Movie reviews: The Witch, Kung Fu Panda 3, Traders

The Witch 5/5

Set in New England in 1630, The Witch (15A) opens with Puritans William (Ralph Ineson) and Katherine (Kate Dickie) being banished to the wilderness along with their young family.

Their eldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), is minding their baby Samuel one evening when Samuel disappears: was Samuel taken by a wolf, or did something more sinister emerge from the ancient forest to steal him? Or is that Thomasin’s angelic looks disguise a heart of pure evil?

Written and directed by Robert Eggers, The Witch begins as a conventional horror story, although its original sub-title — ‘A New England folktale’ — confirms that Eggers has in mind something a little more sophisticated than broomsticks and bumps in the night.

The tone is one of growing unease at what might lurk in the dark forest, the eerie atmosphere expertly captured by Jarin Blashke’s depiction of a particularly bleak and cruel New England wilderness, but The Witch is a complex and utterly engrossing tale that explores the horror that lies in the darkness of human hearts and minds as the pressure of failing crops and hunger warps religious ecstasy into a paranoid insanity.

The performances are superb, with Ineson excellent as the gruff, pious father despising himself for suspecting the worst of his daughter, while Taylor-Joy is luminescent in the pivotal role of the young woman who finds herself suffering the brutal consequences of a conflict between immovable faith and creeping doubt.

It’s not often you experience a horror film that is as moving as it is terrifying, and the fact that The Witch is Egger’s feature-length directorial debut makes it all the more remarkable.

Set during Ireland’s economic crash, Traders (16s) poses a question: what if the only way to survive and prosper was to engage in one-on-one combat with the spoils going to the person who kills the other?

Written and co-directed by Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy, Traders opens with Vernon (John Bradley) proposing his anarchic scheme to his friend Harry (Killian Fox), arguing that all successful entrepreneurs are effectively psychopaths.

Harry laughs off the idea at first, but soon — working in a mind-numbing job and strapped for funds — he finds himself engaged in life-or-death struggles for bags of cash.

It’s a blackly comic premise that brings to mind an Irish (and more extreme) version of Fight Club, but once the initial idea is brought to fruition, the narrative tension and the imaginative creativity seem to plateau.

Bradley is terrific here as the slimy wannabe entrepreneur, but Fox’s character of Harry isn’t as fleshed out as perhaps he should be — the fight scenes convey a particularly gritty realism, but Harry never seems to suffer emotional pangs as a result of his actions.

The motivations are questionable too: Harry, who has a job, becomes a killer to provide himself with financial comfort rather than out of a desperate instinct to survive.

As a result, and despite the intriguing high-concept scenario, it becomes increasingly difficult to care who lives or who dies.

The ‘dragon warrior’ panda bear Po (voiced by Jack Black) returns in Kung Fu Panda 3 (PG), and all of his ‘legendary adventures of awesomeness’ will be required to defeat the mighty General Kai (JK Simmons), who emerges from the spirit world determined to steal the chi of all the great kung fu masters and thus make himself the most powerful being in creation.

Meanwhile, Po has the small matter of meeting his father Li Shan (Bryan Cranston) for the very first time; and as if that wasn’t enough to be going along with, Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) decides that the time is come for Po to become the kung fu teacher of his colleagues, including Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan) and Mantis (Seth Rogen).

On paper that might sound as if the makers of Kung Fu Panda 3 (Alessandro Carloni and Jennifer Yuh direct this outing) are trying a little too hard to justify the necessity for a third instalment in the franchise, but on celluloid it all works out very neatly indeed.

The threat posed by the monstrous General Kai and his army of jade zombies is repeatedly undercut when the people he intends to terrify draw a blank when he roars out his supposedly fearful name, and the emotional storyline featuring Po reuniting with his biological father Li Shan is artfully contrived.

The most striking aspect of this family-friendly tale, however, is the fabulous animation, which draws on an eye-poppingly vivid palette of colours, particularly when the makers create flashback scenes with an impressionistic take on classic Chinese pen-and-ink drawings.