History influenced The Witch

Robert Eggers built the script out of the primary documents, and the film is subtitled "A New-England Folktale" for that reason. The dialogue is assembled from period court records, diaries and pamphlets, which is why it is hard to follow and was not softened. The family's situation is documented practice: banishment from a plantation over a doctrinal dispute, a farm at the edge of the woods, a failing crop, and no neighbours. The point the sources gave him is the one the film runs on. To a Puritan family, the question is not whether witches exist but which member of the household has covenanted with the Devil, and the terror is that the answer is arrived at from inside the family, by the family.