David Rinker

This a good film but occasionally suffers from heavy handed storytelling. From a purely atmospheric stand point the Witch (VViych) is gorgeous. The cinematography, the costumes, the dialogue, the acting...they all evoke the world of a 17th New England that would strike many of us as being at once familiar and very alien. The vulnerability the family feels on the edge of the woods is reminiscent the many fairy tails we are all still acquainted with. And when strange things start happening, we are just as confident as are the characters that something supernatural is impinging upon their already tenuous existence. And this is where the film falters. What could have been left to build as a mysterious force of malevolence is given all too clumsy elaboration. For example, when the baby suddenly vanishes, we are legitimately surprised and fearful. This moment was horrifying even despite it's lack of action (and because of it). Yet the film felt the need to immediately remove the sense of mysterious foreboding by giving the audience an omniscient point of view. This diluted the more basic element of terror, the one where a child could simply vanish, without a trace, forever. That shift in perspective relieves the audience of the dread that the family was left to experience. That disconnect between the religion clouded confusion of the family and our now more removed point of view makes many of the film's later decisions seem less impactful. We feel more like spectators who are given too much information. In the end there is little ambiguity that there are supernatural forces at work, but the diluted sense of terror runs the risk of making the evil seem less sinister and just more, well, goofy. Unfortunately, the final scene in the film left me with too much of the latter.