Filmmaker Robert Eggers and actress Anya Taylor-Joy discuss their brilliant new horror film, The Witch.
The Witchis uncannily accurate right down to the version of English that the characters speak and unrelentingly disturbing.
Its thoroughly eerie and atmospheric, and an incredibly confident debut from Eggers.
I wanted to make an archetypal New England horror story like a nightmare from the past.
If you could experience a Puritans nightmare firsthand, thats what I wanted to do.
The witch is also a symbol of feminine power, which gives the story a modern relevance.
Its tragic that they had to create a witch in the common imagination as a symbol of darkness.
And the ramifications have gone throughout time.
So reclaiming female power in a positive way, or in any way, is still going on today.
How did you react to it?
Anya Taylor-Joy:I hadnt read that many scripts.
Id only been acting for about two or three months or something like that.
I read it very late at night and I had my audition the next day.
This script just completely terrified me.
I dont know what it is about this.
Its scaring me, but in a good way.
It felt big and it felt important.
And it felt like a story that I wanted to tell.
How did you find the balance between that and the innocence that you also still had?
Taylor-Joy:I dont know.
It was almost as if it felt pretty destined.
It felt really natural.
Lets talk a little bit about the language and developing it accurately.
And common people went to the plays and enjoyed them.
New England was the most literate part of the western world.
So this was so important to them.
So youll find wills of farmers who couldnt write but could read.
And they were dictated wills.
And if we take them as accurate, they are clunky, but also kind of beautiful.
So basically I studied the vocabulary and I studied the grammar structure.
That was time consuming.
So there were earlier drafts that should never be seen by anyone.
I mean they dont really exist.
Taylor-Joy:I love it.
I mean it was an absolute privilege to be able to speak in such a beautiful and lyrical way.
I never found the language to be a barrier.
If anything, I felt it was a wonderful way into that world, if that makes sense.
When I read the script, I dont ever remember thinking, Oh.
This is written in kind of an English that I dont understand.
I never even questioned it.
I was like, Yeah.
This is something that I understand.
And its a beautiful way to speak.
So Im really very lucky to have been able to speak that way for five weeks.
I only cast people who could do it.
You are not a novice in film, but you havent directed a feature before this.
Did you feel confident going into this?
Were there things that you didnt anticipate going in?
Eggers:I was confident going into it.
I got married and I was more able to handle this.
The animals, even though I love animals, the goat was so typically difficult.
Nature was a bitch.
But I like that challenge.
I really do enjoy it.
But, wow, nature was not making things easy for us, let me tell you.
We were so close and we became so close so quickly.
We initially met and we were just friends.
That was the way it worked.
From Day 1, we were like, That scene is going to be horrible.
Lets just agree right now that were going to do it.
We really were crying and we were really struggling with that.
I think that comes across on screen, and so we did our job.
It seems like youve watched a lot of the classics and have steeped yourself in the genre.
What to you are the basic tenets that need to be in a horror film?
Its also one of the greatest, most atmospheric films ever made.
First of all, its more neo-Romantic than Expressionist.
But here inNosferatuthere is these weird clash of like real locations and these expressionistic sets.
Its really kind of strange.
For me, the most important thing about a good horror story is actually confronting the darkness in humanity.
The other thing is restraint.
Youve got to have restraint.
