Cinephilia: The VVitch A New England Folktale

The VVitch A New England Folktale
Genre: Supernatural, Horror, Period Piece
Directed by: Robert Eggers
Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie
Released: 2015

Blair Witch was doomed to fail. The whole gimmick of "this is actual found footage" unraveled almost immediately, and without that aspect a lot of the impact was lost. Found footage is a dead genre in my honest opinion, the whole premise is almost always just going to irritate viewers and even if the climax gets interesting it almost never makes up for the inane opening bits. The VVitch is nothing like Blair Witch, but it manages to capture that eerie feeling of something living out in the woods.

The story is simple, in early New England a religious family is kicked out of their village and must strike out on their own. Upon establishing their little farm everything begins to corrode around them. First their baby boy disappears, then their oldest son vanishes before showing up naked and clearly under some sort of sinister magical influence. The paranoia and fear does the majority of the work in destroying this family however. Seeing the parents turning on each other and their children as blame for who is responsible for all of these ungodly things is thrown around is handled very well, and manages to leave the audience with a general feeling of unease.

Each character is successfully portrayed as potentially the source of all of this suffering. The father has a strange air of regret about him, and seems to care for his daughter quite a bit more than the rest of the family. The mother never stops praying and is immediately uneasy upon leaving the village. The eldest son is starting to hit puberty, and unfortunately his sister is the only girl around for him to notice, filling his head with concerns of sin. The two youngest children routinely hear the family's black goat whisper to them and address him as Black Phillip. However the eldest daughter seems to be at the center of everything. Every time something wicked occurs the eldest daughter is either there, or was the last one seen around. The film leaves it ambiguous as to why this family is suffering so. Is it one of the family members? Or are they truly a family of sin being punished by god? Maybe they just choose really poorly when setting up their new home and it's truly random chance this is happening to them.

Of course throughout the film we do see a witch performing all kinds of strange rituals, always naked. The witch also appears to have several, either, familiars or other forms she takes such as a rabbit and a crow that show up throughout the movie. Eventually the father boards his living children up with Black Phillip, that night the witch appears in the same room. We are never shown what happened, but the goats are dead, the ramshackle shed is torn apart, the youngest two kids are missing and, lo and behold, the eldest daughter is seemingly unscathed.

Being slow, is the one major criticism I could see being levied at the film. Most scenes are rather quiet and subdued, and even the most hectic scenes are fairly tame overall. Mostly the audience bears witness to the family deteriorating as they cannot come to terms with their god letting this happen to them. Personally, however, this is exactly what I wanted from this movie.

I've always been fascinated with the ideas of witches, or creatures lurking in the woods beyond mortal understanding. We never see exactly what the witch does, or why, and we shouldn't. Even so, it's clear the witch is powerful and unnatural. The mysterious nature of the witch and her power is perfect, if ever we were to see her true magics it would be too late for us. The ending might ruin a bit of the mystery, but I still think it works and fits the rest of the film nicely. In it's own way, the ending flips the narrative and I'm curious how the story will flow when you know the ultimate conclusion.

The VVitch really nails the atmosphere for me. It's creepy, unsettling and makes me want to stay away from, and explore the woods in equal parts. I'm struggling to put into words exactly how this movie hit the mark for me, but how I felt being immersed in this world is perfect and something I've wanted for a long time. The isolated hopelessness in the wake of an unknown power overwhelming a family that might deserve what's happening is just exquisite. While it's never truly horrifying, luckily it doesn't rely on cheap scares either. Instead it slowly instills a feeling of dread and foreboding, which carries through even through the end regardless of how you feel about it. I can understand if people wouldn't like this, and for that reason I can't whole heartedly recommend this. But for those of you who have always wondered about witches hiding in the woods, or enjoy the general sense of unease of the time and setting The VVitch very well might satisfy you.