It’s been another fairly innocuous year for horror at the cinema (bar It Follows) and no one will be losing any sleep over Insidious 3 or The Woman in Black 2. So when The Witch came out of nowhere to receive ecstatic reviews at Sundance, genre fans took note.
The Guardian’s Jordan Hoffman called it “something near greatness” and the first quote-heavy trailer has now emerged to give us all a closer look.
It’s a stylishly put together 150 seconds of dread, hinting at the tensions that emerge within a family in 1600s New England. When their baby is kidnapped by a witch, their tight dynamic starts to unravel. It’s set generations before the 1692 Salem witch trails, but shares a similar line in communal madness.
The Witch, a first feature from writer-director Robert Eggers, will be showing at the Toronto film festival in September.
- The Witch hits cinemas next year; its release date is yet to be announced.
