The Witch (2015) d. Robert Eggers (USA) (92 min)
In 1630s New England, the pious William (Ralph Ineson) is banished from the Puritan homestead, along with his wife Katherine (Kate Dickie) and their five children, for speaking against the church elders for their fixation on wealth and status. He scorns their golden candlesticks and religious trappings, preferring to make his way in the wilderness alone with his family, closer to the land, closer to God. But when their infant child Samuel is spirited away into the woods whilst under the care of eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), it sets in motion a crumbling of the familial unit, a dissolution spurred by suspicion, hunger, lust, jealousy… and perhaps a little help from beyond the veil.
