All photos courtesy of A24
When the family
comes across the clearing at the edge of the woods, they fall to their knees
and pray, mother and father holding their hands aloft. Pious exiles, this
Puritan clan—father William, mother Katherine, and children Thomasin, Caleb,
Mercy, Jonas and, soon, baby Samuel—has found true salvation far away from both
oppressive England and their compromising Puritan community. It will be a hard
life, but a pure and righteous one.
But someone else
has already staked a claim on this wilderness. She lives by herself in a shack
deep in the thicket, occasionally wearing a red riding cloak that looks lifted
directly from the pages of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. She is a witch, but not the
cackling, green-skinned variety of The
Wizard of Oz or a verbose, compassionate intellectual in the vein of
Hermione Granger. There is something much more primal and elemental to this crone,
and when she’s done working her unspeakable magic the family at her doorstep
will be at each other’s throats.
