Name : Liz Braun / Alias : Toronto Sun
Helped by along by a great cast, a haunting soundtrack and terrific attention to period detail, The Witch is an auspicious feature debut for writer-director Robert Eggers.

Name : Molly Eichel / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
The Witch is a stressful movie to watch, and that's meant as the highest praise.

Name : Calvin Wilson / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
[Eggers] proves to be an original and accomplished storyteller with much more to offer than cheap shocks.

Name : Adam Graham / Alias : Detroit News
The Witch" isn't typical gorehound material; it has an art film prestige and a commitment to period authenticity.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
What makes this chillingly creepy little black-magic folk tale work so beautifully is its evocative sense of time and place . Well, that and composer Mark Korven's unsettling soundtrack full of screechy, dissonant strings.

Name : Chris Vognar / Alias : Dallas Morning News
Minimalist, slow to burn and utterly confident in its style and tone, Robert Eggers' Colonial New England fairy tale earns its chills the old fashioned way, through timing, atmosphere and skill.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
One often enters the theater hoping to discover an innovative talent who could be "one to watch" or "the next big thing." Wait no longer, Eggers has arrived.

Name : Bill Zwecker / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
From the very opening scene in The Witch, we are immediately thrown into an ominous journey that conveys pending doom.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
To my taste, the movie finally feels rather one-dimensional, basic. But there's no disputing its awful power - it gets under your skin .

Name : Sara Stewart / Alias : New York Post
It's a creepy little gem, and its imagery will stay with you long after you've left the theater.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
This phenomenal debut feature by Robert Eggers has a singular style and tone, and its horror flows from the deepest wellsprings of human nature.

Name : Robert Abele / Alias : Los Angeles Times
It isn't engineered for hopped-up date-night scares, but its blanket of moonlit dread is certainly form-fitting .

Name : A.A. Dowd / Alias : AV Club
As straight horror, The Witch is something special, transporting audiences to a bygone era that would look plenty frightening even without the paranormal activity that engulfs it.

Name : Randy Myers / Alias : San Jose Mercury News
For anyone seeking an intelligent, atmospheric American horror story reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, Hawthorne and the Brothers Grimm, "The Witch" is the kind of pure movie magic that sends chills up the spine.

Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
For once in a modern horror film, the tactics and developments are simple yet surprising, and the filmmaking captures its chosen time, place and dark corners beautifully.

Name : David Lewis / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's clear that this beautifully made film wants to root its horror in the less-is-more approach. But in this case, less is often just less.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
"The Witch" feels at once sticky with tangible detail and numinous with suggestion.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
Writer-director Robert Eggers is said to be detail-obsessed, and it shows.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
I would prefer seeing a failed attempt at something different than a regurgitation of every modern horror trope. Yet The Witch proves unable to capitalize on being different.

Name : David Ehrlich / Alias : Slate
Robert Eggers' uncompromising directorial debut is a bracingly new experience that boils with the primordial fever of America's original sins.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
Building his film on the diabolical aftershocks of Puritan repression, Eggers raises The Witch far above the horror herd. He doesn't need cheap tricks. Eggers merely directs us to look inside. Be warned: It'll scare the hell out of you.

Name : David Sims / Alias : The Atlantic
The movie's first-time director, Robert Eggers, blends authenticity with black magic, and the result is giddying.

Name : Todd McCarthy / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
Eggers creates a special feel and ambiance in his first feature after a couple of shorts.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
Eggers doles out the horror sparingly and eerily: an image of blood in a milk pail, a moving shape in the shadow of a barn. The movie uses lamplight and hearth light to conceal as much as they reveal.

Name : Scott Tobias / Alias : NPR
The Witch immediately joins the pantheon of great horror movies, with the caveat that it's just barely a horror movie at all.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
With a gentle rap-rapping, Mr. Eggers intensifies the shivers with art-film moves, genre shocks and an excellent cast that includes a progressively rowdy menagerie.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
This bravura first feature by writer/director Robert Eggers leaves the viewer shaken and wondering, "What just happened?"

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
Eggers' depiction of the family's psychological decay and his relentless piling up of deeply disturbing imagery make "The Witch" an unnerving and fresh-feeling horror masterwork.

Name : Stephanie Zacharek / Alias : TIME Magazine
The Witch has been made with extreme care, and part of what makes its supernatural elements so terrifying is that Eggers is also in tune with the more ordinary challenges of just being human .

Name : Alan Scherstuhl / Alias : Village Voice
All the dour zealotry is enlivened by horror elements that edge The Witch toward a welcome pulpiness - and greater honesty about what hokum the film actually is.

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
As a horror movie . the film's only flaw may be that that's how it reductively sees itself - as just a horror movie.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
With incredible attention to detail and an unwavering commitment to the world he has created, Eggers slowly, surely builds tension until it's almost unbearable. And that's delightful, if you're a horror fan. It's a terrific film.

Name : Ethan Sacks / Alias : New York Daily News
There's not much of a coherent plot that's been summoned up to go along with those impressive visuals.

Name : Brian Truitt / Alias : USA Today
The first great film of 2016 is a horror flick with Puritans, possessed kids, naked forest women and a haunting goat named Black Phillip.

Name : Andrew O'Hehir / Alias : Salon.com
Like any truly successful horror film, "The Witch" operates on various levels at once and is open to interpretation.

Name : Justin Chang / Alias : Variety
Writer-director Robert Eggers makes an impressive feature debut with this gripping historical horror-thriller.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : MTV
Like the Puritans themselves, the movie shuns drama. It has too much moral virtue for jump scares.

Name : Jake Coyle / Alias : Associated Press
What makes The Witch more than a mere museum reclamation project is Taylor-Joy.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
For fans of horror at its most sinister, "The Witch" is not to be missed. It casts a spell that lingers long after its most disquieting mists have cleared.

Name : Dan Callahan / Alias : TheWrap
Isn't afraid to go to some dicey emotional and sexual places in its pursuit of its theme, and it has the sense to let some things remain unexplained because they are scarier that way.

Name : Will Leitch / Alias : The New Republic
The Witch is wrapped up in its own views of religion, of sin, of feminine power, but more than anything else, it is wrapped up in itself.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
An unsettling journey back to a time when Satan seemed much closer to our world.

Name : Barry Hertz / Alias : Globe and Mail
A feature debut of startling confidence, Robert Eggers's The Witch is not only an excellent horror film, but also a captivating study in extreme paranoia and the fragile bonds of family.