If thou wouldst like to live deliciously, there's a price to be paid. Before she was wandering around Arrakis, playing chess against the world, or shaving her head to drive through the Wasteland, Anya Taylor-Joy made her big-screen debut as a Puritan teenager whose family had the deeply unfortunate experience of building their new home beside exactly the wrong forest. Now, her groundbreaking horror performance with one of her now-frequent collaborators is about to abandon its streaming home right when fans are getting in the spooky spirit.
Taylor-Joy (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga) stars in The Witch, which is officially leaving Netflix in the United States on October 1. That leaves subscribers only a few more days to revisit Robert Eggers' (Nosferatu) 2015 folk-horror nightmare before Black Phillip and company disappear from the service just as Halloween season gets properly underway. Upon threat of banishment by the church in 1630, an English farmer leaves his colonial plantation, relocating his wife and five children to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest — within which lurks an unknown evil. Strange and unsettling things begin to happen almost immediately — animals turn malevolent, crops fail, and one child disappears as another becomes seemingly possessed by an evil spirit.
With suspicion and paranoia mounting, family members accuse teenage daughter Thomasin of witchcraft, charges she adamantly denies. As circumstances grow more treacherous, each family member's faith, loyalty, and love become tested in shocking and unforgettable ways. The cast is led by Taylor-Joy as Thomasin alongside Ralph Ineson (The First Omen) as William, Kate Dickie (Game of Thrones) as Katherine, Harvey Scrimshaw (Oranges and Sunshine) as Caleb, Ellie Grainger as Mercy, Lucas Dawson as Jonas, and Julian Richings (Supernatural) as the Governor.
How Good Is 'The Witch'?
It's terrific, but you'll need patience, because this is slow horror; it's miserable, and it's dripping with the feeling of dread from the very start. The movie holds a tremendous 90% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes from more than 330 reviews, with critics particularly praising Eggers' period detail (which he's only gotten more obsessive over) and Taylor-Joy's performance. It also introduced two talents who would become considerably bigger over the following decade. Taylor-Joy went directly from Thomasin to movies including Split, Emma., The Menu and Furiosa, while Eggers followed The Witch with The Lighthouse, The Northman, and Nosferatu. Made for only around $4 million, The Witch earned approximately $40 million worldwide.
The Witch is streaming on Netflix in the United States until October 1. Stay tuned at Collider for more.
Comments 0
No comments yet. Start the conversation.
Leave a comment