Book-ending writer-director Robert Eggers's gorgeous and terrifying horror debut is a seeming contradiction. The film's subtitle "A New-England Folk Tale" implies a fable, yet the film's postscript attests to its veracity, noting that portions of dialogue were taken “directly from period journals, diaries, and court records."
The film's success results from Eggers's ability to transport his audience to that dark place where myth meets reality: deep inside a devout Puritan mind where God and the Devil are literal and inherent in every aspect of life.