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When the first trailer for The Witch dropped in August 2015, everything about the feature was still a mystery. True, The Witch had stirred up a buzz at its Sundance Film Festival premiere. However, leading lady Anya Taylor-Joy and newbie director Robert Eggers were unknown quantities to the general public.
That eye-catching and harrowing trailer certainly put this movie on people’s radar, though. Here was a horror movie that looked like nothing else in the mid-2010s horror marketplace. The trailer’s uniqueness even extended to the final line of dialogue spoken against a black screen. Those fateful words “let us leave to the woods” were uttered in the iconic voice of actor Ralph Ineson.
Playing patriarch William in The Witch was the first prominent role Americans saw this British character actor inhabit. However, it wouldn’t be the last. After leaving a massive impression in The Witch, Ineson became a fixture of the last decade of horror cinema.
That prominence extends to the new horror movie The First Omen. Here, Ineson inhabits the role of Father Brennan from the original Omen. Sometimes, less is more, including the presence of certain actors in specific genres. Horror cinema has been all the better because of Ineson’s ubiquity. This actor has built on his masterful work in The Witch to become a modern horror icon.
Part of that iconic stature comes from something simple: Ralph Ineson never condescends to the world of horror. These titles aren’t Ineson dipping his toes into “frivolous” territory before he takes on “real” acting gigs. Before his exploits in The Witch, Ineson had worked with auteurs like Mike Leigh, John Crowley, and Ridley Scott. These features often featured Ineson on-screen in smaller roles. However, they meant he got to work with some of the best filmmakers in the business. That experience helped him hone his craft as a performer.
Ineson’s brief part in Leigh’s Another Year is especially relevant in this regard. With minimal screentime, Ineson as “Drill Worker” exudes an authenticity reminiscent of the performances around him. It also fits in with the naturalism populating Leigh’s filmography. Ineson conveys a lifetime of experiences even with minimal screen time.
These exploits with veteran filmmakers paid off divinely once this man started working in horror films. Ineson lends the same level of conviction to The Witch and The First Omen that he did to Another Year. You don’t get a more checked-out version of Ineson when he’s in a genre film. Instead, Ineson deploys his gifts as an actor from earlier dramatic titles into his scary cinema roles, lending extra compelling tangibility to his horror performances.
Ralph Ineson doesn’t just wield gifts as a dramatic performer, though. This actor’s become a welcome presence in horror thanks to his physicality and his iconic voice. Standing 6’3″ and announcing every word in a booming crackling Yorkshire accent, Ineson often towers over his co-stars while communicating his dialogue in an instantly arresting voice.
These qualities immediately draw your eye to Ineson, he’s unlike anybody else in a given scene. Sometimes, these elements are used for surface-level means in horror movies. For instance, the 2023 scary feature The Pope’s Exorcist used Ineson solely in a voice-over capacity. Specifically, this motion picture used his idiosyncratic pipes as the voice of the demon Asmodeus speaking through a possessed child. It was a classic vocal approach for a demonically possessed youngster in a horror film. Thankfully, this safe creative choice benefited from Ineson going whole-hog on the menacing possibilities of his voice.
However, other horror features have used the vocals and height of Ineson for more interesting and subversive means. Just look at The Witch. Here, Ineson plays a settler father embodying how man is often powerless when trying to “control” or “tame” the natural world.
What’s fascinating in The Witch is how the character’s increasing desperation contrasts with Ineson’s height and authoritative voice. Ineson masterfully portrays William’s increasing rage and despondence; his deftness at capturing William’s vulnerabilities (accentuated by his eventual demise at the hands of goat Black Phillip) is extra impactful, considering how tall and vocally commanding this man is. Even such a thunderous human being withers in the face of paranoia and larger supernatural forces.
By contrast, Ineson’s physicality and voice are used for kinder purposes in The First Omen. Here, Ineson’s frame is utilized to initially instill distrust in protagonist Margaret Daino (Nell Tiger Free). Can she trust this guy spewing conspiracy theories and towering over her? Brennan later becomes a confidante she turns to in times of peril. Now Ineson’s booming voice and tall body are used to quietly suggest a sense of trustworthiness.
His vocals sound like they belong to a man who knows what he’s talking about. Meanwhile, the tall Father Brennan seems like he could handle himself in a fight against evil forces. Comparing these two performances in The Witch and The First Omen shows excitingly varied ways to utilize Ineson’s idiosyncratic aspects.
Ineson’s gift for injecting horror movies with an extra sense of gravitas cuts both ways. Specifically, Ineson has now become a master at imbuing an ominous air into movies that aren’t technically horror films. Take his work as the titular being in the fantasy adventure film The Green Knight, for instance.
Ineson’s physicality and line deliveries as this fantastical being are ominous, he thrives as a performer on juxtaposition. The Green Knight looks like nothing else in the room and looms over everyone else in a given scene.
However, Ineson plays him as a weary figure assured in his strength and knowledge. He doesn’t ham it up nor does he accentuate his body language to come across as “weird.” Instead, The Green Knight seems to permanently carry burdensome experience and horrifying knowledge on his back.
There’s a densely lived-in quality to the character that sets viewers on edge. The Green Knight doesn’t need to call attention to his powers. His composure suggests he could destroy you in the blink of an eye. All these rich and unnerving ideas are communicated through Ineson’s gait in this performance!
Similarly effective is his brief but memorable work in The Tragedy of Macbeth. Playing one of the first figures on-screen (a wounded man known as The Captain), Ineson must immediately convey this adaptation’s minatory air.
Macbeth inhabits a dying world, much like Ineson’s character is grasping at the last seconds of his life. Ineson proves more than up to the task, conveying a vivid sense of despair in his screen time. This man’s mastery of horror performances means he can send chills up your spine even outside of the horror genre.
Something unifying many of these horror and non-horror performances is Ralph Ineson’s gift for being instantly believable in period pieces. Save for the occasional foray into horror set in the modern world like Brahms: The Boy II, Ralph Ineson has largely been confined to titles set in the past.
Not every actor could consistently be authentically true to eras ranging from the 1700s to the 1970s. However, Ineson pulls it off. Once again, Ineson’s lengthy experiences in grounded dramas benefit his work in horror cinema. This man makes the archaic vernacular of his Witch character, for instance, sound natural rather than a mishmash of vintage verbiage.
This deftness means Ineson makes the yesteryear worlds of The Witch and The First Omen feel extra immersive. This realistic quality means they also eventually become even more terrifying to explore.
It doesn’t look like Ralph Ineson will be ending his hot streak in the domain of horror cinema anytime soon. One of his upcoming releases is the latest Robert Eggers horror feature, Nosferatu. Nearly a decade after The Witch premiered, Ralph Ineson is still drawn to horror auteurs.
Devotees of scary movies have richly benefited from such a master of dramatic performances becoming a fixture of the genre. Whether he’s staring down Black Phillip, voicing a possessed youngster, or inhabiting a famous role from the original Omen feature, Ralph Ineson is always a terrifyingly welcome presence.
For more, read our exclusive interview with Ralph Ineson on The Witch. You can catch Ineson in The First Omen now playing in theaters. Make it a double feature! Here are all the new horror movies in theaters this weekend.
