Be quiet and suffer as you should.

Now this is the type of stuff you should do with that Marvel money: Didier Konings, who worked as a concept artist on THOR: LOVE & THUNDER (2022) and DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS (2022) among other big budget studio projects, returns to his native Netherlands for his directorial debut in HERESY (Witte Wieven; White Women, 2024), a stunning folk horror movie about the Dutch Low Saxon (Nederlaands Leegsaksies) legends of the Witte Wieven, a type of ghost witches that haunt the forests. Made for television, commissioned by Dutch filmmaker Martin Koolhoven for his Koolhoven Presenteert TV anthology show, although you couldn't tell, the film is a spiritual cousin to Robert Eggers…

The third green dress in a row. 
I’m always entranced by this symbolic character. 
This film starts with pictures that look so close to The VVitch. Like it could be meant as a direct continuation of this witch-circle in the depths of the woods. 
It is based on a mythical Dutch legend of the Witte Wieven. White women, like ghostly creatures.
A kind of pagan witches. 
The story is not really new but it is kept tight and compact. 
The production design is really good. 
An authentic medieval settlement. 
Costumes, the dirty look, the meat master. 
Everything natural and raw. 
I wished the whole film would stay like this. 
There is even a gross and gruesome gory scene. 
When it…

“Our bed is no longer yours.”
“I’ll make a new place in the house.”

Aesthetically gorgeous, cinematically accomplished. 

Lush strawberry-blonde locks and fair eyebrows. Gingers have always been the devils own. I’d do a lot for Anneke Sluiters.

This joins the tradition of bleak, medieval misogynistic-Christianity forcing woman to find freedom and power in the preternatural magic of the forest. Old world good-for-her type shit with no metaphors. We love to see it.

VVitch seems like the obvious comparison but I found it closer to The Devils Bath and Hagazussa in theme and the richness of the colour palette, even with how cold most of it is.

Originally part of a 6-piece anthology where new directors were each given a…

Watched on NPO3 HD.

Dutch director and filmnerd Martin Koolhoven presents six short films of upcoming young talent set in atypical genre fare, for the Netherlands that is. "Witte Wieven" is the sixth and last one with a short introduction by Koolhoven and director Didier Konings with some behind the scenes footage.

Set in the Medieval dark ages in a small Dutch village of religious fanatics and superstition, Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) is trying to conceive a child and is frowned upon by the villagers. She's suspected of having a pact with the devil residing in the nearby woods. When she's chased by extremely rapey local butcher Gelo, she flees into the forest. Something evil saves her returning into the village…

To me, the power of a great horror film lies in its profound sadness — in the emotional connection you forge with a lead character because they, and they alone, have to undergo all the horrifying things that the darker side of the universe throws at them. Think The Vvitch; think Rosemary's Baby and The Shining; think all the best M. Night Shyamalan films.

This Dutch folklore horror flick succeeds admirably in following in those daunting footsteps, due to Nollkaemper's beautifully restrained and soulful writing, Sluiters' and the fellow cast members' gorgeously committed performances (in historical Nether-Saxon dialect, no less!), and a crew of young craftsfolk who all excel under the supervision of Konings, whose sense of drama and suspense…