Mara, an ancient pagan spirit, hunts a group of teenagers taking their body parts to be reborn. A disillusioned and desperate investigator must confront his deepest fears to save the teenagers.
“Whisper of the Witch” is not so much a movie as it is a cheap replica of better horror films. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a bootleg “The Conjuring” DVD you’d find in a gas station bargain bin, except somehow less inspired. The story begins with a woman inheriting a cursed home, while ignoring every warning sign (classic), and ends up getting some uninspired hauntings by witches who whisper like ASMR gone wrong.
The foggy rural aesthetic is passable, but only if you squint really hard can you see direct copying and pasting from Eggers’s “The Witch.” Instead, the genuine sense of dread in the latter is replaced with bureaucratic indifference. Due to its lack of atmosphere, there is barely any sense of forming tension. It lazily relies on jump scares, and the villain looks more like a Spirit Halloween costume than a terrifying figure.
The funniest part was the lead (Maryana Spivak) playing a single mom in what is supposed to be the USA, because everything is so blatantly Russian that it feels like a parody. Did the producers and director think we wouldn’t notice? If you’ve ever wanted to watch a horror movie that goes through the motions with all the enthusiasm of a DMV representative, this is your film.
It is not the worst film, but what is unforgivable is that it is nothing. A void. Basically a cinematic placebo. Kinodanz’s next project is a “Blade Runner”-inspired sci-fi film. If I have to review that, and if it is anything close to this, I will take Roy Batty’s final “Blade Runner” words to heart: “Time to die!”
Available on Digital August 19th, and on Blu-ray™ and DVD exclusively through Amazon® August 19th
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