THE WRETCHED (2019)

Studio:      IFC Midnight
Director:    The Pierce Brothers
Writer:      The Pierce Brothers
Producer:  Brett Pierce, Drew Pierce, Chang Tseng, Ed Polgardy
Stars:     John-Paul Howard, Piper Curda, Zarah Mahler, Kevin Bigley, Gabriela Quezada Bloomgarden, Richard Ellis, Blane Crockarell, Judah Paul, Jamison Jones, Azie Tesfai

Review Score:

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Summary:

A troubled teenager must save three families, including his own, from an ancient witch with the power to possess people and make them forget their loved ones.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

35 Years Ago – Teenager Megan comes home to an empty house. Noises lead Megan to the basement where she finds a family photo with faces scratched out before encountering a witchy woman devouring her sister. Megan’s entranced father locks Megan behind the cellar door, which has an occult symbol drawn on it.

Troubled 17-year-old Ben Shaw comes to live with his father Liam, who recently separated from Ben’s mother Nora. Liam sets up Ben with a job working for him at the Porter Bay Marina. Ben and his coworker Mallory take an interest in each other. Ben discovers his father has a new girlfriend named Sara.

Liam’s next-door neighbor Abbie loses her young son Dillon while hiking in the woods. Dillon hears his mother’s voice calling to him from an ominous tree where the creature-like witch known as The Wretch lurks. The tree vanishes when Abbie finds Dillon.

Abbie’s husband Ty returns home with their infant son Sam. Ty sees that Abbie brought home a deer she hit in the road. Abbie goes outside to gut and clean the deer, but stops after diseased innards unexpectedly fall to the ground.

The Wretch emerges from the deer carcass during the night. Ben briefly spots the witch while investigating noises in the neighbor’s yard. The next morning, Ben warns Dillon to stay away from the porch crawlspace where he thought he saw the creature hide. At the marina later, Ben asks Dillon to tell him if he sees anything strange at home.

Ben asks to meet Sara. Liam arranges for the three of them to have dinner at home. However, after a call from his mom where she asks after her estranged husband, Ben decides to avoid the encounter with Sara entirely.

Ben instead attends a party with Mallory. The two teens bond as they confide in each other. Ben goes to kiss Mallory, but unexpectedly vomits from having pounded alcohol.

Attractive teen JJ tricks Ben into skinny-dipping with her. The setup turns out to be a prank orchestrated by JJ’s bully boyfriend Gage. Humiliated, Ben sees Mallory storm off alone.

Back at the neighbor’s house, The Wretch stalks Abbie and Ty’s baby in his crib. Abbie gets up to find the baby replaced with a bundle of sticks. The Wretch attacks Abbie.

Ben sees Abbie, now possessed by The Wretch, shamble into the woods when he returns home. An argument with his father about missing dinner prevents Ben from investigating. Sara overhears Ben insulting her.

Mallory ignores Ben at work the next day. Ben apologizes by leaving her favorite flavors of Starburst in Mallory’s backpack. Ben dumps chum in Gage’s father’s boat as retaliation for the prank. Ben reconciles with Sara when she gives him a ride home.

Ben comes home to find Dillon hiding in his house. Having witnessed Abbie contorting, Dillon warns that he is frightened of his mother. Abbie comes to the door demanding her son. Ben insists Dillon isn’t there, but Dillon emerges after Ty shows up alongside his wife. Dillon later tries telling his dad that Abbie is acting weird, but Ty laughs off his son’s claims.

Ben begins spying on the neighbors. Ben sees Abbie contorting oddly while having sex with Ty.

Suspicious when Dillon doesn’t show up at the marina for a sailing lesson, Ben rushes home. Ben goes next door to ask where Dillon is. Ty shocks Ben by claiming he doesn’t have any children at all. Ben notices the witch’s symbol carved into the porch floor in front of Ty’s front door.

Ben researches the symbol online. Ben links it to legends of a woodland witch who possesses people, consumes their children, and makes them forget their missing loved ones.

Ben tells Mallory what he believes is happening. Ben shows Mallory that suspicious activity is going on in Abbie’s cellar. Disbelieving Ben but feeling mischievous, Mallory puts a note under Ty and Abbie’s door that reads, “we know what’s in your cellar.”

Ty goes to investigate the cellar through its outside storm doors. Abbie intercepts and entrances her husband. Ben sees dark blood bleeding from Ty’s ears.

Ben discovers that Abbie threw out all of her baby items as he continues staking out the neighbors. The Wretch realizes she needs a new host when Abbie’s skin starts sagging and her teeth begin falling out.

Abbie returns Mallory’s note to Ben. Ben sneaks into Abbie’s cellar and finds a skull with antlers adorning a shrine made from sticks. Photos of various families with faces scratched out adorn the display. Ben finds a photo for his family and one for Mallory’s.

Ben calls Mallory with a frantic warning that the witch is going after Mallory’s little sister Lily. Mallory says she doesn’t know who Lily is.

Ben races to the marina to stop The Wretch from taking Lily. Gage impedes Ben by beating him up for trashing his dad’s boat. Sara breaks up the fight.

Ben follows The Wretch as she leads Lily into the forest. Ben sees The Wretch pull Lily into the tree stump. Ben tries pulling Lily free, but falls backward and knocks himself out.

Ben recovers and returns home at dusk. Ben finds his father with several police officers discussing Ben breaking into the neighbor’s house. Ben tries telling Liam that Abbie is killing children. Believing his son is on drugs again, Liam tells Ben he is sending him back to his mother and then to a clinic.

Ben realizes The Wretch transferred to Sara when he sees flowers wilting in her presence. Ben slashes at Sara with a knife, but Liam stops him. Liam lets the cops arrest Ben. Before he is driven away, Ben begs Liam to believe him that Sara is possessed and to investigate the neighbor’s cellar for himself.

Entranced by The Wretch, the officer escorting Ben takes him to the beach instead of the police station. The officer begins drowning Ben until an old fisherman’s dog bites him. Ben recovers. The cop goes mad and shoots himself in the head.

Liam doesn’t find anything in the neighbor’s cellar, but follows Ty to the attic where he discovers Abbie dead and Ty hanging from a noose. Liam then sees the shrine with the family photos.

Wearing the animal skull as a mask, Sara stabs Liam from behind. The commotion overturns an oil lamp that sets the attic on fire.

Ben returns in time to shoot Sara. In creature form, The Wretch emerges from Sara’s corpse. Ben escapes the house with Liam.

As the family photos burn in the attic, Ben suddenly remembers he has a little brother named Nathan that The Wretch compelled him to forget. Mallory shows up looking for her sister Lily.

Desperate to rescue their siblings, Ben takes Mallory to the tree. Ben instructs Mallory to make a salt circle around the trunk and be prepared to burn the tree if he doesn’t return, as that is the only way to stop The Wretch.

Ben enters the cave beneath the tree, rescues Nathan and Lily, and fights off The Wretch. After the children make it out to Mallory, The Wretch grabs at Ben as he crawls back outside. Liam arrives in his truck. Liam rams into The Wretch while Mallory throws salt in her face and Ben breaks free. Liam, Ben, Mallory, Nathan, and Lily escape.

In a therapy session afterward, confusion arises when a counselor asks Mallory if they successfully burned the tree. Ben’s entire family, including his mother, reunites. Before leaving town with them, Ben says goodbye to Mallory. Mallory gives Ben a flower and they kiss.

While driving away, Ben notices Mallory’s flower is artificial. Recalling that real flowers wilt in the witch’s presence, Ben realizes The Wretch now possesses Mallory.

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Review:

17-year-old Ben broke his arm breaking into, and then out of, a friend’s house. He was there stealing some Vicodin, but he’s not really a typical bad attitude punk. He’s not necessarily all that troubled either. Mom and dad’s sudden breakup just sent Ben into a spiral that has him fighting to figure out how he fits in with his freshly fractured family.

Ben’s recently relocated father Liam, who already has a new girlfriend, helps his son get back on track by getting him a gig at his marina. Maybe now Ben’s behavior can calm down by casually flirting with cute coworker Mallory, fantasizing about unattainable hottie JJ, and dealing with the usual bit of bullying from Gage, JJ’s privileged prick of a boyfriend.

Ben’s ordinary summer becomes anything but when he crosses paths with a witch in the woods. An ancient entity wrapped in cryptic snips of forest folklore, ‘The Wretch’ possesses the power to hitch onto human hosts. The cursed creature can also manipulate minds into forgetting their loved ones exist, ensuring no one even remembers the stolen children she chews on.

Ben stands the best chance in centuries of unraveling The Wretch’s wrath when his curious suspicions turn into paranoid stakeouts. No one believes Ben’s conspiracy theories concerning unusual activities next door. He has only himself to rely on as Ben sets out to save his neighbors, his new crush, and himself by trying to outwit the flesh-craving hag.

“The Wretched” has a great “Evil Dead” vibe going for it. (The earlier eerie tone, not the later jokey one.) There are a number of reasons for this.

Maybe you saw Sam Raimi’s pull quote promoting “The Wretched” as “wicked fun … a twisted blend of fairytale and horror!” That’s not an entirely unsolicited accolade. The father of filmmaking brothers Brett and Drew Pierce, who wrote and directed “The Wretched,” did visual effects work on Raimi’s 1981 classic. Like Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell, the Pierces also hail from the Great Lakes State, linking “The Wretched’s” DNA with “The Evil Dead’s” both thematically and geographically.

“The Wretched’s” Michigan shooting locations play a big part in perfecting the subtly sinister setting. The story supposedly takes place in summer, but it seems like a Midwestern autumn without the brown leaves or constant chill. So many indie thrillers simply shoot inside a house or in California, they all end up with identical looks. “The Wretched’s” gnarled branches and foreboding forests give it a distinctive flavor of visual dread that psychologically unsettles. The marina, a country store, and an outdoor party also keep that Middle America mood humming so horror feels even more homegrown.

“Evil Dead” energy keeps poking into every corner it can. I know The Pierce Brothers conjured the same sort of creepiness because, no kidding, Ashley J. Williams not so coincidentally featured in my dreams on the night I screened the film.

Excellent effects and exceptional sound design make certain that energy burns hot. Accentuated by CGI cracks and SFX crunches, Madelynn Stuenkel’s constantly contorting frame causes The Wretch to rival any Javier Botet or Doug Jones creature in terms of slender scariness. Your fingers unconsciously curl when you see her slickened with brown slime. Neck hairs stand up at the sound of her inhuman cluck. “The Wretched” delivers a viciously visceral experience by pounding out grotesque gurgles to go with sick sights like diseased animal guts falling onto the floor.

The Pierce Brothers wouldn’t have been wrong to put further faith in composer Devin Burrows, whose unrelenting score always amplifies intensity whether a scene needs all that auditory effort or not, and cinematographer Conor Murphy, whose camera captures incredible amounts of rich darkness without sacrificing detail. Pouring on all the pop it can, “The Wretched” instead commits the sin of cashing out more jump scares than credit permits. They’re often of the unearned variety too, like smash cutting to a loud lawnmower just to jam in another jolt.

Originally titled “Hag” once upon a time, “The Wretched” squeezes as much spookiness as it can out of slim, but not insufficient fiction. Mythology comes cobbled from various tall tales like Jenny Greenteeth and other such legends. This witch doesn’t have a cauldron, broomstick, or pointed hat. The Wretch is an ancient monster made from nature, meaning you get gritty bits about bundles of sticks, secret caves underneath tree stumps, and occult symbols carved into wood.

The movie’s humans are equally engaging, which isn’t always the case for fright films with familiar characterizations. John-Paul Howard manages to turn Ben into an atypical teen even though he may be a routine one on paper. The script gives Howard enough room to bring out Ben’s personality without forcing him to persistently drive plots points. Ben starts with a hunch that he saw something out of the corner of an eye and his suspicion snowballs into genuine concern for the boy next door’s safety. Ben senses something disturbing, but isn’t sure what it is, so he ends up driven by realistic curiosity that compels us to invest in the mystery too. He naturally facilitates storytelling without becoming its tool.

Piper Curda is the unsung hero of the supporting cast. I’m hard pressed to immediately think of another actress who has ever played the down-to-earth “regular” girl with this much charismatic conviction. Mallory is confident, comedic, and cool. The broad strokes of her interactions with Ben may be basic (e.g. a misunderstanding over a rival love interest and accidentally inserting herself into danger). But Curda’s consistent charm prevents her scenes from being boring. Little touches like a gag about misremembered marketing slogans and the best flavors of Starburst (Mallory correctly identifies lemon as the worst) keep her bond with Ben cute, never cursory.

“The Wretched” hits some hiccups by trying to juggle all the people it puts in play. Side stories involving the cool kids hanging out in the harbor retroactively reveal themselves as inessential distractions that Ben and Mallory’s relationship doesn’t substantially benefit from.

But based on its fearlessness for depicting creatures killing children, and fusion of gun-and-go filmmaking with a flair for savagery, if “The Wretched” is indicative of the stylish creepy-crawling The Pierce Brothers can deliver, expect to see bigger and bolder productions in the duo’s future. And even if the movie can’t tear into your skin with its sometimes bombastic approach to atmosphere, it should at least be good for a one-time chiller on a quiet night in the dark.

Review Score: 80

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