David Annandale

“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath” — so wrote Algernon Swinburne in “Hymn to Proserpine” (1866), and the faith-imbued world of the unfortunate family in The Witch is grey and pale indeed. The force they encounter is unequivocally evil, but one of the remarkable things about the movie is that even as we fear this force, we feel its seductive power as well. It is anything but grey.

The Witch is fine new entry in the annals of Satanic cinema. Its closest cousin is probably Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970), a period piece in which the children of a rural village in England become demon-possessed. In its rhythms, though, it has more in common with The Wicker Man and Don’t Look Now (both 1973) — horror films that are not constructed around a series of terrifying set pieces, but choose instead to keep their powder dry, building dread and preparing the way for their devastating conclusions. (Though The Witch has a major piece of nastiness early on, alerting us to the fact that all bets are off. Anything can happen here.)

Spoiler warning now for the rest of this entry. Don’t read any further if you’re planning on seeing the film.

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