Like any good horror film, The Witch is rife with opportunity for allegorical interpretation, and one of the most compelling narratives bubbling beneath surface is the origin story of America itself.

| Feb 10, 2021

The stakes are real. The Devil is real. All roads do not lead up the mountain. Some lead to the heart of darkness, to the depths of a witch-haunted wood.

| Original Score: A | Apr 28, 2017

The film starts with wordy wittering and ends by trying to woo our shrieks -- from Arthur Miller to Dennis Wheatley in the shortest time possible between two blunt points.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 27, 2016

I'm fairly positive scares are not the point. Eggers takes things to a place that's far more disconcerting, showing how human nature can be the most destructive of all forces.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 15, 2016

As horror films go, the film is more slow burn than an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but it builds steadily to its dreadful and earned conclusion.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 10, 2016

A film that surrounds you with a general yet mostly indescribable sense of unease, less through its violence or blood than its mood and tension. And then it clobbers you.

| Apr 27, 2016

As a curio, The Witch has its own fascination; at least until the over-explicit finale shatters much of the mood that has been so carefully built up.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 16, 2016

Aware that gender, as much as faith, remains a burning issue, Eggers makes our hearts swell and our brains sweat.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 14, 2016

An atmospheric chiller rooted in the fertile soil of religious zealotry, social isolation and original sin.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 13, 2016

The little-known cast of British actors succeeds in convincingly portraying these threatened pilgrims who, while seeking out a new and better life, find themselves in the middle of an inexplicable nightmare.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 11, 2016

Anybody seeking torture porn or mindless jump shocks will be in for a disappointment, but Eggers's slippery, intelligent film is not short of accumulating unease.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 11, 2016

Like any outstanding horror film, its true impact only reveals itself once the credits have rolled and it stays buried under your skin, breaking through every now and then to remind you of its insidious power.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 10, 2016

The problem is that the craft and artistry are just too laboured and foregrounded.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 10, 2016

The best moments are early on.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 10, 2016

A hugely assured debut, The Witch is a beautiful, bleak brainworm that will haunt you for days.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 10, 2016

One of the scariest horror movies in years - and not the creep-up-and-prod-you kind of scary either, but a profound, unsettling dread that gnaws at your bones, and which comes back to find you in the dark.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 10, 2016

Its hypnotic spell lingers.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 7, 2016

The Witch is sparing in its use of special effects and generates suspense and foreboding through what is suggested rather than what is seen.

| Feb 29, 2016

In the tradition of William Friedkin's The Exorcist, this chilling low-budget horror movie taps into the same temporal fear that sparks religious feeling.

| Feb 29, 2016

"The Witch" feels at once sticky with tangible detail and numinous with suggestion.

| Feb 22, 2016