Supernatural horror The Witch debuted back in January at Sundance and made quite an impression. The result was rapturous, with a slew of Babadook-esque critical praises, and even a Best Director gong for debuting film-maker Robert Eggers. Check out the trailer below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQXmlf3Sefg Witches are incredibly disturbing, more so than most things that go bump in the night. I can't even put my finger on why that is, but every well-executed iteration, from Roald Dahl's The Witches to 1999's The Blair Witch Project, leaves me a shivering wreck. That's probably why this trailer grabbed my attention. Eggers' film looks like a blend of the aforementioned fellow Sundance success, and Arthur Miller's famed stage-play The Crucible, as a small community of 16th century settlers are plagued by a monster in the woods. Like The Village, but actually frightening. The trailer's sound design jars, the visuals are incredibly washed out and the subtle, slow reveals always feel like they're building toward something unsettling. It's no surprise that Eggers' caught the attention of the Sundance jury, because some of the images here are already seared into my retinas. The cow dispelling blood and the long, patient dollies toward the graying woodland are really, really special. It's hard to ascertain from the trailer if The Witch will be a straight up monster movie, or an enemy within style commentary in the style of Miller, but either way it's shaping up as an intense must-see. A specific release date isn't set, but with the buzz at fever-pitch, The Witch can't be far off. The Witch is due for release in 2016.
