The Witch review: masterful old-school dread stalks the New World

Robert Eggers's singular debut can, without two much sanding of edges, be comfortably slotted into that fecund genre we know as folk horror. This casual category takes in such delightful British entertainments as Blood on Satan's Claw, The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General and the recent A Field in England.

The Witch may be set in North America, but it is 1630 and the accents are still those of northern Britain. The weirdness in the woods appears to emerge from a supernatural dimension. The weirdness elsewhere is that of transplantation.

Kate Dickie (as sharp-featured and keen-of-eye as Una O’Connor) and Ralph Inseson (his head shaped like a fleshy coffin) could have been plucked straight from one of those 1970s classics. Recently expelled from their New England village – for reasons left obscure – William and Catherine are attempting to make a home among inhospitable flora and fauna.

The action properly kicks off with a chilling abduction. Thomasin (a dynamic Anya Taylor-Joy), the couple’s eldest daughter, is playing peek-a-boo with baby Samuel. Her hands part and he’s smiling. Her hands part and he’s still smiling. Her hands part and he’s gone.

If we take the images at face value, then it is hard to avoid supernatural conclusions. But The Witch is wedged in uncertainty. The family come to believe that a wolf has taken Samuel. Then various inexplicable disasters point towards the presence of a witch in (where else?) the forest. The film seems to tell us they're right. But look how differently it represents the creature. Now, she slips nimbly through the forest. Now, she is a nubile temptress. Now, she is a great swollen mass of mottled flesh. It's as if Eggers is running the possibilities through a troubled pioneer brain.

While folk horror savours rural beauty, the message is often that the countryside is cruel, uncomfortable and deadly. The myths the harassed characters entertain – whether Christian or occult – offer magical alternatives to the seasonal deluges and hungry predators. Yet, in these films, the fantasies are often more terrifying than the reality. Catherine, harassed to the point of dementia by the accumulating pressures, worries that, having died before baptism, Samuel will never reach heaven. Everyday developments take on the character of existential threat.

Every beast and plant
This is not the first horror film in which a teenager's impending puberty – poor harried Thomasin is passing into that befuddling state – triggers a kind of collective madness. The assumption of a spirit world allows every beast and plant to take threatening form. The dead-eyed goat named Black Phillip is worrying enough. But the passive rabbit that lurks in the undergrowth seems even more malign. The countryside really is ghastly. And it's not even their countryside.

Anybody seeking torture porn or mindless jump shocks will be in for a disappointment, but Eggers’s slippery, intelligent film is not short of accumulating unease. Jarin Blaschke’s camera finds menacing shadows in the Canadian landscapes. Mark Korven, a master out of Winnipeg, scores with screeches and moans that help the action build towards a final, borderline-absurd catharsis.

Eggers doesn’t let us forget that, in a few centuries’ time, New England will be tamed into suburban submission. The characters still speak the language of the King James Bible. “My corrupt nature is empty of grace, bent unto sin, only unto sin, and that continually,” Thomasin’s brother Caleb says.

But just look how the young twins enter the action. Mercy and Jonas burst into the frame, propelled by a whirlwind of greedy energy and restless desire. Unlike the rest of the family, they seem irrepressibly American. Their descendents will bounce with similar energy towards Burger King. If the twins can survive the bloody horrible winter, that is.