Studio: Shout Studios
Director: Jordan Barker
Writer: Christopher Borrelli, John Chapin Morgan
Producer: Borga Dorter, Jordan Barker
Stars: Hannah Kasulka, Craig Arnold, Sasha Clements, Corbin Bleu, Alexander De Jordy, Humberly Gonzalez, Kyle Mac, Ian Matthews
Review Score:
Summary:
Seven friends seemingly succumb to an ancient curse when they become stranded in a snowy forest.
Review:
Some of the actors in “Witches in the Woods” may be unfamiliar. The same can’t be said of the college kids they portray.
First up is Derek, the pretty boy football star whose alpha attitude winds him tight for angry outbursts. His girlfriend Jill has the good gal gusto of an optimistic activist. She exhibits the kind of consistent concern that gets her into an unsolicited argument with a hunter over inhumane use of animal traps.
Bree sits behind them. Prim and preppy with a pink poof on her winter coat, the cellphone inseparable from her hand defaults Bree to the status-obsessed b*tch of the bunch. Jill’s friend Alison is far more reserved, though that seems to stem from an implied assault and subsequent sex video scandal mentioned only in tiptoe terms.
Brothers Matty and Todd bring up the backseat. Other than being Bree’s mismatched boyfriend, there isn’t much that’s remarkable about Matty. Todd qualifies as the irresponsible goof. He casually calls a state trooper “bro” and smilingly tells the others “trust me” to get them to go along with his bad ideas.
Last but not least is Philip. Philip is Derek’s teammate. However, cryptic texts asking, “when are you going to tell him?” hint Philip may be something else to Derek’s girl Jill. Do you smell a scandalous love triangle brewing? I’ll never understand why anyone would think a holiday getaway with your best pals would be a fine moment to reveal a secret affair instead of, well, literally any other time. Yet here we are staring straight into the eyes of the tropiest trope imaginable for a group of headshot handsome young friends.
While we’re talking about tropes, what’s one way a horror movie can go about stranding its characters in the middle of nowhere? An unforeseen road closure detouring everyone down a remote route? Someone suggesting a sketchy shortcut past a ‘No Trespassing’ sign? A driver distractedly pointing his eyes somewhere else at the exact moment an obstacle rises in the road? “Witches in the Woods” employs all three at once to ensure these seven friends stay stuck in a snowy forest far from help. I’ll bet you already guessed they don’t have cellphone reception out there either, didn’t you?
At a gas station along the way, one of the girls picks up a pamphlet for a nearby historic site where the Stoughton Valley Witch Trials took place. A single paragraph summarizes the sad tale of a servant girl whose violent seizures were thought to be caused by demonic possession. Other villagers succumbed to similar symptoms, which the resulting panic attributed to a curse afflicting local land. These 40 seconds of exposition are all the film offers as an origin story. If you want any additional background beyond that, you’re going to be disappointed.
You’re also going to be disappointed if you expect “Witches in the Woods” to actually have witches in its woods. The movie’s dull dawdling around milquetoast material means you’ll probably come away underwhelmed no matter what. But given what the movie’s title seemingly advertises, it’s an important consumer alert to reiterate, “there are no witches in these woods!”
“Witches in the Woods” is primarily a lot of teen/twenty-something melodrama frosted at its edges by a standard “stranded in the cold” thriller. One person becomes oddly entranced. Her alarming behavior sets circumstances in motion that keep the crew in deepening danger as night falls and the temperature drops with it. Others are possibly influenced by the curse to do strange things too. Or it may merely be bad writing that has everyone scrambling for the silliest excuses to set off into the dark forest alone, which all seven people find a way to do at one point or another.
Snowy landscapes create a terrific setting, but clichéd conditions keep virtually everything else about “Witches in the Woods” completely cold in less appealing ways. Suspenseful scares are in short supply. Repetitive arguments between these frustrated and freezing friends are not. Suit up for petty squabbles, routine beats, and slow setups for splitting up and dying offscreen. For something genuinely witchy, you’d be better off venturing into a different set of trees.
Review Score: 40
If you want to see impossible amounts of blood explode crimson colors like the world’s worst version of a gender reveal, well, “Abigail” at least has that.