Movie Review: The Witch (2015)

When faced with evil, our response to it says more about us than any danger alone does. In 1630 New England, a man and his wife and children are banished from their plantation by a Christian court for crimes not fully specified. Exiled to a green yet bleak wilderness, the family rebuilds their life as best they can, looking to God when everything around and within them falls apart. The “VVitch” is–for the most part–a darkly believable and in some ways disturbingly familiar portrayal of what happens when an external threat is resisted by extremism, with few clear heroes and fewer solutions. As a story, and as a piece of entertainment, the film isn’t much to speak of; its subject matter, however, remains deeply unsettling and may stay memorable longer than the movie.