You can’t live in Seattle for 22 years without understanding that not everyone considers nature—mountains, forests, hillocks, thatches (basically any unpaved road)—to be elementally terrifying. With that in mind, I will allow that not everyone who reads this review will consider The Witch to be as scary as I did.
Maybe you enjoy the onset of dusk in a wintry wood, the telltale twig snapping under the foot/cloven hoof of some unseen threat, the empirically fucked shape of goat pupils. Maybe hunting, gathering, foraging, and farming strike you as noble, enlivening pursuits. Maybe you think the main problem with the North American continent in the 17th century was its paucity of ascetic Christian morality. If so, The Revenant may be more down your alley.
If any or all of the aforementioned things fill you with primordial dread, however, then The Witch is the horror film for you…
