A family’s faith and love are tested when their youngest son vanishes. Blaming their eldest daughter, suspicion and paranoia lead to accusations of witchcraft. A film by Robert Eggers, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw, Ellie Grainger, Lucas Dawson, Bathsheba Garnett, Sarah Stephens, Julian Richings, and Wahab Chaudhry.

In 1630s New England, English settler William (Ralph Ineson) and his family — wife Katherine (Kate Dickie), daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), and young twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) — are exiled from their settlement due to a religious dispute.

The Puritan family settles on a farm near a secluded forest, where Katherine gives birth to their fifth child, Samuel. While under Thomasin’s care, Samuel mysteriously disappears. Soon, it is revealed that a witch has stolen and killed Samuel to make an ointment. Katherine suspects Thomasin’s involvement, since she was the last person seen with him.

Puritanism was a significant religious reform movement that emerged in England during the late 16th and 17th centuries. The Puritans, who were a group of English Protestants, aimed to “purify” the Church of England from what they perceived as remnants of Roman Catholic practices that persisted after the English Reformation. They believed that the Church had not been fully reformed and sought to eliminate these elements to create a more Protestant church structure and worship style.

Consumed by grief, Katherine spends her days weeping and praying. William takes Caleb into the forest to hunt. The next morning, Caleb attempts to sneak out to check on a trap in the forest by himself. Thomasin awakens and sees him about to leave, and she asks him to take her with him. Caleb initially refuses, but Thomasin threatens to wake up their parents, and he reluctantly agrees.

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As they journey through the forest, a hare spooks the horse, sending it galloping wildly into the woods with Thomasin clinging to its back. Their dog chases after the hare, prompting Caleb to pursue them, only to find the dog grievously wounded. Meanwhile, Thomasin regains consciousness after being dislodged from the horse, which has knocked her unconscious. She manages to return home on her own, but Caleb is nowhere to be found.

Katherine is enraged, believing Thomasin is entirely to blame for taking Caleb into the forest without permission. Yet that night, Caleb returns to the farm naked, delirious, and mysteriously ill. Katherine suspects witchcraft and prays fervently for her son. But Caleb succumbs to violent convulsions and passionately professes his love for Christ before dying.

The twins accuse Thomasin of witchcraft, and a series of horrific and unexplained events lead William to deduce that she may be guilty. He resolves to take her for trial on their return to town, but soon realizes it is too late.

Written and directed by American filmmaker Robert Eggers in his directorial debut, THE WITCH is inspired by his childhood fascination with the mythology of witches.

In the film, the filmmaker uses Early Modern English, the language spoken in late 15th century England. This can be challenging for viewers accustomed to modern English, but it is an intentional choice that contributes to the film’s atmosphere and authenticity.

Visually stunning and suspenseful from start to finish, THE WITCH features a superb script, unsettling atmosphere, and chilling performances. The filmmaker’s masterful use of lighting, color palettes, and mood, along with Mark Korven’s haunting soundtrack, creates a sense of dread and anticipation, leaving viewers unable to predict the next terrifying twist.

THE WITCH premiered at Sundance Film Festival on 27 Jaunary 2015. The film was theatrically released in the United States on 19 February 2016, by A24.

Anya Taylor-Joy refused Disney role so she could star in ‘The WITCH’
I remember it was the same day I got asked to be in a Disney Channel pilot, and it was so exciting to be offered anything at all that I ran around the house like a loon. But I just had this really good feeling about The WITCH that made me willing to forego the Disney experience for the thing that felt unknown to me, the thing that felt sacred. It gave me the cornerstones of the way I work now, which is essentially the idea that there is no hierarchy on set: you work hard, you stay on top of the shots and you don’t assume anyone else is going to do that for you.

Conjuring a Coven for THE WITCH
Director of photography Jarin Blaschke collaborated with first-time feature writer-director Robert Eggers in painstakingly re-creating the period. The filmmakers’ research brought them to Plimoth Plantation, a Massachusetts living-history museum that exhibits a 17th-century Plymouth Colony settlement. It was there that they studied family inventories and Plimoth’s re-created structures, which provided the basis for the family farmhouse that production designer Craig Lathrop would ultimately build with period-accurate hand-riven oak clapboards and reed-thatched roofs.

See THE WITCH And THE LIGHTHOUSE In IMAX
Ahead of the release of his long-waited Nosferatu this Christmas Day, A24 are bringing two Robert Eggers classics to the big screen. 2015’s creeping folk horror The WITCH, which starred Anya Taylor-Joy in her breakout and feature film debut, will play across the United States on 23 October 2024, with 2019’s nineteenth-century nightmare The LIGHTHOUSE, with Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson, plays on 13 November.

Robert Eggers: mixing myth, folk tales and the occult with period perfection
Eggers’ major breakout came with his first attempt, even winning Best Director at Sundance, but none of it was left to chance. The Witch was born from five years of official research but in reality, it began during Eggers’ childhood, with the creepy woods that stretched round the back of his house, his Protestant father working the fields and the annual excursions to near-by Salem every Halloween.

“The WITCH” Is Streaming On Netflix And Some People Say It’s The Scariest Movie Of The Decade

This movie is widely considered the best horror flick of the soon-to-be-over 2010s, and when I searched “scariest film of the decade” on Google, The Witch was the first option shown.

METALLICA Guitarist Kirk Hammett Names The WITCH From 2015 As “The Best Horror To Come Out In A Long Time”
It’s original, the concept was great, I love the fact that all the dialogue was taken from the 16th century. And the ending is a recreation of a famous series of Francisco Goya paintings. When I saw that ending, I thought, ‘Oh my God, this looks familiar’, and then I realized what the director was doing. It’s just incredible, and for me, it’s one of the best scenes of that movie. And the soundtrack is really great, too.

How ‘The WITCH’ Accidentally Launched a Horror Movement
There’s no better needle skip in conversations orbiting horror’s status as pop culture’s newly minted genre du jour than the two word trigger phrase “elevated horror,” and if there’s a horror film worth singling out as the spawning ground for said trigger phrase, it’s Robert Eggers’ The Witch. The fault is neither Eggers’ nor his film’s; his only crime is making a movie, and the movie’s only crime is being masterful. Directors only have so much control over the narratives that pop up around their work, which is to say none at all.

Black Phillip: The Real Story Behind the Breakout Goat From ‘The WITCH’
When production designer-turned-director Robert Eggers set about making his first feature, The Witch, he instructed editor Louise Ford to keep the movie’s hircine star — a 210-pound billy goat called Black Phillip — in the margins. No one in the cast had a rougher time with Charlie than Ralph Ineson. On the fourth day of filming, Charlie rammed his serrated horns into Ineson’s ribs, dislodging a tendon.

Actress Anya Taylor-Joy Casts A Spell In The WITCH
The WITCH is the first feature lead for Taylor-Joy, who got her start before the camera on Vampire Academy—though her one-day role as “Feeder Girl #1” wound up on the cutting room floor. Since The Witch caused a sensation at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, she has taken roles in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split and Luke Scott’s sci-fi thriller Morgan.

Robert Eggers, The Director of 2016’s Most Acclaimed Horror Film Spent Four Years Visiting Museums
If there’s any genre that this film fits into more than anything, even more than horror, it’s a fairy tale. Pre-Disney, and even pre-Grimm, fairy tales aren’t moralistic and two-dimensional; they’re dark and enigmatic explorations of family dynamics. That’s a general interpretation, at least. In the early modern period, the real world and the fairy tale world — for everyone but the extreme intelligentsia — were the same thing. People really believed that the old lady down the lane that they were calling a ‘witch’ was actually a fairy-tale ogress, capable of doing the most horrible things. It was very easy to dig into that and be obsessed with trying to bring the audience back to the 17th century and show them a Puritan’s nightmare.

How Robert Eggers Combined History and Childhood Horrors in ‘The WITCH’
When it came to the writing of this piece, it came from the source material. What was really interesting about the research, was that aside from the extreme intelligentsia, the fairy tale world and the real world were the same thing. We looked at fairy tales and folk tales, but also diaries and accounts of real witchcraft and court records, and you see the same tropes throughout, the same witch. If I could take a Puritan’s nightmare as I would envision it and upload it into the audience’s mind’s eye, that was the goal. In terms of cinematic influences, I really like Bergman and Dryer, and they’re definitely in there. I would also say that this movie owes more to ‘The Shining’ than a lot of other things.