Movie Crush Monday: CT & The Witch

Readers, we're back. We've returned to LA, and we're ready to become your friendly neighborhood writer/geeks once again. We're also busily assembling our Top Ten for 2016 and we'll have that to you later this week (see the previous years here and here).

Since we took some time off, I've had a little extra space to think about my Movie Crush this week. Matthew Vaughn has done a few incredible films, and it was tempting to follow just about any of them from Kingsman: The Secret Service, but once I dug into the cast list I saw my Movie Crush immediately, following the incredible actor Ralph Ineson.

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The Witch is director Robert Eggers' feature debut, and it's as stylish as it is terrifying. Honest to goodness, I can't easily name another director who comes out of the gate with as much control of their visual style. Rian Johnson, maybe? And let me tell you, me comparing anything to Brick is about as high of praise as anything can get. 

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But that's what we have here, readers. The Witch is, as Eggers puts it, a "New England folktale". He means it to be more than just your average horror romp. Eggers has done his research and it makes the story feel grounded even as things start to get crazy. The Witch is slowly paced, almost frustratingly so, but the pace leads up to an explosive climax that makes it worth every second of the wait. And a lot of that pacing is credit to the absolutely amazing cinematography. This film is gorgeous.

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The other thing that deserves aaaallll the praise here is the cast. The story centers on a single family, and those six actors carry the entire film. Ralph Ineson and Katie Dickie from Game of Thrones are veterans and so of course their performance is incredible. But the standouts here are the young actors. Anya Taylor-Joy debuts in The Witch, and she's absolutely fantastic so it's no surprise that she's been in just about everything she can in the year since its release. But even the youngest members of the cast shine.

I really can't say enough good things about this movie. It's creepy, it's beautiful, it stuck in my mind for a long time after I saw it, and I see more great things in it with every watch. If you haven't seen it, you're definitely missing out.

Happy Watching!
CT