Anna Bowman is a senior English and telecommunications major and writes 'Film Annalysis' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Anna at aabowman@bsu.edu.
If you’ve been looking for a nightmare-inducing scary movie recently, I’d advise you to stay away from "The Witch." However, if you, like maybe a dozen other people, have been looking for a creepier version of "The Crucible" with more nudity, this movie is for you.
As far as scary movies go, the gore is there, but not much else. Apparently, in order to be a witch, you have to get naked and cut a lot of animals open. That’s basically it. If you believe in this kind of stuff, you’d be wise to keep little Fluffy and Sniffles locked up. Props to the effects department for making it look real, though. And maybe it was. I mean, there must have been some witchcraft involved with convincing someone to make this film.
This is a period piece in every sense of the word. In case you’re unfamiliar with the myths surrounding Puritanism, young women were highly suspect to being satanic murderers fairly often. Like, Hillary Clinton would have been killed way before she ever ran for president. Young girls were fine, but the second they hit puberty, all bets were off.
Because the film was based on fragments of folk tales told about Puritan-age “witchcraft,” the story itself seems a bit fragmented. This would have been tolerable with some strong visuals and maybe a little symbolism thrown in, but "The Witch" dropped the ball where that was concerned. To put it plainly, this movie is where vaguely disturbing imagery goes to die.
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Technically speaking, it wasn’t bad. It had the unsaturated look that we’ve all come to expect from horror films and stuck with the usual dissonant music. While I can’t say there were any shots that blew me away, the cinematographer stayed away from the typical “don’t look behind you” shots, which I appreciate. The lighting was the film’s best asset, in my opinion. It made great use of shadows and soft illumination, which is less common in today’s era of “found footage.”
The creepiest part of the movie was probably the father’s impossibly deep voice. He makes James Earl Jones sound like Zooey Deschanel. Really, he seemed scarier than the witch, in many respects. I don’t know if they did this on purpose, but he looked a little like Jesus if he had a quick temper and weird “dad” abs.
I think one of the worst things you can say about a movie is that the trailer was better, and I’m sorry to say this is true in the case of "The Witch."
