It’s time for one more spooky film. This one’s even got the classic Lon Chaney involved which is always fun although his role is a bit smaller than you might have expected. I felt like this film could be a bit too busy for its own good at times though and this absolutely has one of the most lackluster villains that you’re ever going to see. Definitely not the kind of foe that will strike fear into your heart but I’ll get into that more later.

The movie starts with corporate driving over a cemetery much to the dismay of the locals. They complain to Bill who is the head of the business development. Bill had previously warned Myles and his company not to do any destruction but they ignored him and the damage is done. He had already had a tense business relationship with Myles and this doesn’t help matters. Honestly Bill needed to remove Myles before this point. The guy was quick to bring up his dead father after all which is not something a normal person is going to do. Now a witch from the past will be having her revenge.

So this is one of those films that is a real slow burn. Vanessa, the witch of legend wakes up soon enough within the first 15 minutes or so but you have to consider that the film is barely over an hour. So we’re a quarter of the way through the film all for the setup and then after that we get more and more setup. Fortunately the film is one of those old time titles where the writing is a lot of fun. I’ve always enjoyed this writing style with everyone being ultra polite even when they are going at each other.

The time is partially spent by explaining the lore behind two families that were feuding for years and the place is now haunted. The witches had been trapped with the graves in place but destroying them has broken the spell. There were a bunch of witch hunts between the Whitlocks and another family. The lore is mostly standard stuff so it’s not the most interesting but I suppose you always want to have some setup before the monster shows up to murder everyone. Thing is, this film doesn’t really have a big body count and ends up using more real people than supernatural elements.

There is a whole plot about Morgan and his group being a sort of black ops cult. I would have completely skipped that part of the film because a witch should be enough on her own to be a real threat. Instead the cult’s around to help for some reason. For example Vanessa is able to murder people with voodoo like a classic witch. So she drowns one guy in his pool by drowning the puppet but why did she even need the cult guy to be there and help her drown it? It felt like the cult was completely disposable. If they were added to make the film spookier…well I don’t think it quite succeeds.

I admit that Vanessa isn’t the most intimidating witch I’ve ever seen but that could have been solved with more scenes for her. This film was really busy in general though. For example we have a romance plot going on with Amy and Todd and part of the drama is that Morgan is Amy’s uncle and Todd is Bill’s brother. So there is a lot of drama here and of course in the lore, the two families were the ones fighting during the witch’s trials. It’s like a supernatural version of Romeo and Juliet I guess. It just doesn’t add much to the film and both sides can be a bit dismissive of the other.

When Morgan is being held for murder, Todd just figures he’ll beat the charge and it’s fine. Whenever Amy mentions that he doesn’t approve of their relationship, Todd just says that he’ll get over it. Very helpful…but I guess he’s thinking with his feelings more than anything else by this point. Then when Todd invites Amy to stay at their place for a little while he acts shocked when everyone else is upset. Even if he thought they were unreasonable, it’s not like this is a shocking turn of events.

I would say the biggest way to get this film to be scarier would be to make Vanessa more of a threat. Remove the cult plot and have her just be terrorizing everyone on her own. She could probably spend a little less time trolling as well. For example she goes after one of the old ladies at one point. She breaks into the room at night and grabs her for a good scare. Then…the witch retreats for some reason so everyone thinks the lady is crazy. Only for Vanessa to return the next day and force the lady to drive her car into an explosion. Why not finish her off the first time? I assume this was in part because she is just messing with the humans so that they know true fear but I thought that was a bit weak.

Her scaring the characters without actually bumping them off only works when there is a purpose for it. For example there was another old lady who actually knew all of the lore so Vanessa ambushes her at the top of the stairs. This causes her to fall down and get injured as a warning to the others. Although even as I say that, finishing her off would have still made more sense with a stronger effect of making everyone terrified of Vanessa. This witch really needs some lessons on how to be a more imposing villain.

I think you get the idea but as a final note I’ll also say that the way Vanessa went out was extremely weak. I’ve never seen a villain’s constant aura farming be used against them before but that’s exactly what happened here. Vanessa was just completely zoned out for a super long time which gave Amy time to light her up. It makes you wish more characters would do that in these horror titles but you also expect that most villains would at least be somewhat prepared for a direct attack like that.

Overall, Witchcraft is a pretty decent film. It’s certainly not one of the scarier films that you’ll have seen but all of the production values are on point. The writing is good, the characters are solid etc. There aren’t any real negatives for me to say about the film except that it can just be a bit slow which is ironic for such a short film. It never gets boring but you’re sort of waiting for the witch to do a bit more. I would also argue that the ending cheats us out of a proper climax with her. Still, if you enjoy the old school horror titles then this one is definitely worth watching.

Overall 7/10