drownsoda90

As someone who counts themselves a fan of the big-haired Tawny Kitaen-led 1986 original "Witchboard," I was not particularly enthused by the promotional material for this remake, but I felt a duty to give it a chance, especially given Chuck Russell's horror credentials. I will preface this by saying that I went into this with extremely low expectations. Is this remake high art? Absolutely not. But for sheer entertainment value, I was pleasantly surprised.

The story here takes the bare bones of the original film (with a few visual nods and recreations of scenes from the source material), setting it in present-day New Orleans where a young woman, Emily, crosses paths with a historic "pendulum board." As she and her chef fiancé prepare to open his new restaurant, Emily becomes overtaken by the board which possesses supernatural powers.

While the original film was not exactly known for its subtlety, Russell's reimagining is outwardly garish and plays with a lot of familiar witchcraft tropes and cliches in a manner that may cause some eye-rolling, though the handling of the material was less outrageous in some aspects than I anticipated. The screenplay is far from perfect, though, despite some trite dialogue here and there, I felt the story moved forward at a breezy pace. The history of the board itself and its association with a powerful witch takes center stage here, drawing us back to 17th-century France in a timeline-shifting plot thread that allows for some surprisingly well-orchestrated period set pieces. There is also a unique theme at play revolving around the history of Christian institutions surreptitiously co-opting and dabbling in the very dark arts they purport to condemn, something you rarely see explored in films of this type. These sequences are well-staged and at times reminded me of the period Hammer films of the 1960s and 1970s.

The performances here are decent given the material, with Madison Iseman giving a serviceable lead performance as the troubled Emily. Jamie Campbell Bower plays an occultist/New Age pagan with a vested interest in the board, and his performance is stagy if not amusing. Where the film suffers I think is its overzealous use of digital special effects, which give it a rather silly visual flair that recalls the cheapjack direct-to-video supernatural fodder of the 1990s. Whether this throwback element is intentional or not is difficult to say, though I believe the film would have been much better off without it. Still, there does remain a novelty aspect to seeing something of this nature on the big screen in 2025--and to be honest, it is perhaps not more egregious than a good deal of what we see studios like Blumhouse churning out year after year.

An amusing dinner sequence leads into a finale that is staged quite goofily to say the least, and there is a denouement that is equally goofy despite hearkening back to the aforementioned theme of religious institutions' interests in (and ostensible adoption of) the occult. At face value, the entire thing is admittedly ridiculous, but I can say that I was very much entertained by this film. I went into it with the expectation that it would be a chore to sit through, but I did not have that experience. While it is flawed in numerous ways, I think it is ultimately a decent if not silly reimagining of the original story. To think that a B-movie like this could claw its way to theaters today is a bit of a shock--what's more shocking to me, though, is that, despite being a fairly jaded horror fan, I found it reasonably watchable. Check your expectations at the door, and you may have some fun with this. 6/10.

"Strange Harvest" is a mockumentary that follows two San Bernardino police officers and their decades-long investigation into the case of "Mr. Shiny," a brutal serial killer whose sadistic crimes come to take on occult-like features.

Largely consisting of interviews with the officers, witnesses, and experts involving in the various crimes, "Strange Harvest" very much represents a "Dateline" or "20/20" true crime documentary, albeit a much more graphic and, eventually, fantastical one. Like many of its type, the film plays under the guise of being a "true story," a conceit that we know is a gimmick, but one that I will at least accept for entertainment's sake.

What this film excels it as it capturing the tone and feel of the true crime documentaries that litter nighttime television and major streaming services. From the editing, to the interview formats, to the police and surveillance footage, "Strange Harvest" is an admirable facsimile. The performances and dialogue are also, of the most part, reasonable effective and naturalistic enough to provide functional storytelling; with a film like this, I sometimes find it difficult to suspend my disbelief, but I can say that it came just about as close to "real"-feeling as any other mockumentary I've seen.

"Strange Harvest" owes a lot to films like "The Poughkeepsie Tapes" and the crimes profiled have echoes of "Seven" as well as footnotes referencing things like the Zodiac Killer. For true crime buffs, the film is a fairly entertaining odyssey through an outrageous series of murders--almost so outrageous that it at times stretches credulity--but the pacing and presentation manage to hold it together nonetheless.

The graphic photographs and footage scattered throughout are at times bone-chilling, as are the sequences in which we see the killer either in still image or video. As the film ramps up toward its conclusion, things get admittedly hokier and cosmic, with an H. P. Lovecraft bent to the crimes. Unfortunately, none of this totally gels, and the implications get a bit too silly for their own good.

Even still, I feel "Strange Harvest" is worth seeking out if you are a true crime documentary devotee or enjoy the mockumentary format. It may not revolutionize the genre, but it is a formidable indie film with a number of chilling moments, and it recreates the true crime documentary genre with an admirable amount of realism (despite the more fantastical wiring revealed to be underneath the floorboards). 6/10.

"Weapons" focuses on a Pennsylvania town where a large group of children-coincidentally (or perhaps not) from the same home classroom-flee their homes one night and disappear. Suspicion naturally falls on their teacher, but an intricate web of events unfolds, showcasing a dark, if not unbelievable, turn of events.

While writer-director Zach Cregger's "Barbarian" attracted a significant following among genre fans, I was not particularly a fan of that film; while I thought it had its share of strong elements and could see why some people loved it, the tone and genre-bending grotesque humor did not appeal to my taste. Because of this, I had tempered expectations for this film, but on the whole was pleasantly surprised. There is certainly dark humor here, but it is played in a more human way.

The screenplay utilizes segmented vignettes that interlock, forming a larger portrait of the strange, almost Stephen King-esque events unfolding in the small community. Tensions abound, as the missing kids' schoolteacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) receives her scarlet letter, with grief-stricken parents such as Archer (Josh Brolin) blaming her for their children's disappearances. Further characters are thrown into the mix and each have their own narrative strands in the chain of events, including a struggling cop (Alden Ehrenreich), a young drug addict and petty thief (Austin Abrams), and the school principal Andrew (Benedict Wong).

While this narrative mode can often be hit-or-miss, it is played to great effect here and is clever without being too gimmicky or pretentious for its own good. On a purely technical level, the film is solid-the cinematography and locations are atmospheric, the sparse use of music and silence is pointed, and the performances are uniformly good from everyone involved. That being said, Amy Madigan, playing the aunt of the sole child in his class who didn't vanish into the night, steals the thunder from everyone , giving a performance that is of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" proportions.

Many have noted that the less you know about the film going into it, the better, and while I think that adage stands true for most moviegoing experiences, it is especially true here. The interlocking character vignettes are compelling in their own right, and the plot strands playfully connect by degrees, keeping the audience firmly planted on their toes. The truth eludes you until the outrageous final act, which is where I think the film could lose some people; however, by that point, I think even most hardened horror fans will remain invested due to the high level of intrigue that has brewed over the previous hour and a half. "Where could this possibly go?" was a recurring thought as I watched this, and even when it stretched credulity as the answers came, I remained firmly in the crosshairs, just as each of the children in Ms. Gandy's ill-fated homeroom. 8/10.