
Witch is a British folk horror that creeps under your skin and is truly enthralling.
The film is directed by Marc Zammit and Craig Hinde and it surely lived up to its anticipation in the indie horror community and came out with an incredible promotional poster that garnered a great deal of excitement for its debut.
Also, it has received many favorable critiques and a considerable amount of buzz on social media.
In the film, we witness a flashback when England was in the year 1575, and we are in a small town where we meet our leading couple, Twyla (played by Sarah Alexandra Marks), and William (played by Ryan Spong). It certainly is a plunge, starting from what appears to be the most dramatic point of the movie, and then going back in time to explain how we reached that point.
Once word spreads that a murder has caused chaos in this quiet village awakening the local residents, fingers of blame point in all directions. And when a particular witchhunt Kingston trial begins in which the accused is Twyla, it is up to William and a mysterious older man who is in the picture to exonerate her. Without them, she is dead.
Without ruining the film’s amazing twists, I can at least confirm that there were many surprises and I admit, I did not know where this film was headed.
Since Witch is Craig Hinde’s first film which is also a low-budget movie, it is quite brave. I am happy to see that he and co-writer/director Marc Zammit have succeeded in putting their ideas across the big screen.
It is a pity then, that at times Witch falls short of the ambition; at times the lack of budget can be seen too clearly with bad costume design somewhat taking the audience out of the desired period.
I have to admit that I first took this film on review for the awesome poster and its trailer, so was pretty sad over the fact that the gore that was so prominent in its promotion did not make a huge part in the movie.
The limited amount of terror has been put to a widescreen through the portrayal of a thick storyline that is based more on folk, fantasy, and supernatural elements of the plot.
At times seeing Witch brings tears to the eye as a tale of tragedy regarding grief and loss and posits the question of how far one can go in trying to actually ‘bring someone back.’ This makes it more of a gothic drama brought to the screen and that is not a bad thing at all.
The merits of the film are its different visual perspectives and great color toning which really changes the film’s vibe. With engrossing sets making one feel as though they are living in that time period, it is clear that a lot of effort went on regarding the era and the paranoia of witch hunts where many innocent souls were sacrificed based on hearsay.
It moves closer to more historical-based narratives which, for the viewers, enhances the experience. It is also worth mentioning the good performance of Russell Shaw (Thomas) who was very convincing throughout the film and had a very good screen presence. He was a delight to watch.
Unfortunately, the film loses its way when its elaborate storyline does not make sense, and we fucking quickly have to work ourselves towards unraveling something we had never known in the beginning. This makes characters and their relations to each other rather tedious. And some scenes that are rather heavily crammed with dialogue. It becomes dull at some junctures because the script looks overextended, and the characters do not have any scope to speak except for some scripted dialogues.
But then again, there is also a clear area of improvement for the people behind the production. Making one feel well pleased.
With a larger budget and additional effort put into revising the script to clip the filler moments, Witch surely would have ranked amongst the top-tier gothic horrors. I’m looking forward to tracking the progress of these filmmakers and was pleased by the ending which suggests that there will be more films.
Given the kind of buzz Witch was able to generate in the independent horror market, I am looking forward to what this new writer-director duo plans next.
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