As a first time feature film maker, Robert Egger
demonstrates a skilled and assured hand at how to handle material that is
delicate on several fronts. The Witch,
which he wrote and directed, deals with puritanical religious dogma of the
seventeenth century, witchcraft, and also the conventions of horror and
psychological thrillers. So much could have gone wrong in setting a tone and a
pace, but Eggers gets most of it right.
For starters, he set his film nearly four centuries ago
in New England. As such the dialogue, much of which is taken from contemporaneous
transcripts and texts, contains a style that, to the ears of a 21st
century American, sounds like something out of a restoration village where
actors pretend they know nothing about modern technology. Also the family at
the center of the movie, who have been banished from the village for “prideful
conceit”, exercise such deep religious conviction that we might feel
uncomfortable laughter coming on. But the events that transpire are no laughing
matter.
