Tag Archives: Witchcraft

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CAPSULE: CAMP (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Avalon Fast

FEATURING: Zola Grimmer

PLOT: A traumatized college girl reluctantly volunteers as a counselor at a camp for “damaged” kids, but when she gets there she finds the other female counselors are practicing homemade witchcraft.

Still from Camp (2025)

COMMENTS: Poor Emily has had it rough the past couple years. Already wracked with guilt for a fatal accident that wasn’t really her fault, she finds herself responsible for a second unintentional death, making her feel like a serial killer. She leans on her father for support, and when he suggests the depressed girl could benefit by serving as a counselor at a Christian-themed camp for “damaged” kids, she agrees. There, she finds herself eagerly embraced by her fellow counselors, who aren’t nearly as Christian as management would prefer: every night is an campfire bacchanalia of dancing, flirting, pot, and alcohol. But, just as the Christians warn, weed, booze, and dancing are inevitably a gateway to witchcraft—and, perhaps, to psychic healing as well.

Where Camp is good is in the dreamy cinematography and imagery. Fast’s movie is shot through with experimental impulses, from fuzzy montages underlaid by indie ballads to a red-midnight rendezvous to overlays of twinkling stars as females cavort (and levitate) in the moonlight. Although the Alberta forest is entrancing, occasionally, mountainous backdrops seen from out the window are obvious matte paintings instead of natural vistas. After the indie dramatics of the first two acts, things slide towards the surreal: there’s a pay phone that pops up in the middle of a sylvan glen in the late going at a moment of crucial decision for our protagonist. In terms of setting a dreamy mood, Camp hits the notes it aims at, and for some, that will be enough.

But where Camp is bad is, sadly, pretty much everything else. Not only does the plot wander around aimlessly for most of the film, the characters are unmemorable. Emily’s female confidants are hardly developed: there’s the ringleader, there’s the kinda sexy one, and there’s… two others. The male characters are even sketchier, with only the camp’s senior leader, a wait-until-marriage hymn-singing straight-arrow, receiving significant attention. (There’s another guy who’s positioned as a potentially darker influence, but his plotline seems to fall victim to the cutting room floor.) And, although other critics seem to disagree, Emily herself is too much of a cipher: a knot of guilt, and little more. (What are her interests and hobbies, besides self-medicating and moping?) It’s not the actress’ fault: Grimmer portrays all the appropriate emotions, but why (beyond the obvious) and, more specifically, how her tragedies makes her “damaged” remains something of a mystery.

The overall result is disappointing, because Fast’s visual sensibilities are so engaging and the story has such a weighty theme that you wish these virtues had been wedded to a more affecting narrative. Instead, we get an often lovely mood piece with sincere impulses that’s undone by draggy pacing. If you’re looking for fun at a late-summer Camp, book Miasma instead.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Surreal in a manner that evokes aspects of David Lynch by way of Jane Schoenbrun, Fast’s atmospheric film is more interested in embracing the protagonist’s emotional damage than presenting her with a tidy way out from under it.”–Josh Goller, Spectrum Culture (contemporaneous)

I think this movie is weirder than average
I think this movie is better than average

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ROWS (2015)

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Rows is available for rental or purchase on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: David W. Warfield

FEATURING: Hannah Schick, Lauren Lakis, Nancy Murray, Joe Basile, Kenneth Hughes

PLOT: The daughter of a prolific real estate developer must find her way out of a mysterious maze after she attempts to deliver an eviction notice to a malevolent tenant.

COMMENTS: If you’ve driven across the American Midwest and Great Plains in summertime, you’ve probably been witness to a notably dissonant image: vast fields of corn and wheat, dotted with a mix of ramshackle, rotting old farmhouses and barns teetering on the brink of collapse, contrasted with brand-new, modern houses with lush green lawns and a pair of fresh-off-the-line pickup trucks parked out front. You zip through an economic metaphor, a thruway uniting past and present, a great big landscape of disconnect. Rows knows this feeling. Rows is clearly stimulated by the perplexing feelings that this vision inspires. And Rows is still trying to figure out what comes next.

The world that Rose (get it?) stumbles into bears some of the marks of that confusion. She’s a pretty, rich girl whose only job is doing office chores for her daddy. She’s already feeling the pain of her privilege. As a result, she’s nervous long before she first sets foot inside the house of Mrs. Haviland to boot her from the premises, but her encounter with the woman (and her highly suspect cookies) is proof of how dangerous it is to leave suburbia to venture into America’s breadbasket. We know Rose is going to have to do some penance. What’s intriguing is that her punishment seems to be mental, as she finds herself in a recursive loop which drags her and her friend Greta into the inescapable maze of the cornfield, with escape leading inevitably back to the farmhouse. It’s very nearly Groundhog Day meets Drag Me to Hell.  

Writer-director Warfield puts a lot of skill on display. The film is fantastically shot, making the endless fields of corn look both alluring and ominous. (Surprisingly, the classically Midwestern settings were shot in Maryland.) He also has a knack for pacing; even when Rose’s traps and time loops feel inevitable, there’s a steady unfolding of dread that keeps the psychological horror fresh and visceral. If you aren’t particularly interested in logic or the familiar beats of storytelling, then Rows is a reasonably impressive effort. If anything, the cracks start to show when the script actively adds new elements to keep things interesting, like the addition of an outsider character posing another threat to Rose and Greta, or the out-of-left-field introduction of some malevolent spirit trying to seduce Rose’s father. Rows plays the weird card very effectively, especially once you recognize the repetition that serves as Rose’s purgatory.

When you move past the film’s gimmick, you have a production that looks good but has no real depth. The movie never invests in its characters, for example, especially Schick, the only person in the film we can be certain is real. Without that, the appeal is reduced to its lead actresses wandering through the cornfields in tight tank tops. (The performances are serviceable, although the leads seem to have matriculated at the Joey Tribbiani School of Acting.) The script never really wraps up its intriguing plot, framing the climax as Rose finally learning to look deep inside herself, but then couching it inside other Twilight Zone-ish twists. Rows has some solid tricks up its sleeve, but that only makes the stab at some sort of relevance feel not just unearned but premature. It’s a pity, because there’s genuine filmmaking talent at work, and Warfield has stumbled on to an issue and a community that could really be at home in the thriller and horror genres. There’s some interesting houses along this road, but ultimately a lot more empty fields of grain.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…events become increasingly surreal… a difficult film to synopsise without giving too much away. Partly because its story is such a strange, dreamlike one… becomes something of a chore to keep caring for an answer to its mystery once you hit the midway point. Interesting, but flawed.” Stuart Willis, Sex Gore Mutants (DVD)

(This movie was nominated for review by Jay. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.) 

List Candidates

FANTASIA 2025: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: DOG OF GOD (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Lauris Abele, Raitis Abele

FEATURING: Voices of Armands Bergis, Agate Krista, Karelins Kristians, Madi Madara, Einars Repse, Jurgis Spulenieks, Regnars Vaivars

PLOT: A shamanistic traveler looms on the outskirts of town, while a local priest accuses a tavern owner of witchcraft.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Erotic parrot-mask dancing, cat-licking, distillate of priapism, a lascivious leech encounter, and parting Hell’s seas are among the weird things to devour in in this diabolical delicacy.

COMMENTS: Opening your movie with an aged warrior using a chain-loop to tear off Satan’s massive testicles as they rest below a massive upright phallus is a ballsy move. But by the close of Dog of God, it is clear that ballsy moves are just what this crew do. Brothers Lauris and Raitis Abele pull an ancient (?) trial from fastidiously transcribed historical documents and wrench it by the neck (and possibly elsewhere), squeezing it through a gritty, -cum- palette, setting the dirt and violence and hallucinations to a throbbing synth-metal soundtrack. Dog is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

For your consideration: a guilt-ridden priest with masochistic tendencies; an female alchemist running a tavern; a crippled young monk pushed too far; an obese baron determined to sire an heir; and a tattooed dog man recently returned from the underworld with bad news. These characters, and others, are grimily brought to life through a somber palette daubed occasionally with the vibrant hues of blood, piss, and vomit. This is not a glamorous Middle Ages; this town seems to have almost nothing in it but drunkenness, poverty, guilt, and weeks of torrential rain.

The grimy atmosphere and morose characters could easily have acted as a drag, but elements enliven it. The film score is metal to the bone, with crashing blasts of evil notes underscoring the literal Hellscape as the story travels to the figurative Hell on Earth.  A pungent darkness infects nearly all the characters, with perversions never far from the surface, and cruelty never far from action. The priest’s obsession with a pathetic relic (a piece of straw, somehow “holy”) seems both to awe and arouse the evil pastor. The rotoscope treatment adds a haunting element of the uncanny, as these grotesques flirt with human form and motion. And the stifling atmosphere leaves the viewer forever checked into a nasty state of anticipation until the violent, mind-popping climax.

In short, this was amazing. A blast; I laughed, I gasped, I winced, and, once or twice, just about reeled. The Abele brothers were inspired by all the right people; and as they related in the Q&A session after the screening, “Latvia is very dark and cold most of the year, so you’ve got nothing to do but use your imagination.” Drinking some probably wouldn’t hurt, nor would white-spotted toadstools. However they distilled their multivarious inputs, the important thing is Dog of God emerges from the fetid haze of history and hopelessness — landing on the eye of the viewer like a cackling splat from the backside of an ill-omened bird.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Fans of midnight madness should look no further than Dog of God… a visually scrumptious 17th century trip somewhere between Witchfinder General and Mandy.“–Payton McCarty-Simas, Film Inquiry (festival screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: RIDDLE OF FIRE (2023)

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Riddle of Fire is currently available for VOD rental or purchase. Blu-ray release coming later this year.

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DIRECTED BY: Weston Razooli

FEATURING: Phoebe Ferro, Charlie Stover, Skyler Peters, Charles Halford, Lio Tipton, Lorelei Olivia Mote

PLOT: Three miscreant kids search for a speckled egg they need to get the password to the TV, encountering a real-life witch on their quest.

Still from RIDDLE OF FIRE (2023)

COMMENTS: Riddle of Fire plays out like one of those kid-centered live-action Disney movies of the 70s, if the tykes were foul-mouthed (but still endearing) thieves, and the director was a drugged-out hippie. Tomboy Alice, chaste love-interest Hazel, and young Jodie (whose incongruously adult one-liners are all duplicated in subtitles in case you have trouble understanding his adoewabul accent) have no idea how good they have it on summer vacation, riding around big sky country on dirtbikes with paintball guns and no responsibilities. Preferring air-conditioned adventures, they hatch an elaborate plan to steal a next-generation video game console, but find their summer ruined when they discover mom has password-protected the smart TV. Suffering from a cold that will soon send her into a NyQuil coma, mom agrees to allow them to play for two hours if they bring her a blueberry pie. This sets the trio off on a quest which proves increasingly complicated, as they cannot obtain the pastry without first completing a series of mini-quests, culminating in the search for the film’s big MacGuffin, a lucky speckled egg. Unfortunately, the last carton of such eggs falls into the hands of a gruff “huntsman,” who also serves as hired muscle for a cult of taxidermist witches (who have a whole Mandy-for-kids vibe going on).

Shot on 16mm film (a choice that reinforces the antique feel) in summer-green mountain forests, this “neo-fairy tale” is an American folktale for the Playstation age. The landscape is speckled with red amanita toadstools, suggesting the permeating prevalence of witchcraft, while also nodding to the drug culture. The three (later four) moppets are all likable, despite being pint-sized hoodlums; their “us against the adult world” solidarity makes them easy to root for, and their loyalty to their sick mom softens their brattiness. The script, which incorporates video game tropes as naturally as fairy tale ones, is tightly constructed, leaving little to chance in its intricate web.

Although it mostly plays as a kiddie adventure flick of the type common in the 70s and into the 80s, Riddle of Fire puts oddball spins on the material whenever it can. Even taking the magical realist element of “The Enchanted Blade Gang” out of the picture, the tale has the feeling of a childhood memory: half-experienced, half-imagined, with off-key notes fluttering about. When the children steal their console, they celebrate by dancing around the prize singing a song that’s half old English nursery rhyme, half magical ritual. They sometimes slip words like “yon” or phrases like “that rather ghastly, chilling doll” into their casual conversations. Things really get strange in their 4 A.M. trip to “The Hall of Fortunes,” a mixture between a roadhouse bar and post-apocalyptic trading post where all the adults drink 40 ounces, and the only other kid in sight is painted blue and holding a trident. Since they’re unfamiliar with the adult world, the kids don’t have a sense of how terribly wrong this entire setup is; it’s a hallucination based on a hazy understanding of what grown-ups do when they’re not around.

The irony of these children undergoing the magical adventure of a lifetime in a quest to play in a much less imaginative digitized world is delicious. Somehow, we actually celebrate with the little reprobates when they achieve their goal of sitting on their butts and clicking buttons all day, which is a testament to how much we buy in to the crazy premise debuting director Razooli conjures here. Riddle of Fire is full of stylistic and cultural references, but somehow still feels largely sui generis; it will be fascinating to see where the newly minted auteur goes from here.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… both grounded and fantastical, sweet and sad, a beautiful snapshot of childhood where kids are allowed to be weird little gremlins with opulent tastes and bad attitudes.”–Mary Beth McAndrews, Dread Central (contemporaneous)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SOMETHING WEIRD (1967)

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DIRECTED BY: Herschell Gordon Lewis

FEATURING: Tony McCabe, Elizabeth Lee, William Brooker, Mudite Arums

PLOT: Electrical worker Mitch is horribly disfigured in an accident, acquires psychic powers, and is blackmailed by a hideous hag who promises to restore his looks in exchange for becoming her lover.

Still from Something Weird (1967)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: It is honestly surprising that we haven’t yet found a way to include the Godfather of Gore among our honorees, although it would be amusing if the movie that did so failed to feature any of his trademark bloodshed or exposed skin. Still, it says a lot that the man responsible for such no-room-for-nuance titles as Blood Feast and Two Thousand Maniacs chose to call this one Something Weird. The combination of ESP, LSD, and witchcraft ladled with heavy doses of terrible acting, barely decorated sets, and herky-jerky editing make Lewis’ titular assessment feel pretty spot-on.

COMMENTS: Before I’ve watched a frame, this movie has me at a disadvantage. Look at that title, practically daring me to leave it off our list. Think you can do my job for me, do you, movie? Well, I’ll be judging whether you’re truly something weird, thank you very much.

It does seem like they’re on to something, though. The first few minutes make a strong case for its peculiarity, with dramatic swings in tone and a schizophrenic mix of characters and locations. The opening credits share the screen with a murder-in-progress. (The interruptions are a mercy, as Lewis offers a credit to seemingly every actor in the film, and possibly a few that aren’t.) This is immediately followed by a karate demonstration in which one untalented black belt lectures another even-less-talented black belt. Their sparring gives way to a different kind of wrestling, in which a couple’s heavy petting leads to the woman’s to declare, “You’re electrifying!,” which gleefully segues into an actual electrocution. Even at this point, there’s room for a quick educational voiceover about the fascinating and totally real world of extrasensory perception before our story can truly begin. It’s a dizzying kickoff.

The actual tale threatens to be a major letdown, as our hero is the newly scarred, newly psychic Mitch (an insufferably smug McCabe). He’s immediately unlikeable, assaulting a nurse, bemoaning his fate, and barely concealing his contempt for the clients who visit his fortune-telling parlor. Fortunately, he meets his match in a hideous crone resembling a “Laugh-In” dancer whose makeup was done by a 5-year-old and whose laughter is so forced that it manages to go past sarcastic and come all the way back around to creepy. We don’t see it happen, but Mitch and his mysterious companion Ellen (the unnamed harridan now in disguise as a beautiful young woman who can’t act) quickly become the toast of the town with their incredible abilities.

Somehow, the story still hasn’t gotten started at this point, because Lewis seems unsure where the focus belongs. Is it Mitch trying to Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SOMETHING WEIRD (1967) →