At a glance
| Director | Robert Eggers |
| Release year | 2015 |
| Runtime | 92 minutes |
| Genre | Folk horror |
| Starring | Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie |
Plot
In The Witch (2015), a Puritan family is cast out of a plantation settlement and builds a farm at the edge of a New England forest. The crops fail, the baby vanishes, and blame settles on the eldest daughter.
The film does not treat the supernatural as a metaphor it will take back. Something is in the trees. The question is what the family will do to each other before they admit it. Thomasin’s last choice is the film’s ending, and it is not a rescue.
Production
The Witch is Robert Eggers’ first feature. He researched 17th-century diaries and trial records and wrote the dialogue in a reconstruction of period speech. The subtitle on some posters is A New-England Folktale. It was shot in Ontario, on a farm built for the film, with natural light and a narrow frame. The budget was small, around $4 million, financed after the script won a Sundance development prize.
Anya Taylor-Joy plays Thomasin in her first major film role. Ralph Ineson is William, the father. Kate Dickie is Katherine. The goat was a real animal, named Charlie on set, and was difficult in the way livestock is difficult. The film premiered at Sundance in January 2015, where A24 bought it, and opened in the United States in February 2016 after a festival year. Eggers’ later films, The Lighthouse and The Northman, keep the same interest in period speech and practical worlds.
Cast
- Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin
- Ralph Ineson as William
- Kate Dickie as Katherine
- Harvey Scrimshaw as Caleb
- Ellie Grainger as Mercy
- Lucas Dawson as Jonas
Trivia
- The dialogue was written to sound like 1630s English, not modern speech with thees added.
- Black Philip is a goat, not a man in a suit. The voice, when it comes, is a separate performance.
- Eggers has said the film is about a girl’s coming of age inside a religion that has no room for her.
- The family name is not the point. The isolation is.
- A24’s trailer sold it as a jump-scare film. The movie is slower than the trailer.
- Taylor-Joy was cast from a tape. The role made her a lead.
Related on this site
No character page for Thomasin or Black Philip yet. Eggers’ later films are not on this site.