New horror movie ‘The Witch’ fails to satisfy

If you happen to be going to the movies soon and all the showings of “Norm of the North” are sold out, then you might consider watching a different horror movie: the feature- length debut of promising director Robert Eggers, “The Witch.”

The film centers around Thomasin, the wide-eyed daughter of a Puritan dissident who moves his entire family into the unforgiving wilderness of 1630s New England. Shock and terror ensue, as the family struggles to survive the dark forces that take hold of its members.

In the years following “Paranormal Activity,” the horror movie industry has come to be dominated by Blumhouse Productions and its attempts to make a quick buck with films such as “Unfriended” and “Sinister.”

However, every now and then a genuinely good horror film manages to slip through the cracks and rise to glory. “The Witch” is not one of those films.

While the direction is fine and we do get some decent performances out of the adult actors, the rest of the picture leaves much to be desired. For some inane reason the filmmakers decided to lift  much of the dialogue from period pieces set in that time. That might sound like a good idea late at night after a gallon of bourbon and Tylenol, but in practice it makes the film incredibly hard to understand for most people, and distracting for those who actually recognize the sources (I swear, I heard a few quotes from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible.” If you are going to take dialogue from something, why “The Crucible”?!).

On top of that, while the adults give a nice performance, the child actors are less than satisfactory. During scenes of intense horror, they look more like they are about to yawn or even laugh instead of the expected reaction – horror.

However, what is probably the worst part of all are the actual horror elements in play. Though “The Witch” does not go as far as to use cheap jump scares to get a reaction, the only times it does elicit a fearful response are scenes that heavily sample from other films, such as “The Exorcist” or “The Lords of Salem.” The only things that do feel original are the more dull parts of the movie. It feels incredibly padded and needlessly slow, despite a modest runtime of 90 minutes.

Overall, it’s not a time-waster. It is certainly better than anything Blumhouse is working on and, though not very original, it still has some scary moments that might tide you over until the end.

The direction is satisfying and some of the visuals are very pleasing to look at. Hardcore horror fans will probably be let down by the lack of innovation, but during the film I was able to entertain myself with Monty Python references, so there is some level of good to it.

It recieves a moderate rating of 3 out of 5 on a goat head scale.