The Witch Casts A Spell In Featurette

We’ve been talking about it, since Sundance 2015  and next month Robert Eggers‘ The Witch will finally arrive in UK. Tonight in a new featurette explores it’s roots as a modern horror story set in colonial America.

In this exquisitely made and terrifying new horror film, the age-old concepts of witchcraft, black magic and possession are innovatively brought together to tell the intimate and riveting story of one family’s frightful unraveling in the New England wilderness circa 1630.

New England, 1630. Upon threat of banishment by the church, an English farmer leaves his colonial plantation, relocating his wife and five children to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest  within which lurks an unknown evil. Strange and unsettling things begin to happen almost immediately  animals turn malevolent, crops fail, and one child disappears as another becomes seemingly possessed by an evil spirit. With suspicion and paranoia mounting, family members accuse teenage daughter Thomasin of witchcraft, charges she adamantly denies. As circumstances grow more treacherous, each family member’s faith, loyalty and love become tested in shocking and unforgettable ways.

Writer/director Robert Eggers’ debut feature, which premiered to great acclaim at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival winning the Best Director Prize in the U.S. Narrative Competition painstakingly recreates a God-fearing New England decades before the 1692 Salem witch trials, in which religious convictions tragically turned to mass hysteria. Told through the eyes of the adolescent Thomas in a star-making turn by newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy and supported by mesmerizing camera work and a powerful musical score, The Witch is a chilling and groundbreaking new take on the genre.

It was one of the highlights of our time at the film festival not just The Peoples Movies Andrew, also our horror editor at Cinehouse Scott too, Visceral, scope and tone scared the living daylights out of us and can’t wait to watch this again!

Read our 4 star Sundance review and our 5 star cinehouse review

The Witch is out in UK cinemas 11th March, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson.