Robert Eggers - Tumblr Posts

"Ride with me, Daughters of the North Wind!

Carry me and mine to the shores of my children’s forebears.

There I’ll grow you a forest of birch, fathomless branches to dance your tempest with, raptured by your most righteous breath!"

Olga's pleading to the Valkyries, The Northman (2022), dir. Robert Eggers.

i love this guy

𝐍𝐨𝐬𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐮 (2023) ⚰️

ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪɢʜᴛʜᴏᴜꜱᴇ

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐕𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 (𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟓)

ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪɢʜᴛʜᴏᴜꜱᴇ

𝕹𝖔𝖘𝖋𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖚 (2024) 𝖉𝖎𝖗. 𝕽𝖔𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖙 𝕰𝖌𝖌𝖊𝖗𝖘

𝕹𝖔𝖘𝖋𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖙𝖚 (2024) 𝖉𝖎𝖗. 𝕽𝖔𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖙 𝕰𝖌𝖌𝖊𝖗𝖘

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐕𝐕𝐢𝐭𝐜𝐡 🐐

🜏 ᴛʜᴇ ᴠᴠɪᴛᴄʜ 𓃶

When I tell you this movie is gonna take over my whole being when it comes out. I will literally not be able to talk about anything else. This is gonna be a new favorite I feel it in my bones 😫

“ … If there’s any one performer to whom the movie belongs, it’s [Anya] Taylor-Joy as the grievously misunderstood young woman who may or may not be the witch of the title. Capable of looking at once beamingly innocent and slyly knowing, her Thomasin increasingly becomes the movie’s voice of conscience and reason, precisely because she threatens to complicate and subvert her parents’ rigid moral universe.” - Film Review: THE VVITCH (2015), Variety

the lighthouse (2019) directed by robert eggers

"Should pale death, with treble dread, make the ocean caves our bed, God who hears the surges roll deign to save our suppliant soul."

Is family the biggest horror of all? Discussing The Witch (Eggers, 2016)

Modern Horror, at times, misuses the notion of Family, films like Maggie (Hobson, 2015), Poltergeist (Kenan, 2015) and The Conjuring (Wan, 2013) are just some films that use family as an empowering theme. In these films, our hero fights the Monster for the sake of the family because family is always safe, always strong and always there. This is why the start of The Witch appears too slow because the audience does not suspect the family at all, all Eggers provides the audience with is the beginning of a tale. The film immediately invokes sympathy with them, they are banished from their village and forced to go it alone in the forest. The characters are easy to identify with, the use of old language can put some spectators off but fundamentally, Eggers encourages the audience to understand this Puritan family as our own. At the core of this film is a family coming to terms with loss but this, by no means, suggests that the family is innocent. The Witch shows that horror starts at home and by the halfway point of the narrative, the audience loses all sense of family values.

The audience is forced to experience this film with the characters and once they leave the Village, the setting switches between the forest and their new makeshift home. The use of long shots connotes that the family is completely alone, they only have each other and their Puritan religion to keep them going. This is one of the most interesting aspects about the film, as all they have is each other, they quick to turn and suspect one another. The audience shares the narrative experience with the family, both completely unsure about when and where the horror will emerge from. Will it be from the Witch in the forest or will it be from inside the family which is being torn apart in front of the audience’s eyes?. As the narrative progresses, the audience clearly suspects the latter more. It is interesting to add in here that this film is set in 1630, yet family is still a questionable structure to this day. A 2009 FBI report stated that 25% of murders take place within the family and furthermore, over half of all murder victims know their killer. The Witch shows that fear does not come from the ambiguous creature who lives in the forest, it comes from the people who are “supposed” to love you unconditionally. The terror each family member feels is caused by a sense of loss and confusion with their relatives, their own flesh and blood whom they suspect is terrorising them.

The Witch is a film that lingers on the mind and after viewing it I was completely unsure how I felt. The audience is immediately put on edge and the strategic use of intermittent blank screens makes us wait in fear for the next potential scare. The film is more of a tale than a horror movie, the narrative is incredibly rich and engaging but the best thing about this film is its use of family. The Witch challenges the notion of family, family traps you, family suspects you and ultimately, family can kill you.