The VVitch (2016)

[Mini]

Short blooper real.

Never work with children, animals or Finchy.

[Custard]

Just watched this, and really enjoyed it.

SPOILERZ AHOY

I too found the olde language a bit distracting at first, but it surprised me how quickly it just seemed normal, and how at ease I became with it. It did make Finchy sound a bit like Yoda at times, mind

Thought there were several really effective moments, such as the baby vanishing, the witch taking on a Playboy model form to suck in the tit-starer, the crow pecking at the nips. Black Phillip offing the dad was brutal and made me jump. The complete breakdown of the family in the last third.

It reminded me a lot of the tone of Kill List and A Field In England, and I actually found it refreshing that it was a pretty straightforward story, with not much ambiguousness (is that a word? Typing on my phone, and its late) going on

I actually didn't find it slow-moving at all, and the 90 minutes flew by for me. Maybe it helped that I watched it this time of night, on the laptop, with headphones on, so there were no distractions. The best way to watch horror, I'm starting to think!

Anyway, will probably add more tomorrow, but yeah, enjoyed that

[DukeDeMondo]

Aside from the odd handful of dodgy pretends from the cast, and a few too many cut-to-black-as-the-soundtrack-shrieks-off-into-inifinity bits at the start, I thought this was fairly fuckin fantastic. Really very little I can find to complain about. I would've liked it to have been a wee bit scarier, maybe, or even halfways scary at all - although it was very unsettling a lot of the time - but what it did do was more than enough to make up for what it didn't do or didn't do maybe as much as it might have. 

A Good Thing, I reckon. As good a Blood on Satan's Claw meets The Thing sort of picture as I've seen in any sort of time. 

Noodles mentioned it bein a bit like a hipster account of the former, and I sort of get that. There's something a wee bit Wolves In The Throne Room about it all. But sod it, it worked for me. I loved that it established at the start that we're rompin around the mythologies and the superstitions these folk have woven about them, and taking all of that at face value, and exploring every inch of the paranoia festering away in the lot of them, and what any of it might mean taken to its logical conclusion.

Spoiler alert

Flyin fannies, is what it means

[close]

.

It reminded me a wee bit of Wisconsin Death Trip at times, an all, although they're obviously very different films in all sorts of ways. Collating a bunch of hearsay and gibber and wild, wyrd capers and presenting the whole garrumph as a portrait of an isolated community at a particular time - even if here that community is just one family slowly slidin off its own tits next a load of trees.

Some properly provocative imagery, an all. Surprised by some of it, to be honest. Especially that stuff with the baby at the start.

Anyway, I like it, and that's all there is to it. It's good, I reckon.

[Glebe]

Everything Wrong With The Witch In 12 MInutes Or Less.

It's by no means a great movie, but the guy is being a little picky... also, I give them 1 sin for spelling Minutes, 'MInutes'.

[Old Nehamkin]

Cinema Sins is for shit people.

[Glebe]

'The Witch' Director Robert Eggers Confirms 'Nosferatu' Remake Is His Next Film.

Cripes.

[Sgt. Duckie]

'The Witch' Director Robert Eggers Confirms 'Nosferatu' Remake Is His Next Film.

Cripes.

Kate Dickie?

[Glebe]

The Witch as a Wes Anderson Movie.

Wryness.

[clingfilm portent]

The Witch as a Wes Anderson Movie.

Wryness.

Wasn't quite sure to begin with but a couple of those moments are edited perfectly.

[checkoutgirl]

but later on at home I realised it had kind of haunted me and I'd been thinking about it all night.

Have to agree with this. The atmosphere and general feeling of creeping dread stayed with me for a few nights after watching this. I was staring at my slightly ajar bedroom door at night afeared of a witch coming in my room to get me. I suppose what scared me was my imagination filled in loads of stuff that wasn't there and I like to think this was deliberate by the director.

You could criticise it saying it's just a witch or what have you but I was questioning whether the witch was real and for most of the film I was kind of convinced the witch was one of the family members and I couldn't quite work out where I was for most of the running time. This disoriented me and fed into my overall feeling of dread.

Unlike some on here I though the costumes, period dialogue and acting was all convincing and well done and the forest was like a terrifying character all of its own. The fact that they are yards from a bank of trees that you can't see into worried me. Just everything about this film unsettled me and basically scared the shit out of me.

I honestly haven't been really scared by a film in at least a decade such is my cynicism but this film really got to me. If the magic trick didn't work for you then too bad but I can see why the critics praised it.

[checkoutgirl]

Everything Wrong With The Witch In 12 MInutes Or Less.

It's by no means a great movie, but the guy is being a little picky... also, I give them 1 sin for spelling Minutes, 'MInutes'.

That "Everything Wrong With" series is a load of fucking nitpicking silly garbage.

[Sam]

I just watched this and I thought it was very, very good. I found all the stuff about sin and hysteria and how crap farming is totally engrossing. I had to press pause at one point and figured I was about half way through, but there was 20 minutes left. The horror stuff is almost incidental and yet when it is there it's perfect. Loved how demented the score was, reminded me of Lutoslawski's settings of Henri Michaux. I know a lot of horror films go for that sound, but this was a cut above in that respect. I also loved the 'ah fuck it let's go nuts' final section, all the more for the fact that I think the film works best read as being all in the character's heads, caused by religious hysteria, coincidence and crop blight. There were some quite subtle shots/edits that support that view, to the extent I feel the early reveal of a witch and the film's full on ending are red herrings: it's not a 'oh it was devil all along then' film, it's rather that the meat of the film (the collective hysteria element) is so well done that the 'horror' bits are afforded a certain OTT audacity which deliberately creates tension against the realism. Bah, probably explaining it badly but I'm just trying to say I reckon it's a cleverer/subtler film than some people have given it credit for.

On the other hand the whole aesthetic of the film clicked with me, and I can see how if you don't buy into that early on it'll leave you cold.

Anyway, one of the best horror films I've seen in ages, not that I watch a great deal of them. It just felt like a good film full stop, regardless of genre.

[St_Eddie]

I finally got around to watching this and I don't feel that I can really come to a conclusive opinion on it without a second viewing.  It was interesting but I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't disappointed, due to the fact that I had been expecting to love it.

However, I thought that there was something slightly off about the ending and then I realised what it was!  I've made a quick edit and I think I prefer it this way.  What do the rest of you think?  Better?  Worse?  About the same?

SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING OF 'THE WITCH'...
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9l0_GoiZKB3VklOX1NMUEpYU1U

[Glebe]

'Split' Star Anya Taylor-Joy Reteams With 'Witch' Director on 'Nosferatu' Remake (EXCLUSIVE).

Good stuff.

[Keebleman]

Only just watched this, and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The period feel was as good as any movie I've seen.  I can only think of Topsy-Turvey and Barry Lyndon as being comparable.  And what made it so was the language.  All these costume dramas boasting about how they have spent years and millions getting the right tablecloths etc, and then as soon as the characters speak we're immediately in the present day.  Wasn't like that here.

My main issues with the film were technical ones.  I'm glad I saw it on DVD because I could switch the subtitles on: in a cinema much of the dialogue would have been indecipherable.  The editing seemed oddly incompetent at times: there was one cut during a scene with Caleb and Thomasin where the two shots were matched so sloppily I thought we had switched to later in the day.  Most of all though was the photography.  Having not seen it in the cinema I don't know whether or not it should be blamed on the DVD, but the image had a hyperreal sheen which made it look more like videotape than film and really detracted from the drama.

Other than that, my main complaint was that the film was one minute too long.  The long shot of her and Philip walking into the woods would have served perfectly well as a conclusion.

[Famous Mortimer]

I'll bump this thread too, maybe other people have re-watched it and their opinions have changed or something.

Aside from the odd handful of dodgy pretends from the cast, and a few too many cut-to-black-as-the-soundtrack-shrieks-off-into-inifinity bits at the start, I thought this was fairly fuckin fantastic. Really very little I can find to complain about. I would've liked it to have been a wee bit scarier, maybe, or even halfways scary at all - although it was very unsettling a lot of the time - but what it did do was more than enough to make up for what it didn't do or didn't do maybe as much as it might have. 

I agree with Duke, I just watched it last night and thought the atmosphere more than made up for the relative lack of scares. Great performances, beautifully shot (considering it was gross overgrown wilderness most of the time) and I really liked the way it unfolded.

I watched it mostly because I missed out on watching "The Lighthouse" at the pictures.

[checkoutgirl]

Just watched this again last night as I'd forgotten most of it in the last couple of years. Again it scared the shit out of me. I'm alone in my bed the night after and I can hear the creepy soundtrack in my head. The only films that have unsettled me to a similar degree recently are Kill List, Hereditary and to a lesser extent Midsommar. I saw a comment saying there was no twist, as if that's a requirement for any film. If the atmosphere and mood are working for you a twist is irrelevant.

Interesting few points in this Den of Geek article.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-witch-has-one-of-horrors-greatest-endings/%3famp

[Head Gardener]

I just ordered this from Red Yeti Records, there are only 300 of them and that was the only place I could find it
more info : https://www.sacredbonesrecords.com/products/the-witch-original-motion-picture-soundtrack