Salem Horror Festival 2021: Two Witches

A clever structure makes this witch story all the more compelling.

Synopsis: Witches don’t die before leaving their legacy.

There is a willingness in Two Witches to throw everything at the screen and while that willingness won’t work for everyone, it is commendable nonetheless. Witches in horror go through various stages of representation, from the ‘is she or isn’t she’ ambiguity of films like The Witch, teenage experimentation in The Craft to the overtly sinister in the likes of Suspiria. Two Witches arguably feels closer in tone to something like Drag Me To Hell, with loud noises, gurning and gore taking a leading role.

The structure of Two Witches is an interesting one, constructing itself as an anthology (told in chapters, as is the trend) made up of two stories that interconnect as well as further teases to further entries into that world. It is an ambitious move, but the handling of each section allows director Pierre Tsigaridis (sharing writing duties with Maxime Rancon and Kristina Klebeto) to show their capabilities in establishing characters and situations with precise efficiency.

The first section features Sarah (Belle Adams) as a woman whose recent pregnancy discovery has arrived with a side order of extreme anxiety. Boyfriend Simon (Ian Michaels) dismisses her concerns for the most part, electing to take his clearly spooked partner to visit friends Dustin (Tim Fox) and Melissa (Dina Silva). Continuing with their sequence of poor decisions, the quartet indulge in some spooky pursuits and things, unsurprisingly escalate.

That first section contains a lot of the jump scares of the film, but balances this with shadows moving in the background and a genuinely oppressive, unpleasant atmosphere that is well earned. It won’t be to everyone’s tastes and admittedly, as someone who isn’t as keen on jump scares, my patience was tried a little. For me, the part that shines is the early parts of section two, featuring Masha (Rebekah Kennedy in a very strong performance). Kennedy has more than a little of the Sissy Spacek’s about her, allowing her to effectively play with the nuances of the character, switching from vulnerable to dangerous within an instant. This segment picks up on a far more interesting exploration of witches as a legacy, with power craved rather than objected to.

The over reliance on shots of women in various stages of facial contortion does become tiresome, even when interspersed with the gorier imagery and character development. It feels like a bit of a shortcut that the film takes too often and this loses the impact. Still, this is a film that is practically decadent with its horror images and some of it will likely test even hardened viewers.

If you are looking for something noisy, unsubtle with an interesting take on witches, Two Witches is definitely worth your time and attention.

3 out of 5 stars

For more information on the Salem Horror Festival please see their webpage.

Salem Horror Festival 2021: What Happens Next Will Scare You

A tour through the weirder side of the internet that makes the most of its concept and resources.

Synopsis: Working late on their Halloween feed, a motley crew of internet journalists share their top thirteen scariest viral videos, but when an early entry curses our snarky hipsters, they must distinguish fact from fiction before a tidal wave of terrifying supernatural activity leads to real-life murders.

The last film with a clickbait title I watched was 15 Things You Didn’t Know About Bigfoot (I believe the film has now been renamed for brevity’s sake as I’m pretty sure it also had a further extension of the title into Number One Will Surprise You or something similar) so What Happens Next Will Scare You had plenty to live up to in those terms. What we get over the course of a relatively short runtime is a mostly effective skewering of internet tropes and the scares promised too.

What Happens Next Will Scare You deserves a great deal of praise for the way it handles the movement through different internet aesthetics to showcase the viral videos. Constructing the perfect mean girl vlog, grainy VHS recordings and dimly lit dashcam footage to name but a few means all the videos feel distinctly different and as a result, allow the film to have more fun with the format. This follows an opening sequence consisting of a collage featuring links and clickbait headlines that escalate in their strangeness. It evokes that feeling of stumbling into an internet rabbit hole, sent to stranger and stranger videos. While it does occasionally take the easy way out (there is a screamer gag here early on, for those who struggle with that kind of thing), it does so to further its observations of online culture.

Within that online culture, it looks at the creation of new content, but also positions the internet as a space for found artefacts – previously forgotten videos and curiosities that when divorced from their wider context tend to take on even more sinister qualities. While this is a film primarily focused on trying to have fun with its scares, its treatment of online culture and related media gives it a little extra weight.

Some performances occasionally feel flat but this is more a consequence of not spending that much time with the characters themselves, meaning performers have less time to make a mark, as opposed to having to react to the videos in fairly quick succession. Crowding the space with so many performers when factoring in those featured in the videos does make it difficult to connect on a deeper level, but that is a small complaint when the star is the treatment of the internet and the ability to cram in as many different kinds of scares as possible.

Overall, this is a film that manages to echo the culture it seeks to represent, despite limited means (and sometimes these limits are a little too visible) and has plenty of fun and jolts along the way.

3 out of 5 stars

For more information on the Salem Horror Festival please see their webpage.