The Witch was a sleeper hit in 2015, making the rounds and surprising everyone who saw it by how scary it was - because no one saw it coming. This little horror movie, set in 1630 and feeling extremely legitimate in terms of dialogue (much of it taken from period diaries and court transcripts), costume and set, is very good. No, there's not a lot of gore or jump scares. But this Pilgrim family, cast out of their walled town for their not-quite-in-line religious beliefs, is in for it. Their crops rot on the vine. The baby mysteriously disappears while his oldest sister is watching him. The young twins are bratty and horrible. The second oldest, Caleb, goes missing in the dark, dank woods when he is supposed to be checking the trap line. And the oldest girl, Thomasin, is accused by her little siblings of being a witch after she torments them. The parents are isolated and at their wits' end, laying blame where they can, justified or not.
And there's an evil goat.
I am not doing the movie any favors with this flippant little review but it is quite good. You can easily imagine how the Salem witch hysteria got going from watching the twins; what
The Witch makes you ask is, what if there was actually good reason for that hysteria?
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