Pyewacket (2018)

terrible... so disappointed.

Pretty Good

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

I thought the beginning was more or less promising; I liked how the main character was already into the occult and it seemed like she knew what she was doing. However, the movie very quickly descended into your standard bunch of "am I going crazy or is something after me" horror cliches.The soundtrack and visual vibe was good, but as a whole the movie didn't impress me at all.

The movie I guess could have been better, yet it did win me back a bit towards the end. While the inciting incident feels more than forced (we know teenagers can do stupid things, then again this is way beyond that), it kind of redeems itself on that and on other fronts. There are other moments that will question the characters involved and more importantly their ability to make choices (if you're mean you could also wonder how they survive always choosing the worst possible action to take).Horror is quite good though and through all its faults it does have good cinematography and it does create a really good mood overall. You can have fun with this despite all and while it never fully achieves everything you may wish it did - overall it's more than decent

"Pyewacket" is a relatively new Canadian film from 2017 written and directed by prolific actor Adam MacDonald and here we have his second full feature film. It's not a long movie by any means, barely makes it past the 80-minute mark not counting the pretty long closing credits section at the end. The cast does not include any known actors, at leastg to me I must admit, but that's not a problem at all, never really an issue for the horror genre either and pretty common there. It is the story of a teenage girl who took a turn for the dark side after the death of her father, not in the sense that she turned evil, but that she developed an interest in the occult. And tensions have been rough between her and her mother too in recent weeks, especially when she decides to take the daughter to a new home meaning she, to some extent, has to leave her friends behind. Still there are moments when she seems like a caring mother while in other moments she is a true beast. But she is not possessed or anything. The latter moments also include the one where she makes a truly cruel comment about the girl's father, which eventually results in our "heroine" performing a wicked spell that brings up a witch creature keen on killing the girl's mother. Maybe the extremes of the mother in terms of her behavior are a bit too much to be honest, but I believe Laurie Holden does a really good job here and easily gives the best performance from the cast. Very much a scene stealer. The scenes with the girl's friend, boyfriend and the other guy didn't do too much for me. When we see them all, it's tolerable, but the one with the best friend for example is just so-so, even if MacDonald makes decent use of the known horror film formulas that always work well like stoned teenagers acting as if something horrible happened, but in fact just playing pranks what we can never be sure of. The scene close to the ending with the witch having taken over the mother's body was really good and actually, they should have created a decent ending out of this one, maybe with the daughter giving the witch the knife and the witch killing her too. Or with the spell being performed back in the other direction setting things straight again in the sense of a happy ending could have been fine too. However, the path tehy took eventually with the big fire and the interrogation scene did very little for me unfortunately I must say and left another negative note on the already not too convincing horror element for me here. I don't need constant blood, death and violence, but I need more than what we got here. Like I wrote in the title, the non-supernatural scenes feel almost better than the core of the film, so yes it's not a film I'd recommend particularly to horror movie enthusiasts, let alone call it a must-see, but it is a pretty good watch for everybody who can stomach the more serious moments. The lead actress does what she needed to do too without ever really shining. I'd somehow even say after watching this one that I'd be curious to check out a non-horrror movie by MacDonald in the future. We'll see if it happens. Until then, go and watch Pyewacket. It's worth 90 minutes of your time.

Good performances by the lead actress and also her mum (who was in the Americans). But this movie is very, very slow. There quite frankly isnt enough to keep you engaged from the start until the moment that you finally see something scary in the last 15 or so minutes of the film. Its OK, but only barely. The lead actress is very cute though and I reckon she has potential in future films - she has a bit of depth and was quite good and convincing.