The Witch

The Witch is an amazing film. In the last years, while I continue to be rather interested in psycological, "not paranormal" horror, I've quite lost my interest in "fantastic" Horror films, all those "spirits in a house" kind of films have made the genre terribly boring to me. With such a title, you would expect "The Witch" to fall in this second category, and it's true, but only in part, there is an important human component in the atmosphere of fear.

After checking the American Cosmograph program for this month it seemed like one of the most interesting (and with subtitles) films to me, so after reading some very good reviews I set about on giving it a try. I will not give you a synopsys, just check wikipedia for it, so I will just tell you that the film is as good as the reviews say. One family in a harsh territory and harsh time (17th centry New England) begins to break apart because of their religious integrism, poverty and supernatural forces. Tensions mount, untrust, blame and punishment make life more and more unbearable and everything explodes. There is an amazing resource that increases even more the spectator's unrest, in 2 occasion the screen will go black for around 5 seconds, giving you the time to think and fear what comes next... and you are right to fear it. I pretty loved this trick.

The scenario is amazing, and the photography is really superb. As the review in the American Cosmograph said, at some moments the composition and lightning of a static scene makes you think to be seeing a work of some Flemish painter. They also mention Goya, but I did not clearly identify any sequence like that.

This film is a real must-see, and if you are lucky to watch it in a cinema with a replica of a beautiful Orientalist painting (sorry, I can't remember the title or author), it's even better!