2015

The Witch, or subtitled VVitch: A New England Folktale, because Vs are scarier cause…vaginas? I’m sure they were trying to be old-timey but it got a little confusing when searching for information on this film. There’s also a lot of vaginas in this movie, too (spoiler alert).

The movie starts with, and continues to follow a puritan or pilgrim family that was banished from their plantation town in 1630s New England. Now obviously, analysis of The Crucible has been beaten to death (pun most definitely intended), so I wasn’t expecting any new insight about this time period, besides lack of political commentary.

However, this is where I was wrong, because right away the family decides to settle in a clearing near an extremely creepy forest. Because no one ever said banished Christians were smart. Here’s the thing that bugged me. Yes, I know 1630s New England didn’t have a TON of towns, but I feel like if you come along an unsettled (and unsettling) clearing near a generous brook, there may be a good reason. And that reason is black magic (different from the white magic the people in rich Hollywood Hills cults try to force on you).

Within almost months, bad stuff starts happening to the family. First their baby is snatched by a hungry lady who likes baby flesh. Then the mother toes the line of insanity. Then the twin children that are left start singing the most annoying songs, which makes the viewer want them to be impaled  by a goat. The father is lying to everyone, selling off their possessions to nearby Indians (who were super rude not to warn them about the coven living beyond the tree line). And the eldest daughter (Thomasin) is trying to keep everyone together, but has the sassy mouth. She also has temperament of a teenager, because contrary to popular belief, the bible can’t beat hormones out of you.

After the second son is possessed by the devil through a witch encounter, the mother and father go full blown crazy mode and lock up their remaining children in the barn. The unfinished barn I might add. Thomasin has to go through a few rounds of crazy before she finally ends up alone, basically waiting for the devil to show up. Like Waiting for Godot, but with a 14 year old talking to a billy goat instead of a human. And actually far less existential and depressing.

In the end, though, they were all probably high as fuck on ergot, a hallucinogenic fungus basically blamed for any “weirdo” behavior since Jesus’ time. They complain from the very beginning that the corn is bad, but still keep eating it. Again, banished Christians aren’t too bright. But that’s just “science” interpretation. You can decide on your own if black magic is real or just an excuse to get naked in the woods.