Failures of ‘The Gorge’ go deep

 Billed as an action/romance, The Gorge is set to bow on Apple TV+. I’ve been hesitant about reviewing movies released exclusively on streaming services. My reluctance doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of such films, but a lingering prejudice about the superiority of theatrical releases has proven difficult to shake, at least for me.

  I nonetheless opted to watch The Gorge. Given the chaos of the moment, I craved a diversion that might contain vertiginous thrills — no matter how obviously delivered. 

   Here’s the premise. Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy play two sharpshooters — one a former Marine, the other a servant of Russian overlords—who are assigned to remote posts in what appears to be an Eastern European wilderness. They are separated by a deep gorge that's home to an ominous threat. 

   Their job: Prevent the threat — dubbed The Hollow Men — from climbing out of the gorge, a task that requires ample amounts of ammunition.

   Don't get too excited. Sure, T.S. Eliot wrote a poem called The Hollow Men and the screenplay includes other erudite references but they play more like Post-it notes than deeply felt revelations.

    A simple story arc emerges. Independent sorts, the sharpshooters must bridge the physical gap that keeps them apart, join forces in a battle for survival, and, of course, fall in love.

   At first, I remained hopeful. Sigourney Weaver turns up as a no-nonsense official who sends Teller’s Levi on his mission. Of course, we don’t trust her; she’s too crisp, too smart to be straightforward. 

   After providing some background about Taylor-Joy’s character, director Scott Derrickson lands the two assassins at their outposts, towers flanking both sides of the wide gorge. They’ve been instructed  to communicate with each other, but Taylor-Joy’s Drassa makes signs for Teller's Levi to read through his high-powered binoculars. She invites him to help her celebrate her birthday.

    Derrickson doesn’t waste time revealing the danger,  mutant creatures that look as though they’ve been assembled from sticks, leaves, slime, and animal parts. 

     Joy-Taylor's boldness gives the movie one of its few highlights carrying us to the moment when the two killers wind up in the gorge. There, Derrickson and his team build a world shrouded in fog and populated by weird creatures.

   Considering that both characters are deadly shots at long distances, it's odd that the movie forces them into so much close-quarters combat, slathering the action with gook and gore.

    When our heroes find an abandoned laboratory, we learn how the creatures were spawned, another letdown. A film made by a long-gone scientist explains the whole movie, but not without a heavy reliance on devices that the scientist and her colleagues conveniently left behind.

   You'll have little trouble finding your own examples of contrivance, so I'll conclude by saying that The Gorge returned me unrewarded to the world I'd been trying to escape. 

The origin of a post-apocalyptic warrior

 If this review were a trial, we'd begin with stipulations, agreements that we can accept (or should) without argument.

  1. Few, if any, filmmakers are as skilled at creating propulsive action as George Miller, who offers some of the best bone-crushing, metal-bending sequences ever brought to the big screen.

  2. Not many filmmakers are as committed to harsh truths as Miller. When it comes to post-apocalyptic life, brutality reigns.

  3. In catastrophically depleted environments,  competition for resources feeds cruel compulsions to dominate.

   I begin this way because Miller has created four Mad Max movies that have offered sustained thrills while helping to redefine post-apocalyptic cinema.

   You can bet that Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Miller's latest and a prequel to the widely acclaimed Mad Max Road Fury, will deliver the goods as Miller  plunges into a forbidding hellscape where sentiment is as scarce as good grooming.

    Amid the rubble and mayhem, Miller also has insisted that his movies offer the kind of hyper fun that results from wowed appreciation of chases, crashes, fights, and collisions delivered at breakneck speeds.

   So where am I going with all this? What's my verdict on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the story of a girl who matures into the teenager who'll become the warrior woman played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road?

   I saw Furiosa in IMAX at an evening screening after having awakened in Virginia at 5 a.m. EDT for a return flight to Denver. I was tired and jet-lagged, but my eyelids never drooped. A thudding persistent score, the ominous sound of a truck horn, and the roar of motorcycle engines enliven the forbidding  landscapes Miller creates so well. 

   And yet, I'd be remiss if I didn't say that some of the thrill is gone. Ditto for the exhilarating sense of discovery that Road Warrior initially brought. Don't take this as a pan, I said "some" of the thrill -- not all of it. 

    Furiosa begins with Alyla Browne playing Furiosa as a child who is taken from one of the last remaining flourishing spots on Earth, an Edenic green spot. After marauders capture Furiosa, her mother mother (Charlee Fraser) rides a horse and then a motorcycle to the rescue. Mom's efforts go awry -- but not without giving the movie a gripping prologue.

   When the story begins in earnest, Furiosa has been taken prisoner by Dementus (Chris Hemsworth), a ruthless warlord who lost his family and, as a consequence, decided that nothing but merciless violence will conquer his grief. Hemsworth seems to have fun with an outsized role, tempering Dementus's casually expressed sadism with humor.

   The movie eventually focuses on Furiosa's development. She starts as a crafty child devoted to keeping her green homeland free and hidden from those who would exploit it. She evolves into a warrior determined to avenge the early-film death of her mother at the hands of Dementus.

   As part of her development, Furiosa -- now played by Anya Taylor-Joy -- also becomes the pupil of a skilled driver who serves as a mentor (Tom Burke). The two might have made a great team for an entire movie instead of enriching one episode among many.

    Furiosa's story takes place against the backdrop of a brewing war between the forces of Dementus and those of Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme). 

   Immortan Joe, you'll recall from the previous movie, presides over the Citadel, a fortress built into a cliff. The Citadel dispenses water to the rude and scoffing multitudes, the various tribes that roam this diminished world. 

    Taylor-Joy may not be as physically imposing as Theron, but she brings intensity to a role in which she speaks little, at times posing as a wily young man to escape the fate of young women destined to be held in a harem Immortan Joe uses for breeding purposes.

    No point recounting all the action, except to note that a highlight includes an attack on a speeding silver semi-truck by parachute-wearing warriors. Dementus rides in a chariot drawn by three motorcycles. A variety of  jerry-rigged vehicles revive the junkyard chic that has been a Mad Max staple.

    Some of the character names clue you into the nature of those who populate Miller's expansive desert environment: The People Eater, Organic Mechanic, Rictus Erectus, and Vulture. I had to consult the credits to catch all of these names, but it doesn't matter; it's their fierce looks that count.

   I wish my enthusiasm for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga weren't tempered by the sense that the movie -- which includes chapter headings -- didn't always display the brisk ingenuity that audiences discovered in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) back when Mel Gibson, the original Mad Max, had yet to become a divisive figure. 

   But if Furiosa has fallen off a bit, it hasn't broken into shards. Miller's skill and vision keep familiarity from breeding contempt -- even if we don't always invest in the fate of this teeming screenful of characters, desperate souls for whom good will isn't even a vague memory.

   Most of Furiosa takes place on arid terrain its characters call the Wasteland. For them, the name fits. For Miller, it's territory he still rules.

  

‘The Menu’: a tasty satire about foodies

     The Menu takes aim at restaurant obsessives, folks who'll pay a fortune to be served fashionably minuscule portions.

   Price tags, however, are anything but small. The well-heeled or wannabes willingly open their wallets. In return, they're rewarded with super creative dishes prepared under the guidance of executive chefs who have attained celebrity status.

      In The Menu, director Mark Mylod employs a strong cast -- led by Ralph Fiennes and Anya Taylor-Joy -- for a darkly hued comedy with an amply stocked side dish of horror. Food snobs beware, Mylod's coming for you. 

     For most of its one-hour and 46-minute run-time, The Menu serves its observations with a sharp satirical edge.

       The movie owes much of its success to Fiennes, who plays Chef Julian Slowik, the culinary genius who presides over a restaurant so exclusive it's located on an island where all the food that's served is locally harvested. Diners arrive by boat.

     When he introduces a new course to the assembled diners, Slowik claps his hands loudly and the kitchen staff -- visible to the diners -- snaps to attention.  Slowik has turned his staff into a paramilitary food force. 

      The only response to any question Slowik might ask: "Yes, chef."

       The diners are a select group. John Leguizamo appears as an actor whose career has hit the downside. He arrives with his assistant (Aimee Carrero), a young woman who's ready to seek greener employment pastures.

        Judith Light and Reed Birney play a couple celebrating their anniversary, although they don't seem especially happy about it. 

        Taylor-Joy appears as the date of a young man (Nicholas Hoult) who thinks he knows a great deal about food. Hoult portrays the diner who hopes to impress the chef with his vast food acumen. He's eager to genuflect at Slowik's culinary altar.

        Diners also include a powerful career-making food critic (Janet McTeer) and the editor (Paul Adlestein) who publishes her work. 

       A table of young tech execs (Rob Yang, Arturo Castro, and Mark St. Cyr)  tosses around credit cards with the kind of abandon that lets everyone know they believe in their own sense of entitlement.

      A memorably scary Hong Chau portrays the stern maitre d of the restaurant Hawthorne. She greets guests, gives them a quick tour of the island, and otherwise informs them of the rules by which they must abide if they're to get the most out of their dining experience.

      The meals are amusing. A lone scallop served on a rock drawn from the sea, for example. Or how about a bread course distinguished by the absence of bread? The guests (only 12 are allowed) pay $1250 per person for the evening.

      Aside from Taylor-Joy's outspoken character, most of the guests are pretentious jerks. The screenplay by Seth Reiss and Will Tracy leads these exemplars of privilege to their well-deserved, often violent comeuppances.

       Fiennes makes an imposing dictatorial chef, who regards himself as an artist. Slowik instructs patrons that they must taste, not eat. People aren't eating meals, they’re sampling food conceptions, many mimicking the ambitions of “molecular”  gastronomy.

       A study in austere modernism, restaurant Hawthorne isn't just a place to eat, it's the physical embodiment of rarified consumer aspiration, which is pretty much what the movie’s about — not exactly a theme on which to feast but sufficient for some tasty grazing. 

                

Despite its ambition ‘Amsterdam’ falls short

      Director David O. Russell doesn’t always make things easy for himself — or for an audience.

      In Amsterdam, Russell aims big, offering a tilted comic take on a serious subject: the volatile political climate in America just after World War I and before World War II. 

    Creating a drama that swirls with plot and artifice in the early going, the story avoids disclosing its point until its final act when Russell not only clarifies what he’s been doing but tacks on an unconvincing message about the importance of love and kindness.

    That’s a mouthful of meaning and Amsterdam can't quite swallow it whole -- even with help from a strong cast that revolves around Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and David Washington.

   Bale, Robbie, and Washington play characters who meet during World War I. Assigned to lead a company of black soldiers, Bale's Dr. Burt Berendsen develops a lasting friendship with Washington’s Harold Woodman, who returns from the war to become a lawyer in New York City.

   After the war, Burt helps combat-disfigured vets reconstruct their faces using replacement parts that cover gaping wounds but have a stitched-together look that, to push a point, reflects the movie’s fractured soul. Berendsen’s patients are patchworks.

   Berendsen also suffered grave war injuries. He has a glass eye that Russell uses in comic fashion, abetted by Bale whose hair rises from his head like a garden of untended weeds.

   Married to a woman (Andrea Riseborough) whose family can't abide his mixed breed (Catholic/Jewish) origins, Burt struggles along until he and Harold are drawn into the mystery that propels the movie -- albeit in fitful fashion. 

  The movie's central trio is supposed to discover who killed their beloved military commander, a decent fellow played by Ed Begley Jr.

   Washington plays things fairly straight. During the war, Harold falls for Robbie’s Valerie Voze, a free-spirited nurse who creates art from shrapnel she removes from the bodies of wounded soldiers.

   In a playful interlude the three main characters travel to Amsterdam to recover from the war. Burt and Harold decide to return home, even though they might have continued to live with joyful abandon in Europe. 

   For a time, it seems that Amsterdam’s production design has been influenced by Wes Anderson, who specializes in creating environments that insist on existing on their own terms.

   Amsterdam features a host of talent in its supporting roles, too many to name here. I’ll highlight a few. Michael Shannon stands out as a CIA agent who works with a British secret agent (Mike Meyers). Bird lovers both, they make a fine comic duo.

   In the movie's third act, Russell introduces Robert De Niro as if he were a hole card being turned over by a gambler late in the game.

   De Niro appears as General Gil Dillenbeck, the most decorated marine in American history. American fascists and Hitler supporters are trying to turn Dillenbeck into a frontman for a coup.

    About three quarters of the way through a journey that sometimes seems mapless,  Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy turn up as the bother and sister-in-law of Robbie’s Valerie.

   Loosely based on real events, the movie eventually whips comedy and thriller elements into a political cautionary tale with obvious relevance to the current political environment in which some view elections as inconveniences.

  Fair to say that Russell needlessly complicated a story that might have benefited from more straightforward telling. Besides this period of American unease has been dealt with elsewhere, notably in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which turned into an even better HBO series.

   For me, the always adventurous Bale and Robbie are the mainstays of a movie that tries to capture the ingrained absurdity of human interactions during moments of high stress. Think the Marx Brothers only not as funny and without the anarchic glee.

  Amsterdam doesn’t match Russell’s best work in movies such as Three Kings and American Hustle. Sure, the performances can be tasty but this oddly realized movie often has the feel of an interesting fellow who answers the doorbell without first pulling himself together.

 

A wobbly mixture of horror and comedy

    If director Edgar Wright were a painter, his palette would be a riotous blur of colors, one bleeding into another.

     Just that kind of dizzying impact may have been what Wright was aiming for with Last Night in Soho, a mixture of horror and thriller tropes that alternates between contemporary Soho and the district during the 1960s.

   I called Last Night a horror film, but that’s not quite accurate. Although it spouts a fair share of blood, the movie also has a bouncy spirit that goes against the horror grain. It's upbeat horror.

   The story follows Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) from the country to London where she hopes to prepare herself for a career as a fashion designer.  Obsessed with the 1960s, Eloise enrolls in a school where the students seem to be moving at a faster social pace than the one to which she's accustomed.

   She should have known. Her grandmother (Rita Tushingham) already warned her about London's ability to swallow and destroy a naive young person.

   In an effort to escape the hard-partying atmosphere of her dormitory, Eloise rents a room in a house run by a landlady (Diana Rigg) who may be up to more than we expect. 

   Once ensconced in her new digs, Eloise begins to dream of life in Soho during the swinging Sixties. 

   If this is a dream, it vividly transports Eloise back to the time that long has fascinated her and gives the movie one more twist, this one involving time travel. 

   In its '60s segments, Eloise begins to follow the life of Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), a young woman who hopes to establish herself as a singer in London's fabled West End.

   The line between Eloise and Sandie begins to blur and the movie then contrives to teach Eloise that there’s more to the ‘60s than music and fashion. The ‘60s devoured dreams and dreamers, even slashed them to death.

   To achieve its cautionary goals, the story introduces a slick Londoner (Matt Smith) who promises to help Sandie achieve stardom. Let's just say he's not true to his word.

  Meanwhile back in the present, a fellow student (Michael Ajao) sees that Eloise is troubled. He tries his best to help but has no real grasp of the fact that Eloise's life includes increasingly harrowing trips to the 1960s.

  Terence Stamp drifts through the proceedings, a brooding threatening presence.

  A slick stylist, Wright (Baby Driver) has made a movie that eventually fails to be either amusing or frightening enough to save itself from being a muddled mashup that doesn't always track.

   And exactly what's at the heart of Wright's metaphorical assault on the '60s? Most likely it's youthful naïveté, low-hanging fruit that's too ripe for the picking.

   If you lived through the ‘60s, you may want to push aside the horror and attempted social commentary and simply enjoy the memories evoked by the movie’s soundtrack.

  Although there’s another danger here, as well. You may find Peter and Gordon’s A World Without Love running uncontrollably through your head. 

   Peter and Gordon? If you don't already know, don't ask.

'Radioactive' lacks the charge of authenticity

      Who knew?

     In the film Radioactive, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre go skinny dipping.

     I don’t know whether the real Madame Curie — winner of two Nobel Prizes — enjoyed such liberated pursuits, but little about director Marjane Satrapi's movie convinced me that I was watching something real. 
    In addition to being mired in period trappings, the movie strains (does it ever) to show both the healthy and devastating impacts of radiation. Scenes of Hiroshima, nuclear bomb tests, and a meltdown at a nuclear plant disrupt Curie's story, as does a hospital visit during the 1950s in which radiation helps a boy with cancer.
     The movie was adapted from a graphic novel by Lauren Redniss; a sweeping, time-shattering approach may have worked on the page. Here, it becomes awkward, even a trifle ludicrous at times.

     As played by Rosamund Pike, Marie Curie stands as an obvious avatar for female brainpower. Sam Riley portrays Pierre Curie, Marie's husband. Also a scientist, Pierre helps Marie with her landmark discoveries of radium and polonium. 

    Radioactive can be groan-inducing, falling prey to creative overreach in scenes such as a dream sequence in which Marie views the future of radioactivity, a replay of an already stated theme: Radiation can be used for good or evil.

     Satrapi, who directed the animated film Persepolis, begins by introducing us to the feisty Maria Sklodowska, a fiercely independent Polish emigre living in France, where she battles with the scientific establishment for lab space. Ms. Sklodowska, of course, becomes Mrs. Curie.

     What the movie doesn't underline, it telegraphs. Consider poor Pierre’s fate. He handles large amounts of pitchblende in the attempt to produce radium. We know it’s only a matter of time until he coughs some telltale blood into his handkerchief. 

     Pierre, as history demands, doesn't succumb because of the dangerous substances with which the Curie team worked. He's run over by a horse and wagon while crossing a Parisian street.
     Health-wise, it can’t be a good sign that Marie insists on taking a glowing green vial to bed with her. 

     The movie also spends time showing that Marie wasn’t afraid of being deemed a social outcast. After Pierre’s death, she had an affair with a married lab assistant (Aneurin Barnard), appalling even the live-and-let-live French.

    But wait. There’s more. 
    Late in the movie, Curie accompanies her by-then-grown daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy) to the battlefields of World War I, where the two hope to save wounded soldiers by using Curie’s X-Ray machine, shown here in a cumbersome portable version. Curie's daughter Irene went on to win a Nobel Prize of her own in physics and chemistry.
     If you grew up watching black-and-white TV, you probably remember that Greer Garson played Marie Curie in Madame Curie, a sanitized 1943 version of the Curie story. 

     No one likely will accuse Satrapi of trying to turn Marie Curie into a saint, but the movie's attempts to maintain a serious, high-stakes tone often spills into crippling melodrama or, worse, didacticism.
     In trying to be more than a standard-issue biography, Radioactive winds up being much less.

Another ‘Emma’ reaches the big screen

An aggressively well-appointed version of a Jane Austen novel gets the job done.

We hardly need an introduction to Emma, the title character of Jane Austen's 1816 novel. The young woman was the subject of a well-received 1996 Douglas McGrath movie starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Even greater numbers of viewers probably are familiar with Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, which starred Alicia Silverstone in a smartly conceived, high-school updating of Austen’s story.

Other Emmas have come and gone and some adventurous souls may even have read Austen’s novel. But Austen never seems to lose her appeal, which may explain why we now get director Autumn de Wilde’s 21st Century addition to the Austen big-screen canon.

De Wilde's Emma stars Anya Taylor-Joy (The Witch, Glass) as the smugly self-assured Emma, a young woman who has lived in happy isolation from life’s harder knocks.

For reasons that I couldn’t entirely discern, de Wilde and cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt decided to present the movie in a kind of strange way. Everything about the movie’s settings and costumes seems perfect, yet nothing seems entirely right. It may be pushing the point but it’s as if we’ve landed in a theme park devoted to the novelist’s work. Think Austenworld, where visitors are separated from the exhibits by velvet ropes.

If the approach was meant to heighten the cloistered rigidity of the world Austen observed, it becomes superfluous. Austen was no satirist, but she needed no help in pointing out the pretensions, social limitations, and hypocrisies of her characters.

Thankfully, Austen’s attempts to humble Emma -- making her aware that the world may not revolve around her -- remains. Better yet, the secondary roles are well-cast, from Bill Nighy as Emma’s constantly fretting father to Miranda Hart’s annoyingly loquacious but well-meaning Miss Bates to Mia Goth’s Harriet, a young woman who falls prey to Emma’s thoughtless manipulations.

Early on, Emma dissuades Harriet from marrying Robert Martin (Connor Swindells), a farmer who makes an obviously perfect match for her. Not good enough, says Emma as she sets Harriet up for disappointment.

Such is Emma’s issue; her faith in her own judgment blinds her to the feelings of others.

The key role of Mr. Knightley goes to Johnny Flynn, who brings hunky appeal to the character and who has the distinction of being the only Knightley in the story’s long history to be given a rear-view nude scene.

Austen’s story revolves around misdirected romance and signals that are misread, some involving Jane Fairfax (Amber Anderson) and the supposedly irresistible Frank Churchill (Callum Turner).

The key scenes — Miss Bates’ humiliation by Emma, for example — work well and Austen’s idea that love must be earned with expressions of good moral character survives. Besides, it's reassuring to see that, even with limited screen time, the ever-resourceful Nighy refuses to be held prisoner by a costume so constricting it made me uncomfortable just looking at it. (See photo above.)

He has personalities to spare

James McAvoy helps give M. Night Shyamalan's Split its charge.

First things first. Apart from The Sixth Sense, I'm not much of an M. Night Shyamalan fan. Having said that, I also have to say that Shyamalan's latest qualifies as a better-than-average horror/thriller, a movie that at its best, exhibits a nightmarish intensity.

Mostly set in a basement occupied by a loner with Dissociative Identity Disorder; i.e., multiple personalities, Split provides actor James McAvoy with a dream vehicle.

McAvoy acts out a variety of his character's 23 different personalities -- all set around a situation in which McAvoy's Kevin abducts three high-school girls and holds them as prisoners. Kevin declares his hostages "sacred food," and, in one guise or another, administers to them or scares the daylights out of them.

The kick of the movie involves the way these young women (Jessica Sula, Haley Lu Richardson and Anya Taylor-Joy) discover Kevin's various personalities, which include a nine-year-old boy named Hedwig, a prissy schoolmarmish woman and a guy who seems to regard himself as the caretaker of Kevin's underground domain. The precise location of Kevin's lair is part of the movie's mystery.

When Kevin meets with his mostly sympathetic psychiatrist (Betty Buckley), he usually appears as Barry, a flamboyant fashion designer. Buckley's character carries the burden of expanding the movie's reach. Her character believes that those suffering with D.I.D. may hold the key to a dimly understood form of human transformation.

Of the young women, only Taylor-Joy's Casey receives much by way of background; her story -- seen in flashback -- involves horrific experiences with an uncle who helped turn her into a dejected outsider.

None of this is to say that Split doesn't have exploitative elements: The girls all wear short skirts and sometimes less, the movie's climactic scenes probably push a little too hard and not all of Split proves credible.

Still, McAvoy, with shaved head and predatory grin, approaches his perverse task with obvious relish, and Shyamalan whips up plenty of tension -- even in the face of some predictable twists and turns.

January, of course, isn't known as prime territory for quality movies, but Split is creepy enough to satisfy the folks who like this sort of thing.

Stick around for the epilogue that begins during the end credits. It contains a surprise.

Evil in the woods of New England

The Witch either is a study of madness bred by isolation or a tale of the supernatural. It's grim, strange and sometimes too literal.

A New England-based horror movie set during the 17th Century, The Witch proves somber slice of horror that -- up to this point -- has garnered a significant amount of critical attention. Fair to say, the movie's first-time director, Robert Eggers, creates a physical environment that brims with stark, period-appropriate authenticity.

Eggers also serves up plenty of chilled atmosphere, creating a world bathed in light so severely grey it seems insufficient even to coax crops from the ground.

Taken from historical records of early settlers, the film's dialogue is delivered in accents that sometimes border on the incomprehensible and may sound a laughably stilted to "thine" ears. It did to mine.

For all its eeriness, Eggers' movie grapples with something real, the perils of isolation. The story begins with a super-religious family withdrawing from the main settler community because of religious differences. Are we to conclude that self-imposed banishment inevitably leads to tragedy and madness?

There's promise in such a premise, and it gives Eggers the opportunity to explore what happens when a family -- complete with resentments, fervid beliefs, budding sexual appetites and lots of physical hardship -- tries to put down roots in an isolated clearing surrounded by mysterious woods.

Eggers wisely opts to keep his imagery severe, and his cast certainly can't be faulted.

Ralph Ineson portrays the increasingly troubled father of this lonely brood, and Kate Dickie plays his suffering wife. As a couple, they make American Gothic look cheerful by comparison.

The principal role among the family's children goes to Anya Taylor Joy, who plays Thomasin, a teenager who's guilt-ridden because her infant brother disappeared while she was playing peek-a-boo with the boy.

Of course, we wait for more shoes to fall?

Will brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), who can't help sneaking a look at his older sister's emerging bodice, vanish? And what about the twins (Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson)? Are they doomed, as well?

Before it's done, The Witch has carted out at least one familiar symbol. A black goat represents Satan, and we also see a witch, a naked crone who seems indistinguishable from the forest's rot.

All of this takes place during a time when people worried about salvation the way we worry about Supreme Court nominations. God and the devil seemed to be equally vivid presences in Puritanical lives -- except, of course, for the fact that God remained invisible.

At times, I found the movie a bit ridiculous, and Egger can't resist dealing out a bit of graphic bloodshed, although I doubt it's enough to satisfy Saw-happy audiences.

Meticulously crafted, The Witch creates plenty of convincing eeriness, but yields to an evil temptation -- the literalism that forces Eggers to create images that ultimately undermine the film's stabs at ambiguity. Eggers' spectral crescendo of an ending either will strike you as eerie or risible.

I'm more in the latter camp, and by its ending, I felt The Witch had come close to shattering its macabre spell with Grand-Guignol theatrics the filmmakers weren't able to resist.