The Movies That Changed My Life: ‘The Witch’ Director Robert Eggers

After the recent one-two (three and four) punch of “It Follows,” “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” “The Babadook,” and “Goodnight Mommy,” the chilling swell of arthouse horror has been hitting a crescendo of late (sorry, Bret Easton Ellis). But capturing the arty horror zeitgeist like no other is “The Witch,” the feature-length debut of filmmaker Robert Eggers which earned A24 Films their biggest opening ever.

A big smash out of Sundance Film Festival last year where the film won Eggers the Directing Award in the U.S. Dramatic category, “The Witch” follows a 17th century Puritan family excommunicated from their village who, when forced to fend for themselves, encounter forces of evil in the woods beyond their New England farm. And “The Witch” is sensational (read our review), the modern heir apparent to “The Shining,” and a movie that seemingly mixes the unnerving chill and cinematic vision of Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman all rolled...