‘The Witch’: the horror movie Jenna Ortega says “never gets old”
Getting her start as a child, Jenna Ortega has quickly risen to become one of the most well-known new young stars in the business. She spent the early years of her career balancing child-friendly roles with ones in more adult-orientated projects, like Jane the Virgin and Insidious: Chapter 2, making it hard to predict the trajectory of her career.
Now, it appears she has found her niche: horror and thrillers. While it seems as though the actor isn’t limiting herself to these genres, she has gained the most acclaim by appearing in darker material, leading her to be dubbed one of the newest scream queens in Hollywood. The term has previously been used to describe horror stalwarts like Jamie-Lee Curtis and Neve Campbell, with Ortega seemingly taking over the crown for the new generation.
She appeared in The Babysitter: Killer Queen in 2020, although she really rose to prominence as a horror star in 2022 when she landed roles in five scary movies in a row: Scream, Studio 666, X, American Carnage and Scream VI. Of course, she also bagged the lead role in the Netflix show Wednesday, a supernatural drama helmed by one of cinema’s most gothic filmmakers, Tim Burton.
Naturally, Ortega is a big horror buff – why else would she be so attracted to such projects? Talking to Rotten Tomatoes, she revealed some of her all-time favourites from the genre, citing titles like Possession, Prom Night and Insidious as ones she always goes back to. However, there was one she claimed “never gets old” – The Witch. Released in 2015, the Robert Eggers movie emerged during a spate of releases that were dubbed as ‘elevated horror’.
The label is a rather reductive statement that suggests that certain horror movies have more cinematic merit than others when, in reality, most horror films are made with the intention of representing something deeper and metaphorical. The Witch is certainly a very complex work, though, relying on more than easy shocks and jumpscares (although there are plenty of graphic and brutal moments).
Set in New England during the 1600s, the film follows a family whose lives turn to chaos after they move to a new farm. After their baby goes missing, strange events begin to take place, leading the eldest daughter, Thomasin, to be accused of witchcraft. The family are torn apart (in one instance quite literally), resulting in a captivating supernatural ending. It’s an intense visual experience, standing as one of the best horror movies of the past decade.
The film gave Anya Taylor-Joy her big break, and it also put Eggers on the map as a promising new director. Both of them have had plenty of success since, with Eggers’ next project being an adaptation of Dracula based on the German classic Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, simply titled Nosferatu.
“I have a lot of admiration for The Witch,” Ortega explained. “Everything about it — the cinematography, storyline, the performances — it’s so high quality and so beautifully done. I think that’s a movie I thought about for weeks after I watched it.” Eggers’ movies are the kind you can imagine Ortega starring in, so it’ll be highly unsurprising if she ends up partnering with the director for a film in the near future.
