Poster of The Witch (2015) featuring black Phillip in the middle. IMDB.COM COURTESY
María Castaño, A&E Section Editor
While searching for horror films that were not too frightening in an attempt to build my courage, I stumbled upon Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” (2015) and have been unable to stop thinking about it. The film explores religious paranoia and misogyny through Thomasin and her Puritan family, who are banished from their community after her father clashes with its leadership.
From the beginning, the film establishes an eerie atmosphere that drives much of its horror, avoiding the typical reliance on jump scares and gore. Instead, the characters’ gradual descent into estrangement and hostility creates a sense of unease, leaving the audience desperate to discover what is causing the family to fall apart.
Misogyny plays a significant role in this movie as it directly feeds the familial tensions. The movie begins with Thomasin, the oldest daughter, having to take care of Samuel, a baby barely a few months old and in an innocent game of peek-a-boo. Between camera cuts, he disappears into the forest. While Thomasin had no way to predict or avoid this, she must deal with the guilt of how losing her brother is undoing her mother and the rest of the household to grief.
Thomasin’s relationship to her mother is subsequently tainted as she is seen as the sole cause of the family’s suffering, and is from that point on under constant scrutiny and suspicion that alienates her. Her own two little siblings, at multiple points, make fun of her or say more bluntly what the adults think: that she is at fault for Samuel’s disappearance.
This plot serves as a conductor to emphasize distrust and hyper-awareness as unavoidable pieces of womanhood. A scene that was striking to me when I saw the film for the first time was during supper, when the mother asks Thomasin where a cup she valued dearly was; Thomasin was honest and said she doesn’t know where it could be, causing an argument between them where Thomasin is humiliated, perpetuating her status in the house as a persona non grata.
The cup had been sold by Thomasin’s father some time earlier due to the family’s financial struggles, unbeknownst to his wife. When the truth is eventually revealed to both women, the mother immediately assumes Thomasin is lying and verbally berates her while the father simply watches. I found this moment to be a powerful depiction of how patriarchy can position women as perpetual scapegoats because of their expected role as caretakers of the family. This leaves women with little room to make mistakes or grow, as they are often held accountable when the family fails to uphold the conservative ideal of a traditional family structure.
Paranoia drives much of the film’s conflict, creating a cycle of guilt and resentment that is intensified by the family’s religious beliefs. Eggers’ exploration of misogyny and patriarchy within the family dynamic also humanizes the characters, making their eventual downfall even more disturbing. Near the end of the film, nearly every character, except the two toddler twins, carries some sense of guilt or remorse and believes they played a role in the family’s destruction.
Their search for scapegoats reflects a deeply human attempt to escape the guilt consuming them, even though they have no way of predicting or reversing what happens to them. This cycle is reinforced by their religious beliefs, which are rooted in guilt, punishment and the idea that suffering is an unavoidable part of a righteous life.
With this, I haven’t even gone into detail about the troubling resolution of the film, which I really liked during the first watch. But now have more opinions about it as I watched it through a feminist lens.
While I believe the ending (of which I will give no spoilers!) is consistent with the film’s overall understanding and treatment of the patriarchy, I believe this liberation Thomasin goes into simplifies, in a way, her struggles and the complexity of gender oppression by just having her “get lost in the forest.”
It is still an amazing film that I can’t recommend enough if you are not too queasy or if you dislike blood and a bit of butchery, but it could certainly be worked upon a bit more.