A defiant teenage boy, struggling with his parent’s imminent divorce, faces off with a thousand-year-old witch, who is living beneath the skin of and posing as the woman next door.
Some of the more recent big-budget Hollywood “scary” movies, “The Grudge,” “Fantasy Island,” “Brahms: The Boy II,” were not very scary. In fact, they were not frightening at all. Leave it to the indie filmmakers to truly leave a mark on your psyche with their creepy and chilling entries into this genre, the wonderful “Sea Fever” from director Neasa Hardiman (you can read my review HERE), Floria Sigismondi’s “The Turning,” Oz Perkins’ “Gretel & Hansel,” and now the Pierce Brothers give us “The Wretched,” a modern-day witch tale that delivers in every aspect.
A young man, Ben (John-Paul Howard), is struggling with the imminent divorce of his parents and they both decide that his summer would be best spent with his father Liam (Jamison Jones), working with him at the local marina in the idyllic seaside town where he resides. He befriends Mallory (Piper Curda), a young woman who also works at the marina and they become good friends, with a tinge of romantic inclination. As he settles into his new environment, he notices that his neighbors, a husband and wife and their two young sons, initially appear to be loving and affectionate towards each other but gradually, he notices the wife, Abbie (Zarah Mahler), starting to act distant and unresponsive, even staring at him from her house and when he realizes that the two young boys haven’t been seen in days, he approaches the father, Ty (Kevin Bigley), and asks if they are okay. Surprisingly, Ty tells him that he doesn’t have any children and that it is just he and Abbie.
Naturally, Ben is stunned by Ty’s admission, genuinely believing that he has no memory of his sons but after having already met his eldest boy Nathan (Judah Abner Paul), he decides to investigate. At night, he begins hearing strange noises outside the house and is convinced he is seeing a strange woman in the darkness but when he sneaks into Ty’s basement one afternoon, he discovers a makeshift Satanic altar. He takes a part of it with him and after doing an online search on Witchipedia about it, he is informed that it refers to a witch who is described as “a dark mother, born from root, rock, and tree that feasts on the forgotten.” He quickly learns that the witch can erase people’s memories of other family members and then devours the bodies of those no longer remembered but in order to survive, it must assimilate and then imitate. When the witch comes after Ben and his family, he will stop at nothing to protect them, even though they don’t believe him, so he journeys into the middle of the forest in the dead of night to locate the witch’s lair and destroy it before she destroys him.
“The Wretched” is an extraordinarily effective horror film and offers a realistic milieu within the confines of its narrative. Nothing is ever presented in an exaggerated manner, everything feels authentic, even when we see the witch adjusting its languishing skin after assimilating a human being and because of its realism, the story is scarier. Although the film is set in the present, its overall ambiance harkens back to the horror movies of the ’70s and ’80s, John Carpenter in particular, and Conor Murphy’s elegant and exquisite camerawork is reminiscent of Dean Cundey, Carpenter’s go-to cinematographer early on in his career and the man who also shot “Back to the Future” and “Jurassic Park.” The camera takes its time lingering only on what needs to be seen and thankfully foregoes the reviled “shaky cam” technique utilized in so many movies these days. The top-notch cast delivers outstanding performances and the ending, evocative of some of Carpenter’s earlier works, leaves you guessing as to the exact outcome of some of the characters, similar to “The Thing” and the Carpenter-produced “Halloween III: Season of the Witch.”
Horror films, especially those about witches, can be hit and miss. Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” was well made but its pace was as slow as molasses, Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria” remake, much like “The Witch,” was visually meritorious but lacked any real substance, while “Blair Witch” managed to successfully touch upon some of the elements that made its predecessor so worthwhile but in the end, amounted to nothing more than flash over substance. “The Wretched” is directed by the Pierce Brothers with gleeful abandon, who understand their audience and leave many visual and narrative references to earlier horror classics, including the aforementioned “The Thing” and “Halloween III: Season of the Witch,” but also the original “Halloween.” If you are looking for a scary and intriguing horror film, look no further. Enjoy!
Available on Digital and VOD May 1st
