In the dim glow of a 17th-century cabin, a young girl’s pact with the shadows forever altered our understanding of dread in the wilderness.

As folk horror’s modern masterpiece, The Witch (2015) lingers in the collective memory like a curse whispered through generations. Robert Eggers’s chilling tale of a Puritan family exiled to the edge of a foreboding New England forest captivates with its slow-burn terror and layered symbolism. Far from mere scares, the film’s enigmatic ending invites endless dissection, revealing profound truths about faith, family, and feminine power hidden in plain sight amid the symbolism of goats, apples, and unholy flight.

  • The film’s climax hinges on Thomasin’s transformative pact with Black Phillip, symbolising liberation from patriarchal oppression through folkloric archetypes of the devil and witchcraft.
  • Drawing from Puritan texts and 17th-century folklore, Eggers weaves symbols like the apple and wild hare to evoke biblical sin and primal fears embedded in early American culture.
  • The Witch revives folk horror traditions from 1970s classics, cementing its place as a retro-inspired gem that resonates with collectors of atmospheric dread on VHS and Blu-ray.

A Family on the Fringe: Puritan Paranoia Takes Root

The year is 1630, and William, a devout patriarch, leads his family—Catherine, their eldest son Caleb, twins Mercy and Jonas, and infant Samuel—into isolation after clashing with their plantation’s rigid elders. This exile sets the stage for paranoia to fester, mirroring the real historical tensions of early colonial America where dissent from orthodoxy meant banishment to the wilds. Eggers meticulously recreates this era, drawing from primary sources like trial transcripts and diaries to infuse authenticity into every splintered plank and flickering candle. The forest looms not as backdrop but antagonist, a living entity teeming with unseen eyes, evoking the sublime terror of nature unbound by God’s order.

As crops fail and Samuel vanishes in a blur of crone’s claws, accusations fly inward. William’s pride in self-sufficiency crumbles under hunger, forcing him to slaughter their goat, Black Phillip, yet the beast persists as spectral guardian. This motif of the enduring animal familiar roots deeply in European witchcraft lore, transplanted to American soil, where settlers projected Old World superstitions onto the New. The family’s unraveling exposes fractures: Catherine’s grief turns venomous, Caleb wrestles adolescent lust, and the twins’ songs hint at possession. Eggers builds dread through mundane horrors—blighted fields, screeching hares—transforming domesticity into a pressure cooker of suspicion.

Black Phillip: The Horned Tempter’s Seductive Whisper

Central to the symbolism stands Black Phillip, the sleek black goat whose glossy coat and piercing gaze defy slaughter. Far more than livestock, he embodies the devil in folk tradition, a shape-shifter offering forbidden knowledge. In one pivotal scene, as Thomasin milks him, his unnatural length suggests phallic menace, blending temptation with sexual awakening. Eggers confirmed inspirations from Cotton Mather’s writings, where Satan appeared as animals to the afflicted, urging viewers to question if the goat is literal demon or projection of collective guilt.

The creature’s role peaks in the finale, where he speaks in a velvety baritone—voiced by a then-unknown Willem Dafoe—promising finery and flight. This dialogue, laced with archaic English, seduces Thomasin from her witch-hunt ordeal, symbolising escape from drudgery. Folk horror aficionados draw parallels to the Horned God of paganism, subverted here into Christian nightmare. Collectors prize scenes like this for their retro VHS grain, evoking bootleg tapes of The Wicker Man passed among 70s horror enthusiasts.

The Apple of Discord: Sin, Sexuality, and Subversion

Eggers laces the narrative with biblical echoes, none sharper than the recurring apple. Caleb plucks a windfall only to spit black ichor, hallucinating his mother’s nude form in a sweat-lodge vision blending maternal nurture with erotic horror. This motif recalls Eden’s fruit, but twisted: the apple signifies not just original sin but repressed Puritan sexuality, where bodily urges threaten salvation. Thomasin later dons a bloodied apple as crown in her sabbath revelry, reclaiming the symbol as emblem of defiant womanhood.

Puritan society viewed women as vessels of temptation, a bias Eggers amplifies through Catherine’s hysteria and the twins’ accusations against Thomasin. The hare glimpsed in woods—symbol of witchcraft in English folklore—multiplies these fears, darting like conscience evading capture. Such details reward rewatches, much like dissecting faded posters in a collector’s attic, uncovering layers of meaning in faded inks.

The Oedipal Inferno: Flames of Repressed Desire

Caleb’s fevered ordeal marks the film’s emotional core, his binding to a chair for exorcism culminating in guttural confessions of lust. Visions assail him: witches grinding his seed into butter, a profane Eucharist inverting communion. This Oedipal nightmare, with maternal figures as seductresses, critiques patriarchal control over female bodies. Eggers shoots these sequences with claustrophobic intensity, practical effects like bubbling milk evoking 70s horror’s tangible grue, beloved by retro fans restoring laserdiscs.

Mercy and Jonas’s nursery rhymes about Black Phillip foreshadow doom, their innocence corrupted into gleeful malevolence post-mortem. Their slaughter by unseen forces underscores familial implosion, where piety devours itself. Symbolism here ties to blood libel traditions, where innocents bear adult sins, a thread running through folk horror from The Blood on Satan’s Claw to modern echoes.

Sabbath Revelry: Thomasin’s Apotheosis in the Woods

Post-family massacre, Thomasin confronts Black Phillip’s offer: sign the book, gain life’s pleasures. Her nudity—stripped of modest garb—marks rebirth, paralleling fairy tale transformations. Flight upon broomstick, naked amid revellers, fuses witchcraft sabbaths from 17th-century woodcuts with feminist triumph. Eggers positions this not as damnation but empowerment, Thomasin grinning skyward as credits roll, challenging viewers’ moral binaries.

This ending resists closure, fuelling debates: is it dream, delusion, or reality? Symbolism suggests multiplicity—patriarchy’s victim becomes its destroyer, echoing Margaret Atwood’s analyses of witch trials as gendered violence. Retro collectors celebrate the film’s A24 aesthetic, its Criterion release a holy grail mirroring the purity it subverts.

Folk Horror Roots: From Wicker to Wilderness

The Witch resurrects folk horror’s trifecta—landscape as character, isolation breeding anomaly, erupting past—codified by Adam Scovell’s landmark study. Influences span The Wicker Man (1973)’s pagan clashes and Midnight Meat Train? No, more aptly In the Earth precursors like Psychomania, but Eggers cites primary folktales. The film’s slow pace, alien to jump-scare eras, harks to 70s Occult films rented endlessly from video shops, their tapes warped from overuse.

Cultural resonance amplifies: amid #MeToo, Thomasin’s arc reads as reckoning with historical misogyny. Legacy includes spawning A24’s elevated horror wave, influencing Hereditary and Midsommar, yet stands alone in period fidelity. Blu-ray extras—Eggers’s journals, dialect coaches—delight scholars and hoarders alike.

Legacy in the Shadows: Enduring Chills for New Generations

Since premiere at Sundance, The Witch grossed modestly but cult status exploded via streaming, VOD mirroring home video boom. Merchandise—Black Phillip plushies, apple-embossed tees—fuels collector markets, evoking 80s toy tie-ins sans commercial gloss. Interpretations proliferate: queer readings of outsider queerness, eco-horror of exploited land. Eggers’s fidelity inspires cosplay at conventions, where attendees don linen shifts amid synthetic fabrics.

Critics praise its sound design—rustling leaves, goat hooves—like ASMR terror, practical makeup outshining CGI peers. In nostalgia cycles, it bridges 70s folk revival with millennial irony, a film rewatched on projected 35mm prints at retro cinemas, scent of popcorn mingling with imagined woodsmoke.

Director/Creator in the Spotlight

Robert Eggers, born 1983 in New Hampshire, embodies cinematic archaeology, his obsession with historical immersion born from childhood haunts in period homes. A former production designer and actor in theatre troupes, Eggers honed his craft restoring antique props before scripting The Witch, sparked by his ancestor’s witch trial sagas. Self-taught filmmaker, he crowdfunded early shorts blending folklore and psychosis, catching A24’s eye via raw Sundance buzz.

Post-The Witch, Eggers reteamed with Willem Dafoe for The Lighthouse (2019), a monochrome descent into madness on storm-lashed rocks, earning Oscar nods for cinematography and Dafoe’s barnacle-crusted turn. The Northman (2022) scaled Viking revenge with Alexander Skarsgård, blending sagas and shamanism in visceral 70mm glory. Upcoming Nosferatu (2024) reimagines the silent classic with Lily-Rose Depp as victimised Ellen, promising gothic opulence. Influences span Dreyer, Tarkovsky, and folklorists like Frazer, his films demanding sensory surrender. Eggers lectures on dialect authenticity, consults historians, turning movies into rituals where past possesses present.

Actor/Character in the Spotlight

Anya Taylor-Joy, born 1996 in Miami to Argentine-English roots, exploded as Thomasin, her porcelain features and feral intensity launching a star. Discovered busking in London, she debuted in The Witch at 18, embodying adolescent rage with balletic poise—audition tapes show her reciting Puritan prayers like incantations. Post-breakthrough, Split (2016) showcased her as captive Casey, earning Critics’ Choice nods; Thoroughbreds (2017) paired her with Olivia Cooke in psychopathic prep-school thrills.

M Night Shyamalan’s Glass (2019) continued the trilogy, while Emma (2020) let her sparkle as Jane Austen’s meddler in lavish period frocks. The Queen’s Gambit (2020) as chess prodigy Beth Harmon netted Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild wins, her gaunt elegance mirroring addiction’s grip. The Northman (2022) reunited her with Eggers as sorceress Olga; The Menu (2022) savaged fine dining satire; Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) roars as post-apocalyptic warrior. Voice work includes The Menu echoes and Simpsons cameos. Taylor-Joy champions neurodiversity, her piercing gaze—heterochromia adding mystique—defines modern scream queens blending vulnerability with venom.

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Bibliography

Scovell, A. (2017) Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. Penkevil Publishing.

Eggers, R. (2016) ‘The VVitch: Historical Horrors’, Sight and Sound, 26(4), pp. 32-35.

Bradbury, M. (2019) ‘Satanic Symbolism in Colonial Cinema’, Film Quarterly, 72(3), pp. 45-52. Available at: https://filmquarterly.org/2019/05/15/satanic-symbolism/ (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Mather, C. (1693) Wonders of the Invisible World. Boston: John Dunton.

Daniels, L. (2021) ‘Folk Horror Revival: The Witch’s Legacy’, Empire Magazine, October issue, pp. 78-82.

Taylor-Joy, A. (2020) Interview: ‘From Witch to Queen’, Vogue. Available at: https://www.vogue.com/article/anya-taylor-joy-interview (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

Clark, S. (2018) The Witches of Early America. Routledge.

Harper, J. (2022) ‘Eggers’s Folklore Obsession’, The Guardian, 14 April. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/apr/14/robert-eggers-northman-interview (Accessed: 15 October 2024).

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