William is thrown out of a Puritan colony for being more Puritan than the governors. He takes his wife, four children and a pregnancy to a clearing at the edge of a forest. The crops fail. Thomasin, the eldest daughter, plays peekaboo with the baby, covers her eyes, uncovers them, and he is gone. The Witch was Robert Eggers’ first film, it uses dialogue taken from actual 1630s court records and diaries, and Anya Taylor-Joy was unknown when it was made.
What Happens In The Clearing
The family blames Thomasin. Caleb, the son, goes into the wood and comes back naked and raving, and dies with an apple in his mouth. The twins talk to the goat, Black Phillip. The mother, played by Kate Dickie, sees her dead children at the window. The father cannot grow corn or shoot a hare. The question of whether there is a witch at all, or whether this is a family destroying itself, is held open until the goat speaks. The ending in the wood is either damnation or freedom and Eggers lets you pick.
Why It Started A Career
Everything is lit by candles and daylight, the house was built with period tools, and the family speaks in thee and thou without a false note. It won Eggers the directing prize at Sundance. Black Phillip was a goat named Charlie who broke a rib of Ralph Ineson’s. “Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?” became a line people put on things.
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