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Wow, we just got back from The Witch, and it was really, really well done. There are some very strong performances in this film, including by some very young actors -- I'm not usually a fan of films with children in leading roles...a lot of cringing...by me... Some of the themes and tropes I noticed, which I've listed in the topic tags, were very compelling and explored to varying degrees over about 90 minutes. I'll just touch on a few of these themes, and they may contain spoilers. Superstition and Theocracy and Child Abuse -- This film is set in one of the early Puritan "plantations" -- probably Massachusetts Bay colony sometime in the 1630s or 1640s if I had to guess. The opening scene is the convening of a religious court where a man stands trial for blasphemy, which leads he and his family's excommunication (a la Thomas Hooker). The farmer and his family establish a farm in a remote area, praying all the while for providence from sky daddy. Every plan, every action, every is considered in relation to God. An entire family -- a pregnant wife, a set of twins, and another brother and sister -- is cut off from the protection and the resources of the community for a mere disagreement on some mundane theological point. One of the sons of the farmer is tortured with thoughts of his dead younger brother roasting away in hell because he wasn't baptized before he was (spoiler alert) ...kidnapped by a witch, ritually murdered, and pounded into jelly, and then rubbed all over the witch's naked body, allowing her to fly. Destruction of the family -- The exile of the family embeds them more fully into the stress and hardships of living in nature, as they hack a living "out of the wilderness with their own two hands, bearing their children along the way" (Last of the Mohicans, 1992). The stress and toil have real consequences on the relationships between the family members. Thomasin, the eldest daughter is suspected of having been complicit in her brother's disappearance and another brother's death. The father sells his wife's prized silver cup to purchase animal traps, and fails to tell the truth when it would have saved Thomasin from the suspicion of her mother. Later, the mother seems to hint at infidelity back in England after the father comes clean about selling the cup. Witchcraft and Satanism and Feminism -- I couldn't help but think about Hillary Clinton, watching the witch smear bloody baby ointment all over her wrinkly old lady backside -- symbolic of the State destroying the futures of the as yet unborn tax chattel. She apparently lives alone in a remote hut in the woods and is possibly able to transform into various animals (usually a brown hare -- not sure what it's supposed to symbolize). As you may know, there was a story perpetrated by the "vast right wing conspiracy" that Hillary and her gal pal and former "spiritual advisor", Jean Huston, who is a New Age mystic and once helped Hillary conjure the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt in a seance in the Green Room -- oh but don't worry it was just "roleplaying"...in preparation for "It Takes a Village". The pay off at the end of the movie (major spoiler) ...is Thomasin conjuring Satan, selling her soul to him, and then following him, stark naked, at night, into the woods where there, a coven of 7-10 witches are gathered around a bonfire wailing in arcane tongues and levitating against the night sky...summoning the egregore of the future America...when women will wear the pants(suits) and use the power of the state to destroy their men and extract their resources through their urethras and call NASA sexist because it crushed their dreams of flying in space. I'd give The VVitch 82 out of 100 NuvaRings. The sound editing could have been a little crisper, especially since they were speaking in the Thee and Thou form of English. Visually, it's pretty bleak, which is an obvious choice in keeping with the stark emotional tone of the film. Great debut for Robert Eggers -- looking forward to seeing what he does next.