subtext of the Puritan mindset making things much worse for the characters, like confusing one child about death when the father says the soul's placement cannot be promised, and the general negative and self-loathing religious rhetoric not doing any favors for the emotional state. One way to read the film would be as a story of how viewing life as misery just gives you a miserable life.
Since so much of the drama comes from the mistrust within the family about the true cause of the ceaseless and dreadful misfortunes befalling them, I started to think the film would have been just as strong if the film hadn't told us the witch was an outside force from the start. It could have been a compelling magical whodunit drama where we shift allegiances as the characters do, not knowing who accused is a witch until we learn none were. However, later events in the film make it very clear why Thomasin is shown to be innocent—because the entire story is about how she does not deserve this. Thomasin is a devout and kind girl who suffers just as much as her family and is rewarded for it with suspicion, abuse, and accusations. Her most startling actions make the most sense when you realize her belief in herself that she is being unjustly treated and that she must stand up for herself in a scenario where everyone is wrongly against her. And that sense is what motivates the end of her character arc—if you see it as positive or not, it doesn't matter, because it's entirely understandable for someone who's suffered so unfairly.
It's possible to view the film as not supernatural, but I don't think those readings elevate this particular story. I tend to see it as the story of people being broken down by a life that does not reward them, with witches being a real element underpinning it.
This isn't a film I adored, but I can't say it's done badly and I enjoyed thinking about it.