The Witch Will Freak You Out

“What were out in this wilderness to find, leaving our country, kindred, our father’s houses, for what? For the kingdom of God. Let us pray.”

These are the words that open The Witch trailer, writer/director Robert Eggers' (The Tell-Tale Heart, Hansel and Gretel) feature film debut that plants us in a world at once very American but also weirdly, creepily, alien—17th century New England, 62 years before the Salem witch trials.