The Witches of Dumpling Farm

This movie is so so bad that my eyes began bleeding and shut down on me.

The blessing and the curse of the Age of the Internet is that anyone can make anything and find a way to have it distributed for mass consumption. No, it's not necessarily fair to begin making judgments as soon as a film begins, yet very often - whether quality is very high or very low - one can begin to gain an impression very quickly. 'Wicked witches,' alternatively known as 'The witches of Dumpling Farm,' is definitely an instance where certain matters draw our attention from the get-go. Consider the dull, lethargic direction that lets moments proceed slowly and linger interminably, and which deadens any feelings that one might hope to derive from a horror film. Are you looking for tension, suspense, unease, fright, thrills, chills, or excitement? Sorry, keep looking. Even when discrete genre elements are presented to us, such as blood, gore, heightened emotions, or would-be disturbing imagery, the incidence is all too often tiresomely flat, lifeless, and matter-of-fact, and maybe outright blunt and tactless; documentarians have elicited more engagement. (No, truly. Have you watched anything from Werner Herzog? The man is a genius.)

It's reasonable to suppose that Martin's direction is to blame, yet one way or another the cast doesn't come off well. The performances are largely stale and wooden and/or otherwise unbelievable, and no one comes off worse than Justin Marosa. To be honest, the same blandness and synonymic descriptors apply to most of these eighty-odd minutes, and this 100%, absolutely, positively includes the dialogue, which is also just plain terrible. The premise holds promise, and there are fair ideas in the narrative that have surely been the basis of a good time in other titles. There are also bad ideas in the narrative, though, including too much of the party, a scene which comprises a fair portion of the length; the scene writing and characterizations tend to swiftly grow wearisome. I guess we can at least say that this boasts crisp, vivid, and smooth cinematography, nice hair and makeup, some splendid art direction, and decent production values, but if you think that these alone constitute value deserving one's viewership, I desperately implore you to watch another movie - any other movie. Most of the effects that are employed look swell, but oddly enough, it's the most simple ones (when eyes shift) that are the most transparent and unconvincing.

It takes a little more than half of the runtime for us to really get the sinister fun we came here for as the plot meaningfully kicks up. As this happens, however, we also see how emptily self-indulgent some of Martin's choices can be as both director and cinematographer. Moreover, for whatever invigoration and slight atmosphere we do get in the latter half, the proceedings continue to be troubled by further instances of that dull, lethargic direction, questionable scene writing, and other issues, including overdone vocal effects. What it comes down to, sadly, is that there's nothing in 'Wicked witches' that we can't get elsewhere, and those aspects that trouble this feature weigh so heavily upon it that the entertainment to be had is wanting. Not everything about this is rotten, but too much is weak, and the facets that are appreciable struggle to lift the whole above "middling" - not least as they are often adjoined by the flaws. I'll say this much: the variable strength that the picture bears in the second half, where violence reigns supreme, represents the best that it has to offer, and with that strength is sufficient vitality to save the viewing experience from the bottom of the barrel. Would that the filmmakers' worst impulses were reigned in, that as much care had been applied toward other elements as had been toward the horror brutality, and perhaps that someone in addition to the Pickerings had consulted on the production and provided an outsider's perspective.

There are certainly far worse things you could watch. Unfortunately, unless you're hard-up for genre fare or a huge fan of someone involved (none of whom are specifically known to me), there's also no major reason to watch this over countless other similar flicks that are out there in the world. If you do find yourself pressing "play" then it's passably enjoyable, but only if you can make it through the first half without stopping, and that there is slack to be picked up is the sticking point. Watch or not, it's your choice, but there are too many other films to invest in to spend time with 'Wicked witches.'

Right, well let's me just start out by saying that "The Witches of Dumpling Farm" wasn't exactly what I had hoped it would be. I sat down to watch this 2019 movie from writers Mark Pickering and Martin J Pickering with the understanding that this was going to be a horror movie.

While "The Witches of Dumpling Farm" did have some horror elements to it, it was quite far from being an actual scary horror movie. Quite far indeed.

This is not a very long movie, but it felt like I was sitting through a 3 hour long movie. Why? Well, because the pacing of the storyline was just atrociously slow. It took forever to go from A to B, and very little of any interest happened along the way.

Most of the movie was just close ups of people looking at each other awkwardly, and it felt like 90% of the movie was just filler to make it become a feature length movie.

The storyline was too simplistic to provide proper entertainment, and there weren't any surprises along the way. It was just a straight forward monotonous ride.

The acting in the movie was adequate, taking into consideration the extreme limitations that was enforced on the actors and actresses in terms of a lousy script and storyline, and having essentially pointless characters to work with.

All in all, "The Witches of Dumpling Farm" wasn't a particularly entertaining or enjoyable movie, nor was it a particularly memorable movie. I managed to sit through it, but was hard pressed to keeping my focus, and I will never return to watch it a second time around.

My rating of "The Witches of Dumpling Farm" is a mere three out of ten stars.

Where to start....the plot was awful and without direction. The acting was amateurish and borderline comedy. There was no fluidity to the scenes and it jumped around leaving me wondering if I had dozed off and missed something. The special effects were very bad. I would not recommend this til.to anyone.

Greetings and salutations, and welcome to my review of 2018s The Witches of Dumpling Farm: AKA Wicked Witches.

The Story gets a 0 out of 2: There are too many holes in this weakly scripted tale. Too many to mention, but I'll give one as an example. Our anti-hero has been kicked out of his family home and is seeking alternative accommodation. Luckily he finds an ad in the paper, he telephones it, and the guy on the other end announces the room's his if he wants it. We later find out that these two, who acted as strangers on the phone, were formerly besties. Yeah right!

The Pickering Brothers, who wrote and directed this travesty, are terrible at crafting personalities. Which constitutes the reason they fill most of the screen time with drug-taking and overweight middle-aged has-been idiots. For the most part, it looks like they merely asked the guys to be themselves.

The witches themselves are NOT witches. They are monster witches who want to devour your flesh and have the gnashers to do so. It's another easy out for our unimaginative writers. All these women do is troll about, supposedly looking awesomely beautiful: Shame they look like cheap hookers who shop at Primark. They scream strangely and annoyingly, then show off their terrible dentistry before devouring your face.

The directors even dared to steal from The Blair Witch Project (or are they calling it "Paying Tribute To"(?)) When the massacre scene begins, we see loads of scary twigs hanging up. Ooh, I'm shivering in my booties.

It wouldn't surprise me if the boring bro's put this film together to show off their musical skills. Yep, on top of being bad film-makers, they're a band. But don't worry, their music is marginally better than this film. But not to miss a trick or two; they get their crappier music mates to add to the soundtrack. A marvellous way to get your songs to stand out more. They even used the festival they played at, DumpFest - yeah, that's right, "Worst Name For A Festival EVER!" They slid in drone shots of the DumpFest patrons parking their cars. The cue of automobiles was to show how many guests were ar the Awesome House Warming Party they were throwing. Trouble is when you regard the crowd of party-goers, you realise there's must be seven cars to one guest. I love it when film-makers produce this kind of mistake. Unintentional giggles are great.

The Direction and Pace receive a 0.25 out of 4: The direction actually scores some points as there are some decent aerial shots, thanks to the drone pilot. There's even one decent shot of the car and witch chase when we see the fleeing car zoom past a wheat field in the inky night. It's only on for a second, but it's notable because the rest is so dull.

The Acting gets a 0.25 out of 2: The leading actor does try giving the audience something interesting. But it's way too little, and he's not an appealing character.

And, my Enjoyment level hits a 0 out of 2: Thank god for the distraction of the internet. Without it, I wouldn't have made it through this abomination of a film.

The total scores give The Dumpy Witches a 0.5 out of 10: I sat through this film so you don't have to. Enough said!

Floss those teeth, get rid of all the bloody flesh, jump on your broomstick and fly over to my Absolute Horror list to see where this terrible film ranks. But moreover, to discover something better to watch.