The Witch

The Witch is a 2015 American-Canadian supernatural horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his directorial debut. The film stars Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson. The Witch follows a Separatist family encountering forces of evil in the woods beyond their New England farm, forces that may be either real or imagined.

Plot
In 1630s New England, English Settler William and his family — his wife, Katherine, daughter Thomasin, son Caleb, and fraternal twins, Mercy and Jonas — are banished from a Puritan Plymouth Colony over a religious dispute. They build a farm near a large, secluded forest and Katherine has a newborn child, Samuel. One day, Thomasin is playing peekaboo with Samuel when the baby abruptly disappears. It is revealed that a red-cloaked witch had stolen the unbaptized Samuel and that night kills him and uses his blood and fat to make a flying ointment.

Katherine, devastated, spends her days crying and praying, while William insists a wolf stole the baby. Even though Katherine forbids the children going to the forest, William takes Caleb to lay a trap for food. Caleb asks if Samuel's unbaptized soul will reach Heaven. William chastises Caleb for raising the question and later reveals to Caleb that he traded Katherine's silver cup for hunting supplies. That night, Katherine questions Thomasin about the disappearance of her cup while implying Thomasin was responsible for Samuel's vanishing. After the children retire to bed, they overhear their parents discussing sending Thomasin away to serve another family.

Early the next morning, Thomasin finds Caleb preparing to check the trap in the forest. She forces Caleb to take her with him by threatening to awaken their parents. While walking in the woods, they spot a rabbit, which sends their horse Bert into a panic and their dog Fowler promptly chases. Caleb runs off after the pair, while the horse throws Thomasin off, knocking her unconscious. Caleb becomes lost in the woods and stumbles upon Fowler's disemboweled corpse. As he gets deeper into the woods, he comes across a hovel, where a beautiful young woman emerges and seduces him. William finds Thomasin and takes her home. Katherine angrily chastises Thomasin for taking Caleb into the woods and, to save Thomasin, William reluctantly admits that he sold Katherine's silver cup.

Caleb is found outdoors in the rain that night, naked and delirious from an unknown illness. When he awakens the next day, he expels a bloody apple from his mouth; Katherine believes it to be witchcraft. Caleb passionately proclaims his love to Christ before he dies. The twins then accuse Thomasin of witchcraft and, in retaliation, she reveals to the parents that the twins have had conversations with Black Phillip, the family's black goat. Enraged, William boards both Thomasin and the twins inside the goat house and plan to return to the plantation the next day. That night, the witch enters the stable and drinks milk from the goats, terrifying the twins and Thomasin. Katherine awakens to a vision of Caleb holding Samuel, whom she takes and begins breastfeeding. It is revealed that Samuel is in fact a black raven pecking at her bare and bloody breast.

The next day William awakens to find the stable destroyed, the goats eviscerated, the twins missing and an unconscious Thomasin lying nearby with blood-stained hands. As Thomasin awakens, Black Phillip gores William before her eyes. The commotion awakens an unhinged Katherine, who now blames Thomasin for the tragedies that have beset the family and tries to strangle her. Thomasin kills her with a billhook in self-defense.

Alone, Thomasin enters the stable and urges Black Phillip to speak to her. The goat asks if Thomasin would like to "live deliciously" and materializes into a tall, dark man. He orders Thomasin to remove her clothes and to sign her name in a book that appears. She replies that she does not know how to sign her name, so Black Phillip guides her hand. Thomasin follows Black Phillip, back in goat-form, into the forest, where she joins a coven of witches holding a Witches' Sabbath around a bonfire. The coven begins to levitate and a laughing and convulsing Thomasin joins them, ascending above the trees.

Cast

 * Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin
 * Ralph Ineson as William
 * Kate Dickie as Katherine
 * Harvey Scrimshaw as Caleb
 * Ellie Grainger as Mercy
 * Lucas Dawson as Jonas
 * Julian Richings as The Governor
 * Bathsheba Garnett as Witch
 * Sarah Stephens as Young Witch
 * Charlie as Black Phillip (goat form)
 * Wahab Chaudhry as Black Phillip (voice, human form)
 * Axtun Henry Dube and Athan Conrad Dube as Samuel

Production
Eggers, a native of New Hampshire, was inspired to write the film by his childhood fascination with witches and frequent visits to the Plimoth Plantation as a schoolboy. After unsuccessfully pitching films that were "too weird, too obscure", Eggers realized that he would have to make a more conventional film. He said at a Q&A, "If I'm going to make a genre film, it has to be personal and it has to be good." The production team worked extensively with British and American museums, as well as consulting experts on 17th-century British agriculture.

Eggers wanted to film the picture on location in New England but the lack of tax incentives meant he had to settle for Canada. This proved to be somewhat of a problem for Eggers, because he could not find the forest environment he was looking for in the country. They had to go "off the map", eventually finding a location (Kiosk, Ontario) that was "extremely remote"; Eggers said that the nearest town "made New Hampshire look like a metropolis".

The casting took place in England, as Eggers wanted authentic accents to represent a family newly arrived in Plymouth.

Filming
In order to give the film an authentic look, Eggers shot only "with natural light and indoors, the only lighting was candles". Eggers also chose to stylize the film's title as "The VVitch" in its title sequence and on posters, stating that he found this spelling in a Jacobean era pamphlet on witchcraft, along with other period texts.

In December 2013, costume designer Linda Muir joined the crew, and consulted 35 books in the Clothes of the Common People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England series to plan the costumes. The costumes were made with wool, linen, or hemp. Muir also lobbied for a larger costume budget.

Music
Mark Korven wrote the film's score, which aimed to be "tense and dissonant", while focusing on minimalism. Eggers vetoed the use of any electronic instruments and "didn’t want any traditional harmony or melody in the score", and so Korven chose to create music with atypical instruments, including the nyckelharpa and the waterphone. He knew that the director liked to retain a degree of creative control, so he relied on loose play centered on improvisation "so that [Eggers] could move notes around whenever he wanted".