Hear me out, a bus driver, his teen sidekick, two cops, and a priest go into the jungle…No, it’s not the start of a tawdry joke. When combined with a coven of vengeful witches, it’s the basic plot of the first horror movie horror movie to hail from Panama, Diablo Rojo PTY. A bit slight, directors Sol Moreno and J. Oskura Najera nevertheless create a strange, dark, witch-infested descent into hell.
Don’t you hate it when an ancient witch moves in next door, possesses your neighbor, starts stealing children, and no one believes you because they think you’re acting out due to your parents’ messy divorce? Yeah, that sucks. Such is life for Ben (John-Paul Howard), protagonist of writer/director brothers Brett and Drew Pierce’s new horror film, The Wretched.
The most important lesson gleaned from Friend
Request: Beware the Facebook witches, because they are a real thing
and they’re coming for you and your friends! Apparently. And while I won’t go
so far as to heap praise on German director Simon Verhoeven’s 2016 (it took a
while to make it to U.S. shores) horror film for being particularly original,
or even all that memorable, it’s solid genre fun. At times. In fact, it has the
makings of an awesome junior high sleepover movie.
From the very first frame, writer/director Jason Bagnacki’s
neo-giallo Mark of the Witch (formerly titled
Another) sets a dark mood and an atmosphere fraught with
tension. When you start your movie with a bunch of creepy dudes in black robes
performing an occult ritual on a baby in a cave, this sort of thing is bound to
happen. Spooky imagery, slow motion shots, an ominous drone, and many more
tools of the trade pile layer upon layer of pressure on top of you as you
watch. One scene even slows and well-known pop song ever so slightly just in
order to disconcert you in a new and different way.
Robert Egger’s debut feature, The Witch,
may be a horror movie, but it’s more of a folk or fairy tale, a suspense
thriller dressed up in supernatural trappings. Steeped in the religious
conviction and paranoia of 17th Century New England pilgrim life, this is more
dirt-smudged tension and distrustful atmosphere than jump scares and monsters
hiding around corners.
Before seeing it I had a sneaking suspicion, but now that
I've actually watched the movie, I'm fairly certain that The Last
Witch Hunter was made specifically for me. The Vin Diesel-starring
fantasy adventure is gonzo and over the top in a way you rarely encounter
anymore, especially in expensive mainstream movies, but it lines up damn near
perfectly with my cinematic proclivities.
