Robert Eggers to Direct 13th Century Werewolf Thriller Werwulf

Yeah what I love about the witch is that it captures more than just the horror of like, you know, a witch, but also the hopeless 17th century Puritan nightmare of being excommunicated, ostracized and left to fend for yourselves in the woods in an unfamiliar country.

Idk, at a point it becomes its own weird marketing gimmick. Like, you can make a movie with period accurate 17th century English dialog, because, despite antiquated turns of phrase and whatnot, it is by and large the same language we speak today. Middle English (which is the more appropriate terminology for the vernacular in post-Norman Conquest Britain, not Old English), by contrast, requires significantly more effort to decipher, and I think it is unrealistic to expect any audience put up with a whole movie written in that way, and this is to say nothing of how period accurate pronounciation would further obscure the meaning of words which would otherwise be recognizable in writing.

To illustrate my point: 1600s English

To be or not to be, that is the question;

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep-

1300s English

When that Aprill with his shoures soote

The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich licour

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Can you piece together what Chaucer is saying there based on context clues and a decent vocabulary? Sure, it's not impossible, but, again, I believe a modern production written in that way becomes more about the filmmakers choice to use that language to tell the story than it is about the story itself. It's worth pointing out too that the language used in The Canterbury Tales is 100-200 years more modern than the time period of this film. Period accurate dialog would sound even further removed from modern English.

Now, with that being said, Eggers clearly has a talent for writing evocative period styled dialog so I'm happy to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I am a little wary of the marketing machine already spinning up here.