Two stars. Rated R, for disturbing violent content and graphic nudity
By Derrick Bang
Filmmaker Robert Eggers’ modest
little chiller is being hailed as 2016’s first “New Wave horror masterpiece,”
akin to last year’s It Follows.
Sadly, that’s high praise this film
doesn’t deserve.
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| As Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) continues to suffer the guilt of having "lost" her baby brother, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) tries to comfort her. But he does the job badly, in part because of his own conflicted feelings about his older sister. |
It also has been described as the
unholy love child of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman and The Blair Witch Project. That’s much closer to the truth, albeit
with far more Bergman than Blair.
Unlike that 1999 cinematic con job, which was a case of the emperor having no
clothes whatsoever, The Witch does
deliver a few lurid sequences while building to its nasty finale.
But Eggers is a much better
director than writer. He definitely gets full marks for moody atmosphere and
unsettling tension, and — assisted by production designer Craig Lathrop — quite
cleverly stretches the $1 million budget to deliver impressive period
authenticity.
But the plot is clumsy and
random, with key details and motivation left undisclosed, and the characters are
badly under-written. We’ve no idea why any of this is happening, or what these
poor folks have done to deserve it (although there’s a suggestion that female
puberty is the catch-all culprit).
More to the point, character
behavior is deranged, and therefore impossible to take seriously. Much has been
made of Eggers’ meticulous adherence to early 17th century New England dress,
mannerisms and particularly speech; that’s well and good, but he rather
overplays the religious zealotry, to the point of generating unintended
laughter at all the wrong moments.
On top of which, even with the
aforementioned third-act climax, Eggers’ pacing is languid to the point of
tedium. Something obviously is wrong, when you can’t sustain interest for a
brief 90 minutes.
In a word, The Witch is a yawn. Until the final 10 minutes or so.
