When Fear Dressed as Faith
When The VVitch: A New-England Folktale (2015) as The Witch was made it made an impact at Sundance Film Festival. The trailer alone managed to horrify even gore-hungry fans of the genre. “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously” became a modern-horror cult sentence.
The Witch was not created to enchant the audience with visual beauty or with a captivating harmony, it was an invitation to elaborate, to think, and to reason. Robert Eggers did not compile a ghost story, he delivered a spiritual autopsy, removing the layers and exposing the insides of the early Puritans. The flick reveals the prison of belief, sir. The deepest terror was the primitive need to blame something or someone when the world turns upside down.
A Family Torn Between God and The Woods
During the 1630s a Puritan family was exiled for being too proud, unusual for the time, self banning for a misplaced sense of reverence. they settle at the edge of a dark, brooding and seemingly sentient forest, watching, waiting. The family has a teenage girl, Thomasin, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who is at the age of struggling the most with the issues of obedience and self formation.
The sense of suspicion rooted in the family is exacerbated when the Newborn goes missing during Thomasin’s care, seemingly snatched by the forest. The family’s crops failing and livestock becoming vicious is one of the foreshadowing elements in the film. Thomasin becomes the target of fear, being accused of witchcraft, isolation, and ultimately a balance forced between a polar submission, and polar liberation.
Thomasin is seemingly the only one under the burden of stereotype of an ignorant fictional family. The horror is the consequence of a self torture, guilt and a driven repressive torment within a family and a soul who is unable to express or is simply starving for the liberation.
Anya Taylor-Joy – Becoming Thomasin, Losing Innocence
Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance as Thomasin is the heart and haunting of the film. At just 18, this was her breakout role—her first feature film. She’s spoken in interviews about how The Witch changed her life overnight but also left her emotionally raw. Eggers, known for his precision, demanded complete immersion. The shooting conditions—remote, freezing, and stripped of comfort—helped her embody Thomasin’s isolation.
Anya later revealed that filming scenes in which she was accused or abandoned by her on-screen family took a toll. “It was like living a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from,” she said. That exhaustion is visible in every frame. Her wide, searching eyes aren’t acting—they’re reflecting the very confusion the character endures.
Interestingly, Anya’s real-life trajectory mirrors Thomasin’s transformation. Both were young women thrust into worlds that demanded more than they were ready to give. Thomasin finds liberation in the darkness; Anya found it in embracing the kind of roles that defy norms. The Witch marked her emergence as a fearless performer unafraid of discomfort—something that would define her later choices in Split, Emma., and The Queen’s Gambit.
The Devil in the Details
Each scene in The Witch feels as if it were handcrafted. Robert Eggers spent years researching 17th century diaries, witch trial records, and Puritan folklore. Eggers even crafted the dialogue based on texts from the period. Hence, the dialogue feels alien, as if it were a coded sermon.
The family house, the forest, the farm, and even the props were made using period authentic tools and materials. The result was a claustrophobic realism. The cinematographer, Jarin Blaschke, used only natural light or candlelight and lit the scene to provoke a draining of warmth, casting long shadows. It was suffocatingly real.
Eggers was relentless in his pursuit to create realism. The actors noted his attention to detail on historical accuracy was almost obsessive. He once delayed a shot because a costume had a stitching detail that was inappropriate for the century. That precision was what birthed something transcendent, for instead of feeling like a period piece, it felt like a curse that was un-earthed.
Themes of Rebellion, Faith, and Female Autonomy
The Witch, at its core, is a parable of repression. Thomasin’s family, in the film, embodies the dangers of religious absolutism. The father- William (Ralph Ineson) – clings to faith as everything around him is decaying, and his pride, disguised as piety becomes the downfall. His wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie) embodies grief so consuming it mutates into paranoia.
For Thomasin, the witch signifies autonomy. The family considers her a sinner long before she commits any sin. The woods, feared as the domain of the devil, become her refuge. When she unburdens herself of guilt and joins the coven, it is not submission, but emancipation. The haunting image of her rising, naked and laughing, is not horror, but defiance.
In interviews, Eggers called it “a story about the birth of feminism in the New World.” That ending–Thomasin’s liberation through damnation–reflects the history of women for centuries who were deemed dangerous merely for wanting freedom.
When Reality and Fear Intertwined
The film’s unsettling power was also a product of real-life circumstances. While filming in Ontario, some of the crew experienced troubling nights spent in the woods. The wind shifted, lights popped, and the sounds of hidden animals caused a great deal of anxiety. While Eggers was the first to dismiss any talk of curses, some of the actors, when speaking some interviews, did admit the environment itself ‘felt alive.’
Ralph Ineson once joked The Witch was a film that ‘tested everyone’s sanity’ and perhaps it was. Ineson was physically hurt during filming by Black Phillip, the goat. Even Kate Dickie, who played the mother, said that staying in character as a grieving, suspicious mother left her emotionally spent. However, the goat’s unpredictable behavior in the film seemed to add the line between imposed direction and chance, and in a way, the ‘chaos’ crafted a more authentic feel to each scene.
The Hype and the Whispering Audience
When The Witch was first advertised, the large expectation in the horror film audience was to see a conventional film filled with blood, demons, maybe a few jump scares to curb their boredom. What they got was a psychological fable that burned slowly and some of the audience left the theater feelling confused while others felt a sense of awe. However, the audience that was willing to stay was left with a sense of haunting long after the film ended.
Throughout social media and other platforms, people began debating about The Witch. Was Thomasin really possessed? Did the witch even exist? Was there a devil, or was he just a product of guilt and repression? Numerous Reddit pages and YouTube analyses examined every detail, from the family’s decaying corn (poisoned by ergot, a fungus historically linked to hallucinations) to the rabbit that kept appearing as a trickster omen.
Even critics who found the film initially “too slow” later admitted that it had a grip they couldn’t shake. Its horror, like damp wood smoke, seeped into the psyche.
A Quiet Revolution in Horror
What The Witch accomplished went beyond its box office success. It reshaped the genre’s tone. Before Eggers, movies in the horror genre were dominated by loud scares. After The Witch, silence became the new terror. Its success allowed for the making of films like Hereditary, The Lighthouse, and Midsommar, which were more focused on disturbing the audience as opposed to just frightening them.
In India too, cinephiles found unexpected resonance. The movie’s themes of faith, family honor, and patriarchal control echoed rural folklore here, where “daayans” and “chudails” signify women with patriarchal control over them. Thomasin’s arc mirrored the stories of women in cultures built on submission and judged for claiming power.
The Woods Still Whisper
The Witch still evokes extensive analysis even several years after its initial release. It wasn’t created to frighten—it was created to entice. To compel us to ponder the unsettling nature of righteousness, the price of conformity, and the freedom hidden within the taboo.
Perhaps this is the true enchantment Eggers has balanced—not an invocation of dark sorcery, but an unsettling reality. Because when the prayers are finally uttered, the smoke settled, and the darkness envelopes you, you must do as Thomasin once did: the only way to persevere is to accept it.