The Witch (2016)

This awe-inspiring first feature film from The Northman (2022) writer and director Robert Eggers, The Witch (2015) pulls from 17th century New England exactly, using diaries and journals for dialogue, exact costume replicas, and real folklore to construct something that might be paranormal—or might just be inside the mind. In the film, after a religious dispute a devout family is banished to the outskirts of town, where they try to establish a farm right next to the woods. At first they take to the task with devotion and God-fearing hope. But soon enough, their infant son goes missing and the family is convinced a witch kidnapped and sacrificed him. The family's grieving mom (Kate Dickie) finds herself doing strange things like lying in an open grave and attempting to breastfeed a bird, which leaves their oldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) to shoulder much of mom's responsibility. Meanwhile, her brother (Harvey Scrimshaw) is super horny, and big sis is by far the hottest girl in the middle of nowhere. On top of all that, their crops are failing so they're stuck trying to hunt for food to survive the winter. Plus, their goat might be possessed by the devil, Thomasin gets accused of being a witch by her dad, and there may well be an actual spellcasting sorceress terrorizing them at night. Not great. With all those issues, who wouldn't look at a coven and think if you can't beat em, join em? Luckily for us, in Eggers' world the Puritan girls are babes, who give us super impure thoughts. As a witch, Bathsheba Garnett flashes a bit of ass in a super dark scene, while Sarah Stephens tempts the young man with her colossal cleavage deep in the woods. Those things are mesmerizing! But the most shocking scene in the movie is when Thomasin strips down to hop on a broomstick, once she decides to become a witch herself. The problem is, this witch pulled a switch: Anya Taylor-Joy used a body double! If this is what the girls looked like in Salem, forget about their witchcraft, we'd have tried to nail em!