Bad Witch (2021) Review
Bad Witch (2021) Review
Xander (Chris Kozlowski) is a witch whose abuse of black magic has led him to disaster after disaster. After trying to go clean of witchcraft, Xander befriends a young loner, helping Roland (Jackson Trent) with bullies, girlfriends, and other teenage atrocities.
BAD WITCH, co-directed by Victor Fink and Joshua Land, is billed as a comedy/horror that sadly lacks much in the way of genuine laughs and is short on horror. What we do have is a lot of talking, which is great for character and relationship building but it’s not exactly what viewers are signing on for when they sit down to give this a look. This is a shame as it is competently made and the cast are good, more so when you compare the performances to other low-budget fare, however it probably doesn’t help matters that as a middle-aged man I am not exactly the demographic that the film appears to be pitched to.
The film kicks off with a young lad discovering that his father has been tied and bound and burnt to a cinder. Rather oddly he’s not that bothered, also it begs the question how did he manage to sleep through the screaming as well as the smell of burning flesh permeating the family home. Instead of traumatising young Xander for life the event inspires him to take up the black arts, we know this because when we cut to twenty years later he’s reading books about magic.
What follows is very testosterone-heavy with women effectively taking a back seat as Xander bonds with a local geek, named Roland Grimm (see what they did there), leading to a showdown with the local bully. Unfortunately there’s little else going on, the narrative is slight, the majority of characters are odious (even the ones we are meant to like) and aside from a gruesome toe-nail removal scene there’s very little to recommend in the horror department. When BAD WITCH played the festival circuit it won MidWest WeirdFest’s Best Horror Film award, so what do I know, but then it’s geared towards a young, American male and not a flabby, fifty-two year old Brit.
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