WITCH HUNT (2021)

Studio:      Momentum Pictures
Director:    Elle Callahan
Writer:      Elle Callahan
Producer:  Eric B. Fleischman, Maurice Fadida
Stars:     Gideon Adlon, Abigail Cowen, Lulu Antariksa, Anna Grace Barlow, Natasha Liu, Ashley Bell, Echo Campbell, Christian Carmago, Elizabeth Mitchell

Review Score:

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Summary:

In a modern America where practicing magic is a crime, a conflicted teenager questions the prejudice against witches while helping two fugitives cross the border into Mexico.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

In present day New England, teenager Fiona and her younger sister Shae watch in helpless horror as Bureau of Witchcraft Investigation agent Hawthorne burns their mother Esther at the stake for witchcraft, which is illegal under the 11th amendment.

In Southern California three months later, widow Martha Goode runs an Underground Railroad stop for fugitive witches out of the home she shares with her teenage daughter Claire and young sons Corey and George. Hiding witches behind their house’s walls creates conflict for Claire, who has to keep this secret from her friends while trying to fit in by following the same popular prejudices against witchcraft as everyone else.

Jacob Gordon, a coyote, picks up a witch named Gina from Martha’s house to sneak her over the border into Mexico where witches can gain asylum. Detective Hawthorne pulls over Jacob’s vehicle. Hawthorne takes Jacob into custody and uses a salt circle to burn his car while Gina is trapped inside.

Martha opens the hidden part of her home for Fiona and Shae to wait for Jacob to escort them across the border. With Jacob missing, Martha ends up housing the girls for several days, which causes more stress for Claire as she continues wrestling with the confusing morality of her family’s situation.

Unsettling events happen while the sisters are in the home. Claire dreams of Esther burning at the stake. Shae has a frightening vision of a burnt witch within the house’s walls.

Outside their school, Claire and her friends see BWI agents putting witches aboard a prison transport bus. One witch tries to flee. A BWI agent shoots her. Claire has a sudden asthma attack throughout the altercation.

Martha’s suspicious neighbor Cynthia comes over to tell Martha that someone from their town was caught transporting witches. Martha feigns disgust by parroting Cynthia’s bigotry.

Claire writes a school paper on the 11th amendment. Claire’s research covers Prop 6, which would restrict the rights of descendents of convicted witches simply for having magic in their blood.

Claire has a nightmare involving the burnt witch. Fiona comforts Claire afterward. The two teens begin bonding over the hardships of their respective lives.

Claire meets her friends at a movie theater showing a restoration of “Thelma and Louise.” Claire sees their classmate Kelly getting turned away at the box office because a BWI list identifies her as being related to witches. Kelly argues with the cashier. Claire has another asthma attack. The box office window suddenly cracks. Kelly runs away thinking her anger triggered latent magic.

Claire and Fiona continue bonding. When Claire learns Fiona has never been to a bar, Claire sneaks her out of the house to go to ‘Saints and Sinners’ tavern. There, Claire tells Fiona about “Thelma and Louise.” The girls discuss the ambiguity of Thelma and Louise’s fate since the movie ends on a freeze frame.

Fiona demonstrates her magic by animating water from a glass. Fiona has Claire try the same trick. When the two of them join hands, all activity in the bar freezes and stools levitate to the ceiling. Frightened, the two girls move to leave. Reality returns to normal as the stools fall and patrons shoot the duo dirty looks. Back at home, Claire comforts Fiona for being the victim of unjust prejudice.

Detective Hawthorne comes to Martha’s house while investigating reports of witchcraft at the bar. Hawthorne detects magic in the home. Martha allows him to search, but forces Hawthorne to leave when he walks in on Claire undressing. Hawthorne threatens to return. Martha chastises Claire and Fiona for stupidly going out in public.

Claire dreams of following a path of blue flowers to the border wall. Claire climbs the wall and sees Gina and Esther beckoning to her from the other side. In reality, Claire stands atop her house’s roof in a state of sleepwalking while Martha and Fiona plead for her to wake up. Cynthia sees Claire fall without suffering any injury.

At school, Claire and her friends spy on BWI agents retesting classmates who failed a routine witch detection test that Claire passed. The girls are tied to chairs, given snorkels, and pushed to the bottom of a swimming pool to see if anyone floats. No one does, but a girl named Amy dies. Claire gets upset at her friend Jen when Jen insists that Amy chose her fate.

Claire returns home to find her mother and brothers missing. Fiona tells Claire that Hawthorne took them for questioning. Fiona also tearfully confronts Claire after having found her school paper on the 11th amendment. Claire tries explaining that she doesn’t actually believe the viewpoints she wrote about.

Hawthorne brings Martha and the boys back home. Hawthorne pulls his gun and accuses Claire of being a witch. Hawthorne threatens to shoot Claire unless she uses magic to stop him. Fiona and Shae create a distraction that causes everyone to scatter. Fiona and Shae become trapped behind the walls while the burnt witch, revealed to be Esther’s ghost, emerges to attack Hawthorne. Smoke fills the house as a fire breaks out.

Claire has another asthma attack, but channels it into magic she uses to break the wall to rescue Fiona and Shae. The house goes up in flames with Hawthorne inside. Everyone else escapes.

Martha admits that Claire inherited the witch gene from Claire’s father’s family, who lives in Ciudad de Azul. After her husband died, Martha moved them closer to the border in case Claire ever needed to cross. Martha apologizes for keeping the truth hidden while passing Claire a collection of postcards sent by her father’s family over the years. Knowing she wasn’t capable of protecting her daughter forever, Martha tearfully tells Claire she can find safety with her father’s family in Mexico.

With Fiona and Shae as passengers, Claire races a truck toward the border wall. The frame freezes just before impact.

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Review:

Debates over what is or isn’t a horror movie don’t need to exist. If something includes a murder or a monster, it probably qualifies as horror, although a broader definition absolutely encompasses almost anything involving death, the supernatural, or any form of fright that can be considered thematically terrifying.

Horror films frequently fall into multiple genres anyway. Somebody can argue all they want that “The Silence of the Lambs” is “actually” a “psychological thriller.” Sure, whatever. After that person gets done pompously puffing through upturned nostrils, the story where a killer cannibal helps a haunted FBI agent hunt a skin suit-wearing serial murderer will unquestionably still be a horror movie too.

One of several ways “Witch Hunt” can be categorized is as a horror movie. It’s more than that though. Writer/director Elle Callahan’s sophomore feature is also a family drama, coming-of-age character study, and current events commentary. Anyone who sees that it features witchcraft and goes in expecting cackling crones on broomsticks, goth girls, or fiery bolts of hex magic will find out fast the film doesn’t play in those sandboxes. “Witch Hunt” is horror, but it’s not “that” kind of horror.

The Constitution’s 11th amendment makes practicing magic illegal in “Witch Hunt’s” present-day America. Even though genetics give them their powers through no fault of their own, anyone discovered to be a witch is executed by the Bureau of Witchcraft Investigation. Society subsequently ostracizes the families of those women, with California’s Prop 6 threatening to restrict rights by treating relatives like unwanted aliens too.

If they can get through the wall, one way to escape persecution is to seek asylum in Mexico. Widow Martha Goode is sympathetic to that cause. She runs an ‘Underground Railroad’ stop behind hidden walls in her Southern California home. This creates conflict for Martha’s teen daughter Claire. Claire isn’t sure mom should be risking their lives to help supposed criminals cross the border. She’d rather keep up xenophobic appearances by parroting her friends who bigotedly bully redheads.

(“Witch Hunt” seemingly suggests its witches tend to be gingers, yet not all of them are? It’s one of the confusing points about the setup’s undercooked background mythology that isn’t fully fleshed out with a clear explanation.)

Claire has her perspective challenged when Martha temporarily takes in two sisters. Shae and Fiona, the latter of whom is Claire’s age, watched their mother burn at the stake. Now they hide in Claire’s house until it’s their turn to be transported. What no one knows is their coyote isn’t coming, because a determined detective made that man disappear. With the sisters caught in limbo, Claire gets cornered into developing a friendship she didn’t expect. Through her bond with Fiona, Claire reconsiders the politics of prejudice, and discovers a startling secret about her personal identity in the process.

It doesn’t take a savant to see the subtext. In “Witch Hunt’s” allegory, witches are surrogates for immigrants, minorities, Muslims, homosexuals, or any persecuted group unfairly suffering from institutionalized hatred in modern society, specifically in post-2016 America. Plug in whichever parallel you prefer. Then watch “Witch Hunt” shine a harsh light on reality through a fantasy fable that asks sexists and segregationists, “Now can you see the cruelly hysteric absurdity of dangerously isolationist ideologies?”

They can’t and they won’t, of course. “Witch Hunt’s” female-forward roster, where men appear exclusively in abusive positions of power, and integral use of a Mexican border wall, which cleverly flips the desired direction of travel, ensure that those who most need to reconcile with the movie’s plea for open-minded enlightenment have baked-in excuses for dismissing the film out of hand as woke leftist propaganda.

“Witch Hunt” doesn’t just mean well. It’s also made well. There’s nothing the least bit ostentatious in the simple production design. From Martha’s hillside house with hidden walls to the high school gymnasium’s swimming pool, sets and locations create scope and spaces that accent modest visual values. With accomplished actress Elizabeth Mitchell providing Martha’s maternal self-sacrifice while “Dexter’s” Christian Carmago seethes tightly-coiled villainy as a dauntless BWI agent, performances are precisely pitched according to each role’s requirements.

Although everyone does what they’re supposed to both in front of and behind the camera, “Witch Hunt” unfortunately doesn’t hit the heart or the head as hard as it has to in order to resonate the way it wants. There isn’t any one outstanding culprit to point at and conclusively say, “that doesn’t work.” Nor is there any one inarguably underwhelming element that would significantly alter the film “if only it had been changed.” There’s just an overall sense of an x-factor’s absence, and things ring hollow as a result.

By nature, “Witch Hunt” tells a dour tale that doesn’t run on action, speed, or spectacle. Claire’s side of the story stays grounded in dealing with catty classmates, doing online research for a witchcraft writing assignment, moping around her mother, and other typical teenage tribulations. Moody melodrama means to be a big part of the movie’s makeup, except ordinary woes and everyday conversations drag on momentum. Scattered nightmares and flashes of a weird witch possibly living in the house’s walls (another entity whose inclusion is partly opaque – is she supposed to be Fiona and Shae’s dead mother?) don’t possess enough pop to buttress limited suspense.

It’s a little odd that for all the movies I’ve unpacked over the years, I can’t quite pin down what remedy would energize “Witch Hunt” to coax it out of the sleepy bed it lies in. A couple of actresses receive notable billing despite playing negligible parts. Did script or final cut edits eliminate deeper impact from Claire’s callous classmates, or from Ashley Bell, all of whom float in and then off the screen like barely noticed motes? I’m not sure. An unidentifiable echo merely makes the film feel as light as a Lifetime MOW, which is a shame since the message it tries to impart carries more magnitude than any movie could ever completely capture.

Review Score: 55

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