There are some movies that just feel dangerous. As if they’re capable of anything. Movies that seem to be constructed more of dread than plot. Nightmarish windows into a different world, foreign to us perhaps, but altogether believable. For all their alienation, these stories become ones you live in, whether you want to or not.
I saw The Witch (2015) theatrically on its opening weekend after hearing nothing but stellar word of mouth from its tour on the festival circuit. I didn’t know much about it walking in, but my expectations were high. Either way, I was ready for something scary.
That was what the trailer had promised, after all. With its discomforting soundscape, dour color pallet and hyperbolic pull-quotes, the several minute marketing tool had succeeded in convincing the general public that The Witch was a game-changer. With that in mind, we bought our tickets and sat ourselves down in the crowded theater for what would hopefully deliver on the promise of the hype.
Silence followed the closing credits as those in the theater exited in silence. The tone was distinctly different than it had been at the start, excitement had twisted into something more closely related to uncertainty and anticipation emerged as deep-seated dread. It wasn’t that the movie had failed us, no, it was that it had delivered every last bit on the promise of its promotional materials.
Still, from the looks of confusion and dissatisfaction on some of the people’s faces, bolstered by additional commentary which began to sprout in the lobby, the film was not what many had expected. Of course, the definition of a scary movie can vary dramatically from person to person. Some define a horror film by the amount of loud, intermittent sound cues it contains, the effectiveness of which are measured by the presence or lack thereof of inadvertent leaps from seats throughout. Others opt to focus on plot and character content when determining the strength of a horror project, demanding bloodshed, monsters, killers or some other unholy presence.
And yet, are not the very best horror movies defined by the mood and tone they’re able to create? The carefully mounting dread permeating each frame as it flickers by the viewer’s watchful eye? The Witch is a film that plays in that space of dread and tone, crafting an intricate, lived-in world that feels raw and exposed, predatory toward the sort of innocent who might be willing to trust it.
Everything about the production engrossed my senses. The visuals were stimulating and distinct, the landscape and production design completely disappearing into 1630’s New England. The dialogue played so accurately that I could scarcely understand it, their puritan colloquialisms neighboring on foreign language at times. And the titular threat of the witch was so sparsely revealed and her evil so deeply felt that I shudder just thinking about the handful of scenes in which she’s featured.
On top of that, the film offers important social commentary that, although applies to a time and a place far removed from our own, is incredibly relevant. Following the plight of one accused girl named Thomasin, judged in the eyes of her family and forced to watch idly as everything she knows and loves is stripped away, The Witch serves as a strikingly poignant metaphor for the cost that must be paid when a patriarchal society attempts to force a young woman into submission, a command which she cannot reasonably obey.
Many scenes serve to embody The Witch’s visceral energy and potent ability to deeply unsettle, but when I think back on those elements which made it successful, my mind drifts to the scene in the attic. It’s there, when the family gathers around Caleb, a young boy agonized under the affliction of the evil witch, where the unspoken feelings of the group boil to the surface. A quiet and yet bombastic moment in the film, it’s here that dark fears are confirmed and the end creeps ever closer to those suffering on screen.
From clear and poetic words on the page to the projected visual verse, Robert Eggers crafts the sequence from the ground up, carefully plotting the emotionality and feel of the moment with his words well before the camera began to roll. Carrying the script through with superb performances, haunting visual effects and brilliant staging, this scene serves as the perfect representation as to why the film is so successful as a whole.
Some movies feel dangerous and that day in the theater I recognized that unique brand of unsettling discomfort. This is one of those scenes that illustrates exactly why that was.
THE SCENE
Caleb lies in bed, whispering and convulsing in pain. Thomasin enters the room with Mercy and Jonas in tow. Caleb’s mouth closes tight, unmoved by even Katherine and William’s weight. Urging his other children to leave the room, William forces Caleb’s mouth open with the butt of his blade. Caleb vomits up a rotten apple and then lies limp. Jonas and Mercy run from Thomasin and accuse her of being a witch, the cause of Caleb’s affliction. William prays with Thomasin and the family to find resolve. Caleb once again sits up, chanting about his sin as his family prays for him. At the same time, Jonas and Mercy can’t remember the prayer and double over in pain, all the while accusing Thomasin of bewitching them. Soon thereafter, Caleb’s tone shifts and he prays directly to Jesus, happily begging his God to accept him with open arms. Caleb finishes his soliloquy and lies back down. His pained breathing grows shallow and then stops. Katherine moans in mourning as the twins lie silent beside her. She turns to Thomasin and shouts for her to leave, convinced of her daughter’s complicity in the terrible events.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
CALEB SHRIEKS:
CALEB
Get the broad axe and cut off her head.
His eyes are open wide. His head is back. He sweats profusely.
The scene opens in a closeup. Caleb lies center frame, shirtless repeating the lines mentioned in the script twice in a row, his voice scarcely a whisper and difficult to understand. Against the dictation of the script, Caleb’s eyes are shut tight. His lip trembles. The shot holds on Caleb until finally he takes a huge gasp and shouts his “She’s upon me, she kneels…” block while his mother rushes to his side. The camera cuts away to Thomasin, Mercy, and Jonas, watching from across the room.
This is a circumstance where the page acts as a blueprint for what was seen in the finished film. Dialogue and blocking are both closely adhered to and the general pacing follows suit. Still, the sequence is laden with character choice and nuances that would be difficult to glean from the text.
There’s a symmetry to the blocking which bookends the sequence, beginning on Caleb’s sweaty, pained form and slowly tracking the camera back, only to do the opposite at the end of the scene. Caleb writhes in the shot the camera keeps returning to, he centered between his compassionate mother and authoritative father. Almost every line appears in the finished film as written, with a few exceptions (”God is naught” is excised, for example).
Rather than showing Caleb’s mouth shut tight, the film clues the viewer in based on Katherine’s observation that his mouth is “shut tight” or “sealed-up”. Again, as before, the shot holds for an extended period of time, watching as William grips his son’s face and attempts to force his mouth open. He turns and shouts “Away from this!” to Thomasin and the twins as he continues to work on Caleb’s jaw. He jams the hilt of his pocket knife in and sets to work.
The long takes and time spent in the moment heightens the intensity, especially given the emotionality and pain on display in such a young child. The dialogue is already disconcerting enough as it is, but when portrayed with such wavering tone and volume, given the anguish its being filtered through, the words escape Caleb’s mouth almost unintelligibly. All of this feeds into the alienation and otherworldliness of the plane the viewer is peaking into and subsequently helps to foster the overwhelming dread this picture is so expert at cultivating.
THERE IS SOMETHING BEHIND CALEB’S TEETH… PUSHING THROUGH.
WILLIAM pulls the knife away.
CALEB STARTS RETHCING…
HE HEAVES, AND HEAVES…
HE VOMITS UP A SMALL ROTTING APPLE!!
The formatting lands the intensity and suggests the heightened level of fear in the characters who are witnessing the horror. On film, a sound not unlike the first bite of an apple marks the separation of Caleb’s jaw. William lowers the knife and something is visible between Caleb’s lips, an object obstructing the whole of his mouth and throat. Caleb sits up and heaves, expelling the corrupt article from his body.
The image lands on a medium shot of the apple sitting idly by, Katherine, William and Caleb behind it, just out of focus. The apple sits there in mockery of everything the family holds dear, its sickly red surface marred by shapeless patches of black disease.
Underlined sentences and capital letters continue to mark important or revelatory aspects of the scene moving forward, as the twins move to accuse Thomasin of witchcraft. JONAS points at THOMASIN holds more weight than the sentence without the punctuation, suggesting the severity of the motion. Shots of Thomasin, Katherine and the twins and William intercut here as the accusations fly, looks of trepidation and condemnation growing ever stronger in the eyes of both the accusers and the accused.
A small change, but as opposed to William in the script, it is Thomasin who cries “Silence!” amidst the indicting din, providing her a foreshadowed sense of agency given the direction the film is heading. From here, the film deviates further, William having only Thomasin kneel before him to pray as opposed to all of the children present.
Again, this block is done in a single, medium shot, Thomasin located on the far left with her father’s form to the right, mostly out of frame. Behind her, visible in between Thomasin and William, is Katherine, huddling with the twins beside Caleb’s outstretched hand. The entire family watches, all visible in the shot, as Thomasin stares up at her father and pledges love, respect and reverie for the God which by all accounts should protect them, if their beliefs are to be validated.
William demands they “Pray!” for their bewitched brother, gathering the family around Caleb’s bed. Once again, a wide shot is utilized so that the whole group is visible at once. Jonas and Mercy fail to join in the ritual however, claiming they can not remember the words they have spent their lives memorizing.
THE TWINS look as if they are in pain.
As in the script, Mercy shouts “Thomasin, stop!”, resulting in Thomasin’s attempted assault on her as she shouts in return, “Get on thy knees and pray!” The children double over, moaning and shouting. Meanwhile, the page cuts between the stoic William and Katherine, covering her ears so as not to have to hear it. The twins writhe painfully on the ground, however they are not pushed there by Thomasin as scripted. Some of the excess dialogue here is excised, allowing the scene to push forward to its inevitable conclusion.
SUDDENLY: CALEB STARTS TO SCREAM.
JONAS AND MERCY START TO SCREAM THE SAME WAY AS CALEB.
Far from a scream, in the film Caleb interrupts with a high-pitched gasp, a moan of a breath that sounds as though he were emerging from water after an extended stay. He strains to choke out his airy words, which resemble barely understandable, guttural noises far more than they do the English language: “A toad. A cat. A crow. A raven. A great black dog. A wolf.”
Caleb clenches his teeth and screams his words, alerting the viewer that the content of his speech is not nearly as important as the intent. The script calls for Jonas and Mercy to start acting like animals in a horrifying manner, noting that they do not seem like children. Instead, they echo Caleb mockingly in the film, chanting, “She desires of my blood!” in cruel repetition.
Caleb falls into mantra shortly thereafter, saying “I am thine enemy wallowing in the blood and filth of my sins” over and over again. At the same time, William, Katherine, and Thomasin recite prayer, depicted in the script as a dialogue box beside Jonas’. The image intercuts between close-ups of everyone involved, creating an intimate shared moment between a family desperately attempting to cling to the last thread of hope once shared between them.
In contrast to how the scene opened, the camera tracks in on Caleb as his demeanor shifts. His eyes open up and his voice adopts a loving, joyous tonality. He speaks of “light” and “love”, sitting up as he requests that Jesus, “Wash me in the ever-flowing fountains of thy blood”. An eerie silence fills the room while the image holds on Caleb.
Gone from the script is the actions of Jonas and Mercy as they silently mouth the words he says and tremor on the floor near him. Instead, Caleb continues uninterrupted by anything else in the room, laughing and caressing his face through these final lines. As described on the page:
As CALEB’S words grow more intense, he continues to writhe, and his motions and exclamations seem DISTURBINGLY EROTIC.
He concludes his cry to the heavens, saying, “MY LORD, MY LOVE MY SOUL’S SALVATION, TAKE ME TO THY LAP!!” Then, his broad smile and dazed expression falter. He takes a deep breath. Then another. He lies back down, his breathing deep and slowly fading. Finally, after a few more shallow intakes of breath, his chest stops moving.
In the script, Jonas and Mercy also collapse and Thomasin calls to Caleb to rouse him. The film, holds on Caleb’s form and the silence proceeding it. The first person to speak is Katherine who moves to her son and calls out his name. Katherine grows more frantic with each passing second, shaking Caleb’s body and whispering his name. A wide shot reveals the twins lying motionless beside her which is followed by reaction shots of Thomasin and William, horror-struck.
In keeping with the script’s assertion that Katherine would be the one to pronounce Caleb dead, her words turn to loud moans and throaty cries as she screams her little boy’s fate to the cold, unfeeling Hell they have found themselves in. Without mention of her visceral reaction, the page scarcely reflects her grief.
As on the page, Thomasin shouts for Jonas and Mercy to “Get up!!”, moving toward them. Unlike what is written, Thomasin does not yank them up, only to have them fall to the ground, silent. Before she can reach her siblings, Katherine snarls unscripted words at her, screaming at the top of her lungs, “GET AWAY FROM HIM! GET THEE GONE!” Decried by her mother, Thomasin departs. Her father follows, leaving Katherine to mourn another child.
The script ends with the words, THOMASIN panics! A simple phrase which no doubt holds a great deal of meaning. After all, the world is a frightening, dangerous beast with a thousand bloodthirsty mouths all centered on feeding their unending appetites. And what is a young woman to do if her own family, her flesh and blood, loses sight of her humanity, seeing her as just another one of those terrible mouths…
For, to Thomasin and her family, God has always meant law. Righteousness is absolute. To be cast away from goodness is to be given over to the wicked. Evil lives in that wild place where God does not tread. A place without order. A place of chaos. A place where just about anything can be tested and tasted, both the unsavory… and the delicious.
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
Robert Egger’s screenplay for The Witch opens with a message to the reader, which concludes:
The characters must appear as real as farmers, not actors with dirty faces. Even the supernatural elements must be photographed as realistically as possible. Yet, with all this authenticity and “realism,” it is still a folktale, a dream. A nightmare from the past.
The Witch felt dangerous to me that day. As though I were peeking in on something evil that I probably shouldn’t see. It brought me back to that young kid I once was, catching a snippet of a horror film on TV late at night. The adrenaline and the fear that comes along with that dark brand of curiosity which only seems to arise when facing that which is supposed to remain unseen.
Experiences like that can be hard to come by and, for many horror fans, are highly cherished. After all, the more of the frightening and macabre that one consumes, the more difficult it becomes to surprise or shake them. There are a multitude of ways that a film can achieve such a state, but chief among them is atmosphere. Mood. Tone. The feel, even more than the story.
Few sequences represent the striking tonal darkness which pervades the whole of the film than that where Caleb’s bewitchment comes to a head. From the carefully constructed dialogue and flow of events on the page to the beautifully executed, blocked and performed finished result on the screen, this scene establishes the extremity and desperation of the peril the characters are hopelessly lost within.
“We knew that if this scene didn’t work,” Robert Eggers said in his commentary for The Witch found on its Blu-ray release, “that the whole film would fall flat afterwards. I think more than any scene this is just so collaborative.”
In the commentary, Robert Eggers says that although the film was meticulously shot listed, with this scene the crew needed to focus on the performances first and let the filmmaking come intuitively along with them. “It was like rehearsing a play,” Eggers said, “and trying to figure it out organically.” The shots and character composition from frame to frame was born out of the interactions and allowing the sequence to have a realness present that provided an incredible credibility to the disturbing and otherworldly subtext.
What remains is a sequence and a film seared into the memory of those who view it, manifesting like the edges of a horrific dream which creeps back into your mind whenever you least expect it. All of its expertly crafted parts serve the accomplished whole but Caleb’s death stands as a defining event in the narrative and darkly unnerving timbre that the movie crafts so well.
People may not go to the movies to feel uncomfortable per se — certainly some of the folks in the theater with me when I first saw The Witch did not — but there is an undeniable draw to experiencing danger distilled. The rare times where fear is made manifest and captured on celluloid. It may not be loud, it may not be bombastic, but it’s in those moments most quiet where the emotion comes alive and you see it. You feel it.
As the screenplay warns, a nightmare from the past.
Now that sounds dangerous.
The Witch (2015) Written & Directed by Robert Eggers
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