I woke up this morning, made some coffee, watched the trailer for Sundance smash-hit horror film The Witch, and now I completely regret that decision. There’s no amount of coffee that can make one truly ready to see goats unnaturally standing on their hind legs or squirting blood from their udders.
Directed by first-timer Robert Eggers, The Witch is about a New England family about 400 years ago (before the Salem Witch Trials) whose newborn baby mysteriously vanishes. Blaming everyone but themselves, the family begins to turn on one another as the mysteries of the surrounding woods starts to unravel. That sounds kind of innocuous, but once kids start looking possessed, people start running through the woods in the pitch black, and the goats start freaking out, it’s obviously not. It’s something more.
The Witch was one of the two or three most buzzed about films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and got picked up by A24 for distribution. They’re putting it out in 2016 and now it’s on your radar, where it should be.
If the trailer wasn’t terrifying enough, look at this poster, sure to never be on anyone’s wall, ever. (That’s a compliment.)
Contact the author at germain@io9.com.