THE WITCHING (2016)

Studio:       Ruthless Pictures
Director:    George Bessudo, Calvin Weaver, Patrick Rea, April Wright, Sean Lee
Writer:       Jesse David Ing
Producer:  Corey Norman, Haley Norman
Stars:     Ellen Elizabeth White, Kimberly Dollar, Katie Parker, Allan Kayser, Jennifer Friend, Michelle Davison, Taylor Hart, Alice Krembelberg, Ryan Vigilant

Review Score:

---

Summary:

A group of paranormal podcasters swap scary stories around a campfire on the anniversary of a witch’s murder in the same woods.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

The Witching – Stacy, Nathan, Emma, Danni, Mike, and Sandy host an episode of their paranormal podcast “The Witching Hour” from the Woodland Valley Forest where the Woodland Valley Witch was killed on Halloween 67 years earlier. After everyone swaps stories around the campfire, Emma becomes possessed by the witch and murders everyone.

Grief – Sarah and Brodie mourn the death of their young son Christopher. Sarah is stalked in their house and eventually pulled into the closet by a ghost child.

Sleepwalker – Sam mourns the death of her husband James. Waking from sleep to find black sand on her face, Sam searches online and connects the strange occurrence to the Native American legend of the Sleepwalker, a demonic cousin of the Sandman who induces sleepwalking and plucks out his victim’s eyes. The Sleepwalker attacks Sam during the night, but she stabs it and flees back to her bedroom. There, she encounters a vision of her dead husband James in a state of demonic possession.

Next Caller – Sarcastic skeptic Handsome Billy Bob Brown, host of the radio show “After Shocks,” welcomes guest Amy Fowler, who claims she can speak to the dead. Over the course of the show, Billy Bob takes calls from God, Satan, and his dead mother. By the end of the show, Billy Bob is killed by visions of his dead mother and his dead brother Allan.

Hourglass Figure – Frustrated housewife Chelsea discovers she can stop time for one hour each day by using an antique hourglass that belonged to her husband Ray’s mother. Chelsea uses the hourglass to get more done around the house and to take more personal time. After using the hourglass repeatedly, Chelsea discovers a written warning that for each use, a loved one will age by 100,000 hours. Suddenly, Ray rapidly ages and dies. Their daughter Lucy also ages and loses all of her teeth. Chelsea’s infant daughter Lola gets her hands on the hourglass and flips it playfully, rapidly aging Chelsea and killing her.

Graveyard Shift – Parking lot security guard Sam welcomes new security guard Kenny to the night shift before taking his leave. While working his shift alone, Kenny finds a woman dying from a drug overdose in her car. When he goes to call emergency services, Kenny sees the woman jump off the side of the building and disappear. Kenny greets the next shift’s guard in the morning and learns that Sam died seven years ago when a woman committed suicide during the graveyard shift.

Sweet Hollow – Emily drives alone on a dark road to visit her sister Allison. Handsome stranger James gets Emily to pull over. Under the pretense of tightening her tire, James sabotages Emily’s rear wheel and also convinces Emily that he is a friend of her sister’s who is to be set up with Emily on a blind date. James returns to give Emily a ride when her tire falls off. While driving, James tells two urban legends of Sweet Hollow Road involving a hatchet murderer and ghostly police officer Carl Abbot. Emily calls her sister and learns that Allison does not know James. Emily escapes James’ car and seeks help from a police officer, but it turns out to be Carl Abbot’s ghost. James comes after Emily with a hatchet.

---

Review:

“The Witching” is another patchwork anthology film from the same people responsible for “Zombieworld” (review here), “The Invoking 2” (review here), “All Hallows’ Eve 2” (review here), and probably more like-minded features yet to come.  If you’ve seen any of those titles, then you already know the formula: Repurpose various horror shorts from as far back as 2009 having little in common except questionable quality, insert an equally unrelated wraparound and presto, another thumbs down collection of mediocre at best mini-movies.

In the wraparound, six amateur actors unconvincingly portraying paranormal podcasters swap scary stories in the woods where a witch was murdered 67 years earlier.  What’s the significance of the 67th anniversary?  I couldn’t tell you.  I’d wager that the writer(s) couldn’t either.

These campfire tale interludes are so generic, it’s blatantly obvious that they don’t even know what segments they are bookending.  The outro for the first short includes one man ambiguously musing, “if that happened to me, I would never talk about it.”  Well, yeah.  If you were murdered by a ghost, it would be impossible to talk about it whether you wanted to or not.

“Grief” is the first short.  I’d summarize the story except there isn’t one.

“Sleepwalker” uses an identical concept, but at least it has a moderately interesting monster and motivation involving a Sandman-like figure of Native American legend.  What it doesn’t have is much of a meaning.  With its recycled premise, ancillary inclusion of an unnecessary side character, and abrupt ending, “Sleepwalker” is missing essential ingredients to be effective.

After two consecutive shorts of a ghost haunting a grieving woman, “The Witching” switches genders with “Next Caller,” where a ghost haunts a mourning man.  “Handsome” Billy Bob Brown is one of those tame movie shock jocks who is more morning zoo goon than Howard Stern, getting his supernatural comeuppance EC-style for being an insufferably sarcastic skeptic.  Another ghost gets revenge story.  Another stretch your arms and yawn reaction.

“Hourglass Figure” is highlighted by its fundamental misunderstanding of basic math.  An antique hourglass can stop time and give its user an additional hour to use how s/he will, in this case an overworked housewife takes time out for herself, except loved ones pay a penalty by aging 100,000 hours.  That adds up to only 11 and a half years, yet the loved ones here instantly age into cousins of the Cryptkeeper and promptly die.  It’s not a bad premise for a horror short.  “Hourglass Figure” merely mixes a rushed setup (in no way would one extra hour a day significantly impact this woman’s life in the manner depicted) with poor effects (aged corpses look like first week pottery class projects) into a missed opportunity to be noteworthy for something other than not knowing how long 100,000 hours is.

“Graveyard Shift” is a tale more tepid than room temperature tap water.  Guy has a strange encounter.  Guy finds out after the fact that the people he encountered were ghosts.  Guy shrugs his shoulders and goes on about his business.  That last action applies aptly to “The Witching,” except there is still the matter of one more short and then wrapping up the wraparound.

“Sweet Hollow” winds down “The Witching” with Emily, a woman driving alone who has apparently never heard of the “your tire is loose, here, I’ll fix it for you” bait-and-switch when a stranger stops her on a dark, deserted road.  While alarm bells ring for the viewer with every sentence said by the mystery man, Emily falls for his ruse hook, line, and sinker.  He then regales Emily with several stories about Sweet Hollow Road, one involving a serial killer with a hatchet, and one about a murdered police officer.  Everything then comes together in a confused conclusion juggling more urban legends than “Sweet Hollow” has hands to keep in the air.

There is no complexity to any of the shorts in “The Witching.”  The only reason the movie as a whole and its individual parts aren’t any more rudimentary is because everything is pared to the bone already.  Even the end credit scroll exerts minimal effort, inconsistently alternating which side of the screen is for actors and which is for character names, mixing up the film order, and not even including writer/director information for one of the shorts.  With horror this half-hearted, it’s no wonder that the impression left by “The Witching” doesn’t even make an indentation.

Review Score:  35

---