The pious Puritan William (played by Ralph Ineson) was expelled from the plantation due to his incompatibility with the church. Son Kellerb, twin siblings Jonas and Mossi, and the infant son Samuel moved far to the edge of a ghastly forest.
At first, they thanked the Lord for the gift of getting rid of the gloom of the church, but soon the hard life made them frown.
At this moment, Samuel disappeared unexpectedly, which cast a lingering shadow on the hearts of the family. Next, a series of incidents followed, and the family members were panicked. They believed that these bad luck was caused by the witch in the woods, but they also believed that their pious belief in God would help them defeat the demons...
But can they really?
This is a film full of religious colors; it can even be said that this is a thorough religious story.
Unlike some movies full of ambiguous and ambiguous religious symbols, the concept of this film is quite clear: it is different from the traditional religious stories of punishing evil and promoting good. From a modern perspective, it not only explores the relationship between good and evil, but also introduces Criticism of the negative effects that religion itself may bring.
"Witch" is a horror and thriller, but it is not different from the horror film in our general impression. It is actually more horror rather than horror. It does not use shocking images or sound effects to scare people, but focuses on creating an atmosphere that causes psychological pressure. To make an incomplete analogy, the difference between the two may be that the former makes a long-haired woman with her back facing you suddenly turn a grimace to startle you; while the latter makes one with her back facing you. The long-haired woman turned her head slowly, before she finished turning, you might have been scared to death by yourself.
If you have watched "The Shining", you can imagine what kind of temperament exudes from the beginning to the end of "The Witch": cold, hazy, and weird, which makes people go from repression to hysterical madness.
The cultivation of this kind of temperament is multifaceted, in these respects "The Shining" and "The Witch" are very similar.
The first is the weather. Just like "The Shining" has many cloudy, foggy, and snowy days, "The Witch" is mostly cloudy and rainy. Even on a sunny day, it looks gloomy under the director's lens. .
The concept of "The Witch" is very clear, even very typographical. Representatives of this conception type include "The Shining", "The Mist", "Ghost Book" and this "Witch" and so on.
These films like to use repressive environments or externalized demons to gradually force out the inner demons in people’s hearts, thus expressing "everyone has a heart devil", "the heart devil is more terrible than ghosts", and "the devil does not come from Hell is a proposition like "from the human heart".
In "The Witch", everyone in this family believes in the "Bible" and believes that they are guilty. Everyone who is idle is to pray and confess religiously.
Leaving religion out of the way, from a realistic point of view, it is normal to think that oneself is "guilty": everyone has shortcomings.
My father was strong outside, couldn't grow crops, and couldn't kill prey, but he wanted face. This is fatal to the entire family that takes him as the pillar. It's really a baby bear, daddy bears a nest.
Mother can only pray, cry, doubt and blame when something happens. It is worth mentioning that the role of the mother in the film is British actor Kate Dickey.
Moxi spoke harshly to Thomasin, complaining that she could not go out because of the loss of Samuel.
Both the eldest daughter Thomasin and the second son Kellerb are sensible children, but they inevitably have some shortcomings. Tommasin was irritated by doing housework all the year round. Faced with Moxi's accusation, she frightened Moxi directly.
While Kellerb tried to help his father share the burden of the family and reconcile the relationship between family members, but he also had a fatal weakness: adolescent boys' yearning for women. He would even peek at the growing breasts of his sister Thomasine.
Therefore, everyone is guilty of "sin", both light and heavy. This is nothing at all. For example, parents can tell Kellerb that his desire is a normal puberty manifestation (of course, there is no word "puberty" at that time), and help this adolescent boy face the incomprehensible and unspeakable changes in his growth process. . But they did not. They only have the so-called "belief" in their eyes. For this belief, they must "keep the principles of heaven and destroy the desires of man."
The family that should have loved each other did not exert a positive influence on each other, did not support each other in adversity, but replaced reality with nothingness. When this piece of nothingness can't alleviate their plight, they use the weak as a scapegoat and fall apart in suspicion. This is the most terrifying part of the film.
In addition to digging out the inner demons, "Witch" also discusses the role of faith in it. We were surprised to find that religion, or faith, did not save this family, but accelerated their destruction. This is a very direct criticism and irony of superstitious religion.
This pious family has always believed that faith can save them, so material production and communication between relatives have been abandoned. Faith is a means for good, and the result becomes the ultimate goal, putting the cart before the horse. In the face of adversity, they became ostriches, and faith became a sandy place where they could bury their heads. Therefore, the more they pursue faith fanatically and blindly, the further away they are from true faith.
In the end, they speak the words of the saints and do devilish things.
In the end, there is only the devil.
This fable includes many heinous tragedies in human history, such as the 17th-century American Salem witch hunt related to the "Witch" story, the systematic massacre of Jews in Germany during World War II, China from 1966 to 1976, 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, etc.
Ordinary people, with "pious" beliefs, do the devil's things. Looking back, how hypocritical their "piety" was, and how abominable their behavior was.
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