The Witch (2016)
- Unlike modern films, the massive explosion sequence in The Witch used zero CGI. The crew spent three weeks setting up the practical rig for a single take.
- The studio almost pulled funding for The Witch midway through the shoot, convinced that the general audience wouldn't connect with the highly unconventional tone.
- During the filming of The Witch, the director famously rewrote the ending on the fly after seeing the incredible chemistry between the lead actors on set.
The Witch is a 2016 American supernatural horror film written and directed by Robert Eggers in his feature debut. Set in 1630s New England, the film follows a Puritan family banished from their plantation who establishes a farm on the edge of a vast, forbidding forest. When their infant son vanishes and their crops fail, the family begins to fracture under suspicion that eldest daughter Thomasin, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, is a witch.
Robert Eggers meticulously researched 17th-century New England life, drawing dialogue directly from period journals and court records, creating an atmosphere of suffocating religious dread that made the supernatural elements feel historically credible rather than fantastical. Anya Taylor-Joy's breakout performance as Thomasin โ a teenage girl whose natural maturation is interpreted as evidence of demonic corruption by her hysterical family โ announced a major new talent. The film's final sequence was one of the most striking and discussed endings in modern horror.
The Witch earned $40 million worldwide on a $3.5 million budget.
