As I’ve gotten older, I find that it’s harder for movies to scare me. It’s natural, especially after you spend significant amounts of time trying to analyze films, there’s a certain separation that can emerge, a sense in which you appreciate how well designed that monster is or how unexpected that knife slash was or how intricate that big evil trap is, but it doesn’t reach out and grab you the way it might have when you were a kid.

But what still scares me, what still gives me goose bumps and sends that tingle up my spine, is mood and atmosphere. I’m less apt to be rattled by the boogeyman jumping out of the closet or the murder emerging than I am when a film creates a supreme sense of foreboding, of something in the air that is amiss that no one can quite put their finger on. *The Witch* (or *The VVitch* if you’re a stickler for typeface) has some truly disturbing set pieces, and each of them is incredibly well-executed, but what makes it the scariest film I’ve seen in years is the way it creates that palpable mood of unease even when nothing particularly frightening is going on
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In that vein, the film that it reminds me of most is *Rosemary’s Baby*. Both films are very deliberately paced, foster a sense of paranoia in its characters, and build an unnerving atmosphere that chills you before the real fireworks begin. *The Witch* delves a little more into the overtly supernatural, but it feels of a piece with its disturbing predecessor in how it’s understated for much of its run, and draws out the most horror from the reactions of its characters.

Those reactions are what elevate *The Witch* from being a well-shot, well-designed film and turn into something truly chilling. At its core, the film is a psychodrama, focused on a family pointing their fingers at one another when horrible things start happening. The scene where the youngest child of the family disappears suddenly, and we see glimpses of him being prepared by some mysterious figure is upsetting, but what is even more disturbing are the recriminations and blame that follow and grow as more such events take place as the movie unspools.

Blame and guilt permeate the film. Thomasin, the eldest daughter and protagonist, is blamed by her mother and chided by her twin siblings. Caleb, the eldest son, deals with the guilt and fear of original sin, for the concerns that if he dies he will go to hell because he is stained by sin. William, the patriarch of the family, blames himself for leading this wife and children to these cursed lands.

And the lands truly seem cursed. The other film that comes to mind in the midst of *The Witch*, particularly in the midst of its lovingly-crafted, haunting images, is *Winter’s Bone*. The setting of the film becomes as much a part of creating that chilling mood, of making you feel like this family is isolated in a place too far away from help, and too barren to be a place of any hope. As in *Winter’s Bone*, the film is set in an area of desolation, thoroughly immersed in bleak gray, to where the setting feels truly forsaken by God.

That too is an important thematic touch in the film. There is a great deal of religious imagery in the film and references to the stain of original sin. From seemingly impossible apples to goats that evoke depictions of The Devil, to the frequent concerns over whether the departed are in Heaven or Hell, there is a religious bent before the supernatural ever comes into play.

[spoiler]That religious bent is the undercurrent behind mother turning against daughter, sibling turning against sibling, family turning against family. The paranoia sets in; the accusations fly; people are boarded up, die mysteriously, and think each of them is the cause. The titular witch of the film is truly frightening, made up to be equally grotesque and luring at different points of the film, an unseen, bizarre, almost alien force that inflicts its will on this family. And the contortions of Caleb as he’s under her spell are the peak of the film’s overt and unnerving scares. But what’s even more frightening is the effect that this haunting has on the family, to where they are torn apart, tortured even, long before the devil tightens his grip around their necks.

In the end, Thomasin is left with nothing. The rest of her family has either been killed by the witch or killed one another. So Thomasin, who strove to be good and to be morally right, finds herself bereft of everything, bereft of everyone, tired of resisting. She asks Black Phillip if he is what they said he was, if he is the devil. He offers her a chance to escape, a chance to have pretty things and luxuries, and as she wanders out to a coven dancing by the firelight, she rises, and it’s clear she’s accepted.

Maybe this was his plan all along. Maybe he wanted another witch, and the only way he was going to find one was to strip her of everything else in her life, leave her without parents, without siblings, morally and spiritually bereft, to where any option besides where she is now seems like an alternative, like something to take her away from all of this.

Who wouldn’t want to escape? From having to see your brother convulse like a child possessed and laugh like a madman, from watching your father lament everything and meet his untimely end at the hands of the devil, from having your mother attempt to strangle you and be forced to kill you. These moments are each horrifying in their own way, the horror that comes from a family falling apart in the most drastic and gruesome terms.

But where *The Witch* truly succeeds, and what sets it apart from its horror brethren, is the desolate setting, the delicate-yet-forceful cinematography and images, verisimilitude of the production design, and above all else, the psychological horror of these people knowing something is wrong, ensconced in a futile struggle to fix it, and practically eating each other in the process, until all that’s left is a young woman with nothing left.[/spoiler]