After years of vampire and zombie supremacy, witches have clawed their way out of those beguiling Blair Witch woods and back into the horror mainstream. Which is a huge relief for anyone who, like me, can no longer look at a zombie for more than three minutes without becoming, well, zombified. And Twilight has done such a number on vampires that the poor bastards may never be scary again.

Witches, however, make fascinating and versatile horror adversaries.

Director Robert Eggers’s debut feature, The Witch, is a deeply unsettling collage of New England folklore with – horror of horrors – some surprisingly feminist themes.