Horror Details & Easter EggsGreat horror movies do more than just scare audiences. They tell complex stories with thoughtful costumes, set dressing, background action, etc., making them fun to rewatch and analyze again and again.
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Director Robert Eggers spent four years researching to make The Witch as historically accurate as possible. So you know there are a host of Easter eggs and historical references to be found in the 2015 slow burner.
Scroll on for a collection of the most chilling and fascinating insights from fans on Tumblr and subreddit r/MovieDetails. Don't forget to vote up the ones you find bewitching.
The food on the farm is infected by ergot fungus, a hallucinogenic fungus. Many scholars believe that ergot poisoning contributed to the paranoia surrounding the Salem witch trials in 1693.
Jonas and Mercy claim to have forgotten their prayers, which angers Katherine and William. In Christian religion, witches, or those cursed by witches, are said to be unable to complete a prayer.
When the first baby is killed, the baby is ground up and rubbed over the witch's body. We then see her rubbing a long stick down with the same blood. It was believed at the time that witches used blood to give them the power of flight.
After Thomasin wakes up at the end of the film, and the twins are nowhere to be found, she goes into the woods where she finds a circle of women dancing around a bonfire. All of them are covered in blood. They then begin to levitate.
Thomasin, who hasn't touched the blood of her siblings is, however, covered in her mother's blood.
I saw their separation from the town as a sheep being separated from the herd. It becomes vulnerable to the wolf. That’s when the family becomes the target of evil. Notice, every time the father says he is headed back to town, that’s prevented. All attempts to rejoin “the flock” are thwarted.
Keeping the family isolated was the first step. Second was to slowly isolate Thomasin from her family “flock.” And we know that her mother never looked at her the same after the baby was killed... By forcing Thomasin to kill her own mother, she is now someone who has not only murdered, but murdered her own mother. She probably sees herself as damned to hell at that point, no matter what she does. So if she is, if you can’t beat’em, join’em, you know? I think it’s really about how we’re most vulnerable when we’re isolated from support.
The mother represents the sin of avarice, because she spends a lot of time regarding her precious silver cup and planning to sell her own daughter. Also, the boy's final prayer was really disturbing. It wasn't he was proclaiming his love for Christ, but more like he was in love with Christ.
I feel like that was the Witch or Phillip taunting the mother. At one point she mentioned a dream where she had sex with Jesus - or, at least that's what I gathered from her description.
