It’s podcast week here at Way Too Indie as we have not one, not two, but THREE episodes of the Way Too Indiecast for your listening pleasure between now and Friday! With too many special guests to handle this week, we were forced to split them up into a trilogy of movie-talk goodness. From indie up-and-comers to festival programmers to Australian A-list actors (get me, bub?), we’ve got so many amazing interviews from across the entire movie spectrum for you in the coming days that you’d do yourself a disservice to not tune in to your favorite movie podcast EVER!

For today’s show, Bernard is joined by WTI’s own Ananda Dillon to review period-horror breakout The Witch, and we’ll also hear from director Robert Eggers to cap off the conversation. Closing out the show is longtime San Francisco movie-series programmer and organizer Elliot Lavine, whose new series “Hollywood Before the Code: SEX! CRIME!! HORROR!!!” is playing for six consecutive Wednesdays at the Castro Theater starting tomorrow night. It’s an insightful, unapologetic, entertaining conversation with one of the most knowledgeable, charismatic programmers in the country and it’s one true cinephiles won’t want to miss.

Be sure to come back tomorrow night for our interview with the folks behind the new film Eddie the Eagle, out in theaters this Friday. We’ll be chatting it up with director Dexter Fletcher, star Taron Egerton (Kingsman: The Secret Service) and his dashing co-star, the one and only Hugh Jackman! See you then!

Topics

• The Witch (7:34)
• Elliot Lavine (36:30)

Articles Referenced

• The Witch Review
• Robert Eggers Interview

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Robert Eggers‘ The Witch gets under your skin and stays there, making you feel a certain kind of filthy for a good chunk of time (for me, a few days of looking over my shoulder at night and rubbing the back of my neck like a crazy person). Contributing to the film’s noxious effect on the psyche are a litany of major and minor details: the American-gothic allure of the 1630s New England setting; actor Ralph Ineson‘s incomparable, gravelly voice; a collection of the most sinister-looking animals you’ve ever laid your eyes on. (Away, evil bunny! Away!) But the real reason The Witch sticks so tightly to the back of the mind is that it leaves us lost in the fog, uninterested in demystifying the terrible, unsettling, supernatural events we bear witness to. Super-serious horror movies aren’t my preferred branch of the genre but when they work, as Eggers’ film does, I can’t help but bow down as I quiver in my 17th-century boots.

The backdrop of this “New-England Folktale” (as the movie is subtitled) is an isolated farm on the edge of a dark wood where a Puritan family resides and tends to crop. Why anyone would choose to live with an ominous ocean of decrepit-ass trees at their back I don’t know, but in this instance, it was the decision of the family’s patriarch, William (Ineson). After being banished from their plantation community (for unknown reasons), the family needed a new place to make a life for themselves, hence the lonely little farm at the foot of hell’s gates.

With a stern hand and a booming voice, William raises his litter alongside his wife, Katherine (Kate Dickie), who’s scary in a stoic, nun-like way. They’ve got an infant, Samuel, who one day disappears while under the watch of their eldest, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy). While the parents and Thomasin’s younger brother, Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw, who has a shining moment that must be seen to be believed), are convinced the newborn to have been taken by wolves, young twins Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson) have a more twisted theory, that baby Sam was taken by the witch of the wood, who they believe to be none other than their dear older sister. The mischievous tykes’ tall tale would probably fall on deaf ears under normal circumstances, but Samuel’s vanishing has thrown the family into a state of panicked hysteria; suddenly, sweet, sensible Thomasin becomes the family scapegoat. Eggers gives us a glimpse of moldy corn, which may or may not effect your perception of the unfolding events. Curious.

Female repression emerges as the movie’s major theme as Thomasin is poked and prodded into a corner with dubious accusations slung at her by the twins and her own mother. The hatred mistrust spirals out of control when Caleb wanders into the forest and returns one night, naked and not quite himself. The blame’s heaped on Thomasin and even William begins to question his daughter’s virtue. One can only take so much abuse; if they want Thomasin to be the witch so desperately, maybe she should play along.

Eggers’ film is rife with Satanic imagery (the family’s goat is suggestively named “Black Philip”), but the real horror comes from the volcanic family tension and their religiously fueled motivations. The movie’s set in a time when things we now consider supernatural—witches, ghosts, demonic possessions—were strongly accepted part of the natural world. The Puritanical mindset of the time almost acts as a magnifying glass for the subconscious fears of moderns like us: Misogyny is disconcertingly prevalent in today’s society, but discrimination against women was even more extreme in the time of The Witch. Gender inequity is the source of myriad societal fears, anxieties, struggles, and conflicts, and at its core, Eggers’ story digs down to the roots of this enduring friction, particularly in this country. The fact that Thomasin is on the brink of sexual awakening just as her loved ones turn on her adds another layer of richness to the predominantly feminist narrative.

A jump-scare rollercoaster The Witch is not; it’s more like those dead-drop rides that crane you into the sky at an agonizingly slow clip and then plunge you toward the ground when you reach the apex. Moments of subtle, subconscious dread are stacked on top of each other carefully by Eggers until the overwhelmingly tense final act. I was relatively calm during the majority of the film, but I was absolutely frozen in fear for the last twenty minutes or so. The horror is cumulative, and the escalating, asymmetrical shape of Eggers’ story is a nice change of pace for the genre.

Take one look the detailed design of the family’s cabin and the period-accurate costuming and it becomes clear that Eggers’ background in theater production and scenic design is one of his most valuable assets. The textured, ashy, gothic imagery brings Bergman to mind, which speaks for itself. Cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, costume designer Emma Fryer and composer Mark Korven (whose wailing choral arrangements are absolutely blood-curdling) keep the movie’s production standards high on all fronts, working in concert to make The Witch one of the most put-together, elegant horror productions in recent memory.

Robert Eggers‘ The Witch opens this weekend, and if you shell out your hard-earned money to watch an independent, historically authentic period piece about a 17th-century Puritan family, I’d say that’s a win for all of us who love weird, geeky productions like this one. The slow-build horror movie centers on a cast-out family of seven living on the edge of a dark and scary wood, their minds warped and ires aimed at each other by an external, possibly supernatural force. Starring Ralph Ineson as the father, Kate Dickie as the mother and Anya Taylor-Joy in a breakout performance as their eldest daughter, the film is more Satanic-family-drama than scare-factory, though its climax had me absolutely frozen in fear. Atmospheric, well-acted and directed, and full of disturbing imagery you won’t be able to shake, The Witch is one horror fans shouldn’t miss.

In a roundtable interview, I spoke to Eggers about the film, which opens wide tomorrow, February 19th.

The 17th-century Puritanical mindset is something that’s pretty integral to your story. What’s special about it to you?
The most interesting thing to me was that the real world and the fairy-tale world were the same thing for everyone except for the extreme intelligentsia. Everyday life was imbued with supernatural stuff. Witches were real; that was something everyone knew and understood, and that was the end of the story. A witch today is a plastic Halloween decoration without a lot of impact, so if I could find a way to get audiences into the mindset of a 17th century English settler, the witch could be real and scary again.

Were there any models you had in terms of trying to recreate the sort of dead vernacular in the film?
I have a background in Shakespeare so I’m sort of comfortable around this kind of language but writing in it wasn’t easy. I studied the grammar and the vocabulary—there are books that do that kind of stuff—but then it was really digging into primary source material and jotting down phrases and sentences of all different kinds of situations and categorizing them. If I needed a greeting, I would take it. In earlier versions of the script, there were disastrous, cannibalized collages of other people’s words. It took a while to turn it into me. It’s a really interesting period for the English language.

What I really liked about the movie is it puts you in this state of mind that’s almost hallucinatory. I’d swear I saw things I didn’t actually see.
I like strong imagery and there were certain things I wanted to show. But your imagination is better than what I can give you. What scares you is more personal than anything I can provide. It’s important to keep things in the shadows and keep things restrained because then they can actually be effective. Some things, if I showed them to you, would not be scary—they’d just suck. Better to keep it in your imagination.

Was there anything you read in your research process that you really liked?
I don’t know if this is my favorite but I used it a hell of a lot: Louis Bayley’s The Practice of Piety, which was, like, a prayer manual. The majority of the prayers in the film are from that book. Kate Dickie, who played Katherine…the script would sometimes say “Katherine prays.” She had a digital version of that book on her iPad and she was just walking around the corn fields reading it. It was pretty cool.

Ralph Ineson has one of my favorite voices. Was his voice one of the reasons you wanted to cast him as William?
Honestly, before I thought we could cast Ralph, his voice was the voice of William when I wrote. I was expecting we were going to have to go down the route of getting a name to do our poor little indie movie. But luckily, when we finally found investors, they trusted in my vision to cast who I wanted. I was like, “Wow. Well…let’s try Ralph out!” He’s fucking incredible and he was so committed to the role. I’m happy to see him on the screen.

Did you set the movie in the early 17th century partly because there’s something inherently scary about that historical period?
Yeah. The idea of the supernatural world being real in the past was kind of crucial for me. When we do supernatural movies that take place today I find it hard. It’s metaphysical truths that don’t work for anyone today. There are obviously successful examples that prove me wrong, for sure, but I also just like the past. I don’t want to make contemporary movies currently. I just don’t give a shit. People ask why it’s set in 1630 and not during the Salem witch trials. Aside from the fact that I could have never afforded to have something of that scope, this is much scarier. [The family’s] so much more vulnerable because they’ve just arrived at this place.

Female repression is something that exists today but in the time your movie’s set, it was much more extreme. I imagine it’s helpful to your story that women in this period kind of had this ceiling they’re never able to break through. That’s a big theme.
I tried my damnedest to do my interpretation of how a family in Puritan New England might have experienced a witching. I wanted the camerawork to be subjective but I wanted to be objective about the themes and let people come to their own conclusions. Feminism just bursts onto the screen, out of history. It just rises to the top. You cannot ignore it. It’s clear, looking back from a contemporary perspective, that the evil witch in the early modern period is men’s fears and ambivalences and desires and fantasies about women and female power. It’s also women’s own fears about themselves and their own power and fears about motherhood. The shadows of that still exist today. Sometimes they ain’t shadows.

There’s sort of a hint in the movie involving moldy corn [as to what’s going on with this family]. How important was it to give moderns an idea of what was happening?
That’s cool that you saw the ergot because most people don’t. I one billion percent do not think Salem was because of ergot of the rye. I sound like a freshmen in college, constructionist loser, but we live in a world with certain rules that are given to us by science and we say it’s the best way of understanding things. But science really isn’t objective, actually. Today, science is our god. It’s not too juvenile to say that, in one hundred years, people will look back at us and think we’re wacky. All these different pieces, from ergot to what’s in your imagination, is all tied up in interesting knots.

Costume design is something I’ve been fascinated with lately. What was your approach?
We were just trying to recreate the clothing of the time. I took a lot of work. The source material, the creation of the script, is pretty easy to access for anyone. But the stuff we had to do to make the clothing and build the farm was more obscure. I was working with historians and museums and people in the living history communities to try to create this stuff. I did so much research for years, waiting to get the money. When I brought on Craig Lathrop and Linda Muir, I gave them piles of stuff and they were pumped. We went to great lengths. All the clothes were hand-stitched and made from patterns of extant clothing. One big compromise is that they are not all hand-woven cloth. Linda ordered swatches of all this stuff, and when we could afford it we used it, but where we couldn’t, her modern equivalents were fantastic.

With the farm, I wanted to build it the way they did back then, end of story. Craig said, “That sounds like a great idea but it’s the winter and we’re never going to be able to do it when we’re up to our balls in snow.” But everything that’s onscreen is the real thing. Everything onscreen is going to be the real materials. That did mean having to use traditional techniques and tools to make the stuff. Where we could use modern tools we did, but if modern tools betrayed the authenticity to the camera, we couldn’t use them.

It comes as a bit of a surprise that The Witch, currently heralded as one of the scariest movies of the year since its Sundance debut, isn’t really scary at all. Set in 1600s New England, the film follows a devoutly religious family of Pilgrims as they try to live on their own on a patch of land near a large forest. Everything seems fine until the family’s infant son gets snatched away by an unseen figure from the woods, and it becomes apparent that something seriously evil is trying to destroy this family by making their lives a living hell.

First, the good stuff: Writer/director Robert Eggers, also a former production designer, nails the period look down with his film’s small, distinct setting. And it’s hard to find a weak link in the cast either, with new actress Anya Taylor-Joy exuding a magnetic screen presence as the family’s eldest daughter Thomasin, along with her parents (played by Ralph Ineson and Kate Dickie). But Eggers gives up the ghost almost immediately by clearly showing that, yes, supernatural shenanigans are afoot, and by doing so, removes any ambiguity or fear from the proceedings. And rather than try to establish any tension, Eggers prefers to utilize poor jump scares sporadically between artfully composed shots, all of which amounts to little. It’s a suffocating horror film, though not in the way usually useful to horror films, taking itself so seriously it’s hard to enjoy.

Add to all of the aforementioned that a rather poor attempt to weave the subject matter into a sort of commentary on patriarchy and the oppression of women—and boy, I can’t wait for people to sink their teeth into how problematic the film is in this regard—and you have your reasoning as to why The Witch is one of the year’s biggest disappointments. It gets by on its impeccable acting and technical aspects, but nothing can hide that this is a horror film without any horror.

Is it even possible to whittle down TIFF’s line-up to 15? This year TIFF has 399 shorts and features playing the festival, an insane number that has us asking questions like “Why are there so many movies?” and “Why couldn’t the 400th movie be Carol?” among many others.

Every year at TIFF is an embarrassment of riches, and this year is no different, so we had a tough time narrowing our choices down to what we consider the essentials (even crueler: it’s unlikely we’ll catch all of these at the festival, meaning we’re praying some of these get released soon or get some sort of distribution deal). But we did manage to come up with a list, and it’s a varied one. There are some films we missed at festivals earlier this year, some brand spanking new ones by directors we love, a return from a master of the cinema, and one film from a newbie that looks like it could be one of the most unforgettable experiences of this year’s festival.

Read on to see our picks below, and be sure to keep reading the site for our coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival for the rest of the month.

Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman. A name that, for those familiar with the man’s work, justifies the length of a paragraph to be all but two words on this list. Kaufman’s screenplays—Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind–-burst people’s notions of original comedy, with plots, settings, characters, and dialogue that turned the ordinary into the fascinatingly unique. It’s easy to get lost in Kaufman’s eccentricities, but there’s profound stuff underneath his squiggly surface (especially evident with his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York). His latest effort is a stop-motion animation feature, co-directed by Duke Johnson, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, David Thewlis, and Kaufman regular Tom Noonan providing the voice talent, about a misanthrope travelling to Cincinnati to give a keynote speech about his bestselling book on customer service. From the purportedly fantastic look of the film, to the much welcomed return of Kaufman’s sui generis imagination, everything about Anomalisa so far (including early raves from Telluride) fills this film to the gills with promise. [Nik]

Arabian Nights

Miguel Gomes has been popping his head out from the subterranean levels of arthouse since 2008’s Our Beloved Month of August, but it was his sensational and half-silent 2012 film Tabu that wrote him on the proverbial map with permanent ink. Now he’s back with what is his most ambitious effort to date, a sprawling 6-hour epic split into three volumes based on the infamous Middle Eastern and Asian stories, 1001 Nights. Going by the popular English title of the collection, Arabian Nights pushes the boundaries of narrative with its three volumes—titled The Restless One, The Desolate One, The Enchanted One respectively—and sets events in Portugal, elucidating on the country’s socioeconomic issues through allegory and Gomes’ signature vigor for cinematic storytelling. Using a mesh of satire and fantasy, fiction and non-fiction, the film has been hailed as a genuinely stirring cinematic experience in all respects since it premiered in Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight, and we are beyond excited to see it at TIFF. [Nik]

The Assassin

Gestating in development for over ten years, and scaling a mountain of budgetary hurdles all while learning to adjust to the ever-changing climate of film production, Hou Hisao-Hisen’s latest film is finally here. For a film that’s been anticipated this long, directed by a beloved legend of Taiwanese arthouse cinema, the hype for The Assassin was strained with a mix of excitement and slight trepidation before it premiered at Cannes. The film turned out to be a critical hit, and Hou was commemorated with a Best Director prize (many believed it would walk away with the Palme). This wuxia tale follows a trained killer (Shu Qi) who is forced to choose between her heart and her profession when she gets her latest assignment. Yeah, it’s a synopsis bland enough to fit the description of the worst kind of Steven Segal movie, but its plot is not why The Assassin has already been hailed as a masterpiece by many. With a master filmmaker at the helm, the film’s qualities are found in its aesthetics, mood, composition, and a refined kind of slow-burning mystery that seems to cast a spell on all who see it. Yummy. [Nik]

Baskin

After discovering Baskin’s inclusion in the Midnight Madness programme, I contacted director Can Evrenol to get a glimpse at his 2013 short film (which this film is based on). Evrenol was gracious enough to let me see his short, and the moment it ended I knew I had to catch his feature-length adaptation at TIFF. Both the short and the film have the same synopsis: a group of cops responding to a call for backup arrive at an abandoned building that turns out to be the home of some sort of horrifying dark arts ritual. By the time the cops realise they’ve stumbled into some seriously freaky, occult type stuff, all hell literally breaks loose. The short is a brief and twisted slice of fun, and Baskin looks like it’s expanding in all the right ways: gorier, nastier, and with plenty more horrifying surprises in store. Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes has gone on record saying that Baskin might rival the legendary premiere of Martyrs at TIFF in 2008, and based on what I’ve seen of Baskin, I’m inclined to believe he might turn out to be right. [C.J.]

Beasts of No Nation

Fresh off the enormous success of True Detective, Cary Fukunaga returns to the big screen with more critical clout than ever before. Beasts of No Nation marks the writer/director’s third feature, and it looks to be a work of greater intensity and visceral impact than either of his previous films. From a Mexican immigration drama (Sin Nombre) to a classic bildungsroman adaptation set in Victorian England (Jane Eyre), Fukunaga now takes us to an unnamed country in Africa where a young boy struck by tragedy is forced to become a child soldier in a ferocious civil war. Fukunaga’s versatility is truly impressive, and with this film carrying the added plus of Idris Elba (in what could potentially be his greatest role yet), I’d say it’s shaping up to be yet another feather in the cap of an exciting and steadily rising filmmaker. [Byron]

Black Mass

Scott Cooper is someone who hasn’t quite broken out yet as a “name director.” Crazy Heart was acknowledged for its performances and music despite being a solid character study with real directorial sensitivity, and while Out of the Furnace proved to be somewhat bland and predictable, it still contained glimmers of a filmmaker with a distinct vision. With his third film, Black Mass, Cooper is tackling something of significant scale. It’s the story of the notorious gangster Whitey Bulger, and the project boasts a killer cast. Johnny Depp arrives in heavy makeup once again, this time in a different context, and he appears to be in rare form, exuding charisma that is terrifyingly deceptive rather than merely quirky. With such a weighty subject, there’s a lot that could go wrong, but hopefully Cooper rises to the occasion and finally takes the spotlight, delivering something more like The Departed than Killing Them Softly. [Byron]

Cemetery of Splendour

Arguably the greatest arthouse filmmaker of the 21st century, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is more beloved than the spelling of his full name is hard to memorize. Every feature he’s directed—most especially Tropical Malady, Syndromes of a Century, and Palme D’Or-winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives—has been studied by cinephiles for their hypnotic power and spiritual sensations. His latest is titled Cemetery of Splendor, and if that’s not enticing enough (it should be), its Cannes premiere was met with the kind of plaudits worthy of Weerasethakul’s venerated oeuvre. The film follows a housewife who volunteers at a clinic where she befriends a soldier with a mysterious sleeping sickness and meets a medium who helps family members communicate with their comatose relatives. In typical Weerasethakul fashion, dreams, memory, and romance are weaved together to create a mystical viewing experience. We couldn’t be more ready for this. [Nik]

Evolution

Way back in January of this year, I picked Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution as one of my most anticipated films of 2015. I figured it would premiere at Cannes, given it went into production last year, but Cannes came and went without her film appearing. I forgot about the film (partially to not disappoint myself again), so once it got announced at part of TIFF’s Vanguard programme this year I was ecstatic. Little was known about Evolution back when I first wrote about it, but now there’s a better idea of what to expect. The film centres on a ten-year-old boy living on an island with no adult males, only women and young boys like himself. The boys undergo various medical experiments, and Nicholas decides to investigate what’s going on. Rather than explain why Evolution is on my radar again, I’ll just quote its programmer Colin Geddes who told me it’s “a sublime, body horror, fairy tale mystery.” I don’t think it’s possible to hear a description like that and not get intrigued. [C.J.]

High-Rise

I won’t lie: I’ve been deliberately avoiding learning much about Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, which is having its world premiere this year in TIFF’s competitive Platform programme. I know it has a killer cast (Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Elisabeth Moss and Luke Evans, to name a few). I know it’s an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel, it involves different people living in an apartment building, and that Clint Mansell is doing the score. That’s about it. So why am I putting this down as one of my most anticipated titles of TIFF? Because Ben Wheatley is one of the more exciting names in international cinema right now, hopping between genres with ease and delivering films that are truly distinct. This looks like a return to the moodier, intense fare of Kill List along with the chamber piece quality of his terrific debut Down Terrace (which largely took place in a house). High-Rise sounds like a literal expansion for Wheatley compared to his low-budget first feature: a bigger cast, a bigger budget, a bigger location and a bigger scale. Here’s hoping Wheatley makes the most of it. [C.J.]

Mountains May Depart

To be honest, I don’t know much about Mountains May Depart, but what I do know is that Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin was one of the best movies to emerge from 2013. Brutal and depressing in equal measures, the film is an anthology that presented the deeply troubled nature of modern China through powerful allegory. Jia’s follow-up seems to cover similarly ambitious ground, spanning two generations and confronting the effects of a rapidly changing societal landscape. No matter what the story details are, Mountains May Depart is a must-see purely because it places the audience in the secure hands of a great cinematic social commentator. [Byron]

Office

Want to know how much I love Johnnie To? Whenever I see the word “musical” I tend to run in the other direction, yet I’m clearing my TIFF schedule to fit in the musical Office because he’s helming it. The film marks two firsts for To, a director who’s been working for decades with an insanely prolific and consistent output; it’s his first musical, and his first film in 3D. Seeing To tackle new areas only gets me more excited, because he’s shown multiple times that he has no problem adapting any genre to his economic and quick-paced style. Based on the hit play by Sylvia Chang (who also stars in Mountains May Depart), Office sounds like a continuation of To’s recent fixation on the corporate class and the 2008 financial crisis seen in films like Don’t Go Breaking My Heart and Life Without Principle. But this time, To has recruited big names like Chang and Chow Yun-Fat, along with (what sounds like) full-blown song and dance numbers. Early word on Office has been great, and I can’t wait to see what will surely be To’s unique take on the musical. [C.J.]

Sunset Song

Suffused with rich feeling and evocative melancholia, Terence Davies’ movies are like a vintage wine that sentimentality has rendered priceless; only to be uncorked for a momentous occasion. Which is exactly what the world premiere of his latest picture, Sunset Song, already feels like. Coming off the heels of The Deep Blue Sea, probably the most underrated and misunderstood film of its year, Sunset Song is a period piece set in the cinegenic Scottish countryside of the 1930s, and based on a book by Lewis Grassic Gibon that’s been called the most important Scottish novel of the 20th century. Other than a few gorgeous-looking stills, and the announcement of the cast which includes the brilliant Peter Mullan, mum’s been the word on the details behind Davies’ adaptation. But if he sticks close to Gibbon’s story, we’ll be following the hard life of young Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn), a woman growing up in a dysfunctional household, on a farm in Scotland. We expect nothing less than the same refined and lyrical cinematic precision we’ve been getting from one of Britain’s most celebrated auteurs. [Nik]

Where to Invade Next?

America’s most divisive filmmaker returns with a new documentary sure to inspire an avalanche of critical blog posts, angry tweets and bitter Fox News segments. It’s been six years since Michael Moore released Capitalism: A Love Story, and little is known about his new project outside of the vague notion that it will concern the United States’ unending condition of being at war in some capacity. I’ve always been fond of Moore’s work, despite the loudness of his mouth and the dubiousness of his specific claims. For sheer entertainment value, his films are about as hilariously satirical as documentaries get, but beneath the unabashed agenda and supposed methods of misdirection lies a sobering reality demanding our immediate attention. For this reason, I can’t wait to see Where to Invade Next? and revel in the controversy it will inevitably stir up. [Byron]

The Witch

If the reactions out of Sundance earlier this year are any indication, The Witch is the latest installment in a recent string of thoughtful indie horror pictures (such as It Follows and The Babadook) vying for “instant classic” status. The film is a period piece—something far too uncommon in the genre these days—and tells the tale of 17^th century New England settlers encountering evil forces in a nearby forest while perhaps confronting their own inner demons as well. I like my horror cinema grim and ambiguous, and the film’s brilliant trailer seems to promise a gloomy tone and ominous atmosphere, along with what might be the most malevolent on-screen goat since Drag Me to Hell (although likely not as humorous). A 2016 release date pretty much guarantees a series of sold-out shows at this year’s fest, so don’t hesitate to check it out if you get the chance. [Byron]

Yakuza Apocalypse

Back in May when Yakuza Apocalypse premiered at Cannes, it sounded like Takashi Miike was back in full-force. But then again, considering his insanely prolific output (I’ve lost track of his films, there are too many), “full-force” seems to be status quo for Miike. The image above should give you an idea of what Yakuza Apocalypse might be like: insane, bonkers, all over the place, nonsensical and yet completely entertaining to watch. The film starts out with a Yakuza boss revealed to be a vampire, and soon the entire town he rules over gets converted into vampires as they try to remove threats to their way of life. And also there’s something about a fighting alien toad, the apocalypse, and whatever else Miike could think of apparently. When it comes to Miike, I don’t ask questions anymore. He’s proven himself to be an amazing director, so when I get the chance to see one of his latest films I’ll go on blind faith. Sometimes his films don’t work out for me, but other times they work spectacularly. Yakuza Apocalypse looks like it’s going to fall more into the “spectacular” category. [C.J.]

It feels like 2014 all over again. Last year, audiences at Sundance could not stop raving about Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, a horror film that apparently scared the crap out of anyone who saw it. This year, it happened again: Dave Eggers’ directorial debut The Witch screened to raves from terrified critics at Sundance, and quickly turned into one of the most buzzed about films at the festival. A24 quickly snatched up distribution rights, and now after months of waiting, a very unsettling trailer has arrived. Here’s a rundown of the plot if you don’t know:

Set in New England circa 1630, The Witch follows a farmer who get cast out of his colonial plantation and is forced to move his family to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest rumored to be controlled by witches. Almost immediately, strange and unsettling things begin to happen-the animals turn violent, the crops fail, and one of the children disappears, only to return seemingly possessed by an evil spirit.  As suspicion and paranoia mount, everyone begins to point the finger at teenage daughter Thomasin. They accuse her of witchcraft, which she adamantly denies…but as circumstances become more and more treacherous, each family member’s faith, loyalty, and love will be tested in shocking and unforgettable ways.

And despite our best efforts to go into this one blind, we couldn’t resist getting a peek at the film, and this one looks like it’s going to be quite a trip. Unfortunately, A24 has only given us a tentative release date of “2016” for The Witch, meaning we’ll have to wait a bit longer to watch all the madness unfold. But if you’re lucky enough to attend this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, The Witch will have its Canadian premiere there. We’re hoping we’ll catch a glimpse soon, because after watching this trailer, 2016 feels very far away.

We’ve already seen which films took home precious awards from this year’s Sundance Film Festival; Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s adaptation of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl received top honors winning the Grand Jury Prize for drama (as well as the Audience Award) and The Wolfpack won on the documentary side of things, directing awards went to Robert Eggers for The Witch and Matthew Heineman for Cartel Land, and other winners include Lee Haugen for Dope, Tim Talbott for The Stanford Prison Experiment and sci-fi drama Advantageous.

But which films generated the most buzz on social media? The infographic below (created by Way To Blue, no affiliation with Way Too Indie, we swear!) shows not only which films were most talked about during Sundance, but also which films people intend to view.

Sundance 2015 Social Media Infographic

This measures the proportion of total buzz or conversation which is ‘Intent’ focused or driven, and thus provides a more indicative measure of the impact of social buzz for our clients business, and takes us one step further than awareness. Way To Blue have devised a bespoke keyword search encompassing a range of natural language keyword sets which represent an audience’s intent to view a movie or engage with a brand, for example “gotta see”’, “can’t wait to see” etc. The keyword set is constantly evolving to account for changing colloquialisms, vernacular & languages across our international work, which social media platforms are often so famous for.” This is measured via a bespoke set of keywords WTB have developed to measure and pick up on Intent related conversation within total conversation.