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I really like that the film runs on the concept that all the ridiculous things people believed about witches was actually 100% true.
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Feb 27, 2016 02:55
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FreudianSlippers posted:I really like that the film runs on the concept that all the ridiculous things people believed about witches was actually 100% true. Again with the subtitle "A New England folk tale" I was expecting there to be real supernatural poo poo from the get go because of that. And people shouldn't poo poo on people complaining about the period accurate speech. Not everybody understands Shakespearean English.
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Feb 27, 2016 03:02
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It's just modern English with some frilly bits. e: But then again I read a shitload of early modern texts when I was at university so I might not be the best judge of how well the average person, who hasn't sat down with a nice book about how the Irish are moon worshiping pagans,secretly Scythians and no better than Wild Injuns, understands it. FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Feb 27, 2016 |
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Feb 27, 2016 03:24
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Phi230 posted:Lol at the dummies in this thread going like "look at the cliches in the witches" Phi230 posted:Again with the subtitle "A New England folk tale" The more I think about this, the more I realize it really is 2 different movies that failed to come together. I really wonder how much of it has to do with the original script being ergot poisoning instead of real witch craft. The bulk of the movie is about the struggle of homesteading and the faith of the family and has this brutal dark realism to it, then all of the "horror" elements are shot in full light and linger on the screen letting you see every detail. Its really glaring and just comical. The scene where the mother is hallucinating starts out just a bit off when you see the cup your mind immediately realizes something is not right, and before the movie gives that a chance to really let that sink in and play with it, it cuts to a close up the kids and a dumb book. Then to top it all off lol crow!, hey look at the crow, did you see the crow yet? crow! thats scary right! crow! The whole audience was just laughing at that, I really don't know why the reveal was not more subtle. Had it been with some dim dark lighting where a low pan up while your brain is trying to figure it all out that scene would have read a lot better. That is why the ending sucked too, there was nothing to make the mind run wild it was just some brightly lit close up scenes of people flying around
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Feb 27, 2016 04:40
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This is a really incredible movie, to the point where it's astonishing it got a wide release. I am not surprised at all in how badly it's being reviewed, seeing as how in the first 10 minutes, a witch pulverizes a baby and bathes in its blood.I just don't see that resonating well with most of the country. I guess I bought into it from that point, and even still I was extremely shocked when the goat spoke back. It was just so dreadful and bleak and every bit of it was well done. My favorite scary moment was seeing the silver cup in the background and then the two children. Chilling. I do think the language plays a part in how dim the reviews are. Even here in CD people are confused about the line by the father, when 2 minutes previously Thomasin calls him out on his pride being the actual ruin of the family, about being cast out, about being a poo poo farmer and a cowardly liar. Dude deserved Satans reckoning, as did the mother.
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Feb 27, 2016 06:28
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The Witch is very frustrating. a lot of technical skill and atmosphere wasted on something so basic and shallow. if horror were a real genre this movie could have been a loving masterpiece. instead the expectations are so low due to decades of slasher retard poo poo that the most you can do is a simple by the numbers witch story that's ultimately pretty boring, and even that causes a ridiculous uproar amongst the legion of drooling morons.
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Feb 27, 2016 06:52
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what I am saying here is they had an amazing aesthetic that was 100% wasted on a total non story, the reason for this being decades of basic bitch garbage like Stabby Michael Man X: The Revenge you loving morons already can't handle this simple fairy tale type crap imagine if they actually made a real story that required any amount of thought whatsoever. this could have been one of the best horror movies of all time instead of an unsatisfying tech demo for the world of horror we never got to see cause that retarded halloween slasher poo poo took over.
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Feb 27, 2016 07:08
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I loved the film and thought it was just about perfect. We're the two slaughtered goats at the end representative of the twins? I also wondered at the rabbit, as it looked more like a European hare rather than an American hare. smallmouth fucked around with this message at 13:22 on Feb 27, 2016 |
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Feb 27, 2016 12:42
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Mr. Unlucky posted:what I am saying here is they had an amazing aesthetic that was 100% wasted on a total non story, the reason for this being decades of basic bitch garbage like Stabby Michael Man X: The Revenge Halloween's pretty dope and so is this movie
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Feb 27, 2016 13:58
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MisterBibs posted:Saw this completely cold and was entirely disappointed. Was not scared or (even unnerved) at any point during the runtime. It's hard for a is she a witch/are they a witch plot to get going when it starts with seeing a frigging witch steal and Do Something You Can't Actually See (cuz that's scary, right?) to a baby, complete with a literal witch doing a literal witch cackle later on. I know this is the first page, but I really got to point out that it's not about "is she/are they witches?" It's about a very visible and real external evil that drives this family to internal destruction by sowing that doubt and fear and agony. The evil is not actually within them, aside from whatever natural sins man is guilty of under Puritan belief, but it's being planted and driven in to destroy them. The most fascinating element to me here is the very active and physical presence of the witch(es) but the complete absence and silence of God and Christ. They pray and pray and pray, Caleb on his death bed screams that he will be joining Jesus. But there is never a confirmation of presence. I was left wondering if they had been abandoned/forsaken by God - or if God never existed and only this evil runs the world.
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Feb 27, 2016 15:11
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eSporks posted:Then to top it all off lol crow!, hey look at the crow, did you see the crow yet? crow! thats scary right! crow! The whole audience was just laughing at that, I really don't know why the reveal was not more subtle. Had it been with some dim dark lighting where a low pan up while your brain is trying to figure it all out that scene would have read a lot better. See, I thought this was the scariest shot in the movie precisely because of the straightforwardness. I found the absence of many of the "Horror Movie" trappings made things surprise me more because the camera doesn't telegraph things the way it would in, say, a slasher.
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Feb 27, 2016 15:47
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FreudianSlippers posted:I really like that the film runs on the concept that all the ridiculous things people believed about witches was actually 100% true. Hell, that's the best part of it. The way they saved everything explicitly supernatural for the ending was genius. I wasn't sure how things would go when Thomasin addressed Black Phillip but "What dost thou want?" was a big surprise for me.
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Feb 27, 2016 16:53
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Mr. Unlucky posted:what I am saying here is they had an amazing aesthetic that was 100% wasted on a total non story, the reason for this being decades of basic bitch garbage like Stabby Michael Man X: The Revenge "ell em ayy oh my taste is loving supreme you idiots" You sound like a really pretentious and boring person to be around Go watch Ida and jerk off you loving nerd DoctorG0nzo fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Feb 27, 2016 |
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Feb 27, 2016 16:56
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"This was a bad movie for idiots, like all other movies" is at least a different kind of dumb I guess.
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Feb 27, 2016 17:05
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DoctorG0nzo posted:Go watch Ida and jerk off you loving nerd Related: The VVitch (2015, d. Robert Eggers)  Ida (2013, d. Pawel Pawlikowski)  Probably pure coincidence and visually the shots are pretty different visually but both are off people in the graves of children.
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Feb 27, 2016 18:57
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I loved that bit because apparently throwing yourself in your loved one's grave was mad common back in the day, it was just what you did at funerals (side note: Ida's very good but it's no My Summer of Love)
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Feb 27, 2016 19:10
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Mr. Unlucky posted:The Witch is very frustrating. you do realize most of the people making GBS threads on the movie one hundred percent agree with you right like, the most common complaint I see is "it's pretty and atmospheric but there's... not really much there"
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Feb 27, 2016 19:29
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I loved that bit because apparently throwing yourself in your loved one's grave was mad common back in the day, it was just what you did at funerals They really did their research with this movie
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Feb 27, 2016 20:58
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I saw it with a Q&A and apparently the director is really interested in the era as well as occultism and folklore and tried several times to get movies based on his interest made but could never get the funding until Witch. Probably because the other films weren't genre movies and for a low budget film to make any money it practically has to be horror. He also said he read through tons of books from the era, both fiction and stuff like diaries and letters, to find out how people wrote and talked and the first draft of the script was just a mishmash of phrases he had stolen from various 17th century sources.
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Feb 27, 2016 22:27
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FreudianSlippers posted:I saw it with a Q&A and apparently the director is really interested in the era as well as occultism and folklore and tried several times to get movies based on his interest made but could never get the funding until Witch. Probably because the other films weren't genre movies and for a low budget film to make any money it practically has to be horror. Caleb coughing up the apple also reminded me of this bit in The Werewolf in Lore and Legend by Montague Summers (interesting dude) where he mentioned the subjects of exorcisms coughing up small mammals and stuff like that. since then I've always wanted to see an exorcism movie where someone throws up a mouse or something.
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Feb 27, 2016 22:30
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Just came back from seeing it, luckily the screening's obligatory shouting-at-the-screen idiot left around 30 minutes in, but not before letting us know what a waste of money it was. I saw a mom with her elementary school aged kid walk out when it was over, I really wonder what they thought. Took me a while to get fully engaged, but it turned out really neat. I definitely found the real horror to be the oppressive fanaticism of the family. The whole telling children they're going to hell for their non-sins, telling them their infant siblings are in hell, that really got me. The prayer scene with the sick child, you know the one, that was chilling. Of course the baby grinding witch and satan himself are creepy and awesome but those things aren't real . This happened, and is still happening around the world, that's terrifying. I know people who got told by their parents they're going to hell for not believing in X hard enough, and what kind of hosed up joyless life would you lead with eternal damnation of yourself and your loved ones constantly on your mind. All this makes what happens in the end perfectly relatable and almost sane Other than that the goat was the best goat since Drag me to Hell, and the best non-movie part of seeing it was someone in the audience letting out a small scream when Black Philipp started talking And as someone who speaks English as a second language the old fashioned speech didn't strike me as particularly hard to understand. It definitely added to the movie for me. Maybe I'm more used to reading between the (for me) incomprehensible lines, but I don't think it needed to be subtitled or anything. I hope the director goes on to make many more period drama folk tale movies like that. Mr. Unlucky posted:what I am saying here is they had an amazing aesthetic that was 100% wasted on a total non story, the reason for this being decades of basic bitch garbage like Stabby Michael Man X: The Revenge It's one thing to not get a movie, but not getting a movie so badly you're actually blaming the audience for forcing the filmmaker to make a dumb movie, wow
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Feb 28, 2016 04:39
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Quality goat acting in this movie. Decent child acting too, which would have sunk it if had been bad.
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Feb 28, 2016 05:30
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The characters in the film and their actions had almost no bearing on the motives of the antagonist (witches, the literal satan) and thus the first hour and a half is almost entirely wasted in terms of plot advancement no matter how much character-building, setting-building, tension-building, etc-building went on. The characters could have lived in perfect idyllic harmony and then the last 20 minutes has Black Phillip goring people and the cackling witch, and so on. And then all the witches float around at the end. Spooky but meaningless to anyone not versed in the minutiae of "real witch lore", and an almost tacked on ending.
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Feb 28, 2016 06:33
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I guess I care more about character and setting and tension and nice cinematography and less about Advancing the Plot. I liked all of those things and didn't really care that the actual story was thin. But the characters being sinful and turning on each other is both because of and attractive to the monsters here. If they lived in perfect harmony they wouldn't be here and wouldn't have blighted crops and wouldn't have a pair of horrible, horrible twins who had been communing with the devil since the beginning.
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Feb 28, 2016 06:40
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Capntastic posted:The characters in the film and their actions had almost no bearing on the motives of the antagonist (witches, the literal satan) and thus the first hour and a half is almost entirely wasted in terms of plot advancement no matter how much character-building, setting-building, tension-building, etc-building went on. Robert McKee's account spotted.
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Feb 28, 2016 07:00
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Capntastic posted:The characters in the film and their actions had almost no bearing on the motives of the antagonist (witches, the literal satan) and thus the first hour and a half is almost entirely wasted in terms of plot advancement no matter how much character-building, setting-building, tension-building, etc-building went on. The witch and Satan are not the antagonists in this movie.
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Feb 28, 2016 08:29
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1stGear posted:The witch and Satan are not the antagonists in this movie. Nah, the witch stealing and pulping a baby in the first act and the Satan goat murdering the dad in the last is pretty antagonistic. Surlaw posted:I liked all of those things and didn't really care that the actual story was thin. It's not that the story was thin, it's that the focus dramatically shifted from pastoral tensions of a deeply repressed family to a goat murdering someone and a cackling witch blowing up a barn. The punishments laid at the feet of the family have no bearing on the actions they took. TrixRabbi posted:Robert McKee's account spotted. I only know of him from that scene in Adaptation. Capntastic fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 08:58
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Capntastic posted:Nah, the witch stealing and pulping a baby in the first act and the Satan goat murdering the dad in the last is pretty antagonistic. Dude, the reason things get as tense as they do is because everyone thinks that someone is a witch after the baby gets taken. They're constantly concerned with the dark forces in the forest and the idea that one or more of them has been taken under its sway. The fact that it's real - and that one of their number does indeed join the Devil's side at the end - is just a development that helps make things even more interesting.
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Feb 28, 2016 14:38
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I wouldn't say the characters have no bearing at all on the story. As a puritan tale of horror it kind of makes a twisted sense. They fled society and entered the wilderness ostensibly because the father wanted to lead a more godly life, but since the woods is a bastion of evil it capitalizes on their sins, which kind of snowball during the course of the movie until Satan is able to destroy the family. Leaving the plantation was prideful and taking the cup was thievery, but these are just the inciting incidents. Satan sees and exploits the sins of the family by ensnaring the son by his lust and lies (he literally vomits his lie, the apple, back up). The back and forth accusations lead to the breakdown of the family structure, the mother loses her faith, etc. They were put into a puritan stress test because of the dad's pride (he's the son of corruption after all) and failed. It's real spooky guys and they're all in hell now. edit: even the baby, especially the baby Drunkboxer fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Feb 28, 2016 |
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Feb 28, 2016 14:54
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Capntastic posted:Nah, the witch stealing and pulping a baby in the first act and the Satan goat murdering the dad in the last is pretty antagonistic. The antagonism faced by Thomasin is the suspicion and oppression placed on her by her parents. Samuel is kidnapped and pulped because the father took them into the frontier. Caleb is driven into the woods because he's trying to protect his sister for being sent away by their mother. The witch incites these incidents and sets off the chain of paranoia, but is not actually an antagonist. Hell, Black Phillip killing the father could be interpreted as protecting Thomasin in a twisted way because at that point her only options were to be executed for being a witch. Instead, she's given the freedom from hatred and oppression she's longed for the entire movie.
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Feb 28, 2016 16:34
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1stGear posted:
The freedom from sexist religious oppression angle would kind of work for me if Black Phillip's contract promise didn't seem so bullshitty. Something like "Do you want to live deliciously? Don't you want to eat butter all drat day? Do you want to see the WORLD??" Lady, you're just going to be hanging out with naked old women in the woods, slinging baby guts. The only high point I see is dancing naked and flying. And honestly, I don't think you need to sell your soul to naked-dance if you're discrete enough.
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Feb 28, 2016 16:55
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1stGear posted:The antagonism faced by Thomasin is the suspicion and oppression placed on her by her parents. Samuel is kidnapped and pulped because the father took them into the frontier. Caleb is driven into the woods because he's trying to protect his sister for being sent away by their mother. The witch incites these incidents and sets off the chain of paranoia, but is not actually an antagonist. This movie is interesting in that it takes the stereotypes of witches and paints them in a positive light. Besides the baby guacamole, the family essentially is their own enemy. They supposedly are godly, faithful people yet they are all hypocrites and sinners themselves. They are also extremely repressive. The movie makes Puritan life look so bad that signing a contract with the literal devil and becoming a witch is actually cathartic and freeing for Thomasin. Historically the whole idea of witches targeted women and homosexuals anyway so it makes sense to turn the whole thing on its head.
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Feb 28, 2016 16:59
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Drunkboxer posted:The freedom from sexist religious oppression angle would kind of work for me if Black Phillip's contract promise didn't seem so bullshitty. Something like "Do you want to live deliciously? Don't you want to eat butter all drat day? Do you want to see the WORLD??" Lady, you're just going to be hanging out with naked old women in the woods, slinging baby guts. The only high point I see is dancing naked and flying. And honestly, I don't think you need to sell your soul to naked-dance if you're discrete enough. Well it's the devil so a clear and fair contract would be quite uncharacteristic. Working in the baby pulping business isn't so bad anyways, puts butter on the table, commute is fine since you can fly and naked hag dances lift company spirits.
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Feb 28, 2016 17:10
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I like the end as a sort of reverse Book of Job story. I figured that the dad was going to be a Job figure (the mother even calls herself Job's Wife) but he fails in front of Satan himself instead of staying true to God up until his last moments. Then, after killing everyone, blighting the crops, and destroying (part of) the home, Satan rewards Thomasin's devotion with a new, better family.Capntastic posted:It's not that the story was thin, it's that the focus dramatically shifted from pastoral tensions of a deeply repressed family to a goat murdering someone and a cackling witch blowing up a barn. The punishments laid at the feet of the family have no bearing on the actions they took. 1stGear and Drunkboxer already responded to this but I'm really baffled that you saw it this way. There's seriously no dramatic shift, we see a witch and the baby kidnapping super early in the movie, and everything goes from there. It's totally fine to not like that, but it doesn't come out of nowhere.
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Feb 28, 2016 17:46
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I liked how the characters were defined and motivated, particularly the mother's desire to go back to England. They did a good job at coloring those interactions with psychological intent, so they weren't just wacko crazies unraveling - these are problems people still have.IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Well it's the devil so a clear and fair contract would be quite uncharacteristic. Working in the baby pulping business isn't so bad anyways, puts butter on the table, commute is fine since you can fly and naked hag dances lift company spirits. It sure beats eating rotten corn and getting yelled at by your weirdo parents.
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Feb 28, 2016 18:02
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I think it says a lot that these people were banished by Puritans for their extremism. Puritans being a religious group that was batshit fundamentalist even by early modern protestant standards where that sort of thing was the norm.
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Feb 28, 2016 18:12
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IM_DA_DECIDER posted:Well it's the devil so a clear and fair contract would be quite uncharacteristic. Working in the baby pulping business isn't so bad anyways, puts butter on the table, commute is fine since you can fly and naked hag dances lift company spirits. True, true. Hail Satan.
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Feb 28, 2016 18:59
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Thomasin is old enough to remember when they lived in England and had such luxuries as glass windows and a steady supply of non-rotten food available to them so being able to eat butter any time she wanted is probably pretty enticing. She is also like fourteen and teenagers are not known for their decision making skills.
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Feb 28, 2016 19:16
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People are also missing the fact here that this movie is supposed to represent 1600s ideas of witches, and back then people believed that being witch meant going off in the woods naked, loving the devil, and flying around. That's just what witches did.
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Feb 28, 2016 19:33
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FreudianSlippers posted:Thomasin is old enough to remember when they lived in England and had such luxuries as glass windows and a steady supply of non-rotten food available to them so being able to eat butter any time she wanted is probably pretty enticing. She is also like fourteen and teenagers are not known for their decision making skills. She was also stranded way out in the wilderness, so her options were either to join the flying witch circus or get lost and die trying to find her way back to the puritan fort.
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Feb 28, 2016 19:56
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