The film tells the story of a young woman who is forced into a marriage with an elderly pastor after her late mother was accused of witchcraft.

Anne, a young woman, is married to the aged local pastor, Absalon Pedersson, who is involved with the trials of witches, and they live in a house shared with his strict, domineering mother Meret.

Anne is thus informed by Herlof's Marte of her mother's power over people's life and death and becomes intrigued in the matter.

Absalon regrets that he married Anne without regarding her feelings and true intentions, and tells her so, apologizing for stealing her youth and happiness.

Anne initially denies the charge, but when Martin sides with his grandmother she is faced with the loss of his love and trust, and she confesses on her husband's open coffin that she murdered him and enchanted his son with the Devil's help.

To depict it, Svierkier was tied to a wooden ladder, and Dreyer left her there while the rest of the cast and crew went for lunch, over the objections of Preben Lerdorff Rye and Thorkild Roose.

However, on the advice of many of his friends he left Denmark on the pretext of selling Day of Wrath in foreign markets and spent the rest of the war in Sweden shortly after the film's release.

[14] On its Copenhagen release, it received poor reviews and was unsuccessful financially, with many Danes complaining about the film's slow pace.

Variety wrote that "the picture is tedious to the extreme," and that its "chief trouble lies in the gratingly plodding pace.

"[19] Life magazine called it "one of the most remarkable movies of recent years" and noted that a campaign by a group of critics led to the film being shown again four months later in August 1948.

[20] Years after its release, film critic Robin Wood called it "Dreyer's richest work...because it expresses most fully the ambiguities inherent in his vision of the world.

[11] Critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that "Day of Wrath may be the greatest film ever made about living under totalitarian rule"[22] and believed it was an influence on the play The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

The site's consensus reads: "Beautifully filmed and rich with period detail, Day of Wrath peers into the past to pose timelessly thought-provoking questions about intolerance and societal mores".