‘The Witch’ Trailer: Beware of Colonial Indie Horror

If you follow even a couple of film critics on Twitter, then you know The Witch. This debut film by director Robert Eggers was a sensation at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Best Director award and also the award for Most Orgasmic Tweets By Film Critics. To wit:

Now the film, which doesn’t arrive until next year, has its first trailer and it is as spooky as promised. Also, the trailer spells the title THE VVitch (with two v’s instead of a w) for some reason and there is nothing more terrifying than strange alternate spellings.

Here’s the official synopsis:

New England, 1630: William and Katherine lead a devout Christian life, homesteading on the edge of an impassible wilderness, with five children.  When their newborn son mysteriously vanishes and their crops fail, the family begins to turn on one another. In his debut feature, writer/director Robert Eggers painstakingly designs an authentic re-creation of New England — generations before the 1692 trials in Salem — evoking the alluring and terrifying power of the timeless witch myth. Told through the eyes of Thomasin, the teenage daughter (in a star-making performance by Anya Taylor-Joy), and supported by haunting camera work and an ominous score, The Witch is a chilling portrait of a family unraveling within their own fears and anxieties, leaving them prey for an inescapable evil.

The Witch opens in theaters in 2016.