WITCHES IN THE WOODS (2019)

Studio:      Shout Studios
Director:    Jordan Barker
Writer:      Christopher Borrelli, John Chapin Morgan
Producer:  Borga Dorter, Jordan Barker
Stars:     Hannah Kasulka, Craig Arnold, Sasha Clements, Corbin Bleu, Alexander De Jordy, Humberly Gonzalez, Kyle Mac, Ian Matthews

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Seven friends seemingly succumb to an ancient curse when they become stranded in a snowy forest.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Due to a closed road, state troopers force Derek, Derek’s girlfriend Jill, Derek’s football teammate Philip, Jill’s friend Alison, brothers Matty and Todd, and Matty’s girlfriend Bree to find an alternate route to a ski resort. Stopped at a gas station along the way, Jill gets into a confrontation with a hunter named John over killing a bear with an inhumane trap. Bree takes a pamphlet detailing the cursed history of the nearby Stoughton Valley Witch Trial historic site, which she reads to the others when they return to the road.

Todd suggests taking a shortcut down a remote path. After the friends become lost, a distraction causes Derek to crash into a snow bank.

Alison begins showing signs of strange behavior, including briefly disappearing before being found standing entranced over a mutilated deer carcass. The group pushes the car out of the snow, but Alison inexplicably attempts to run over Derek. The vehicle loses a wheel, stranding everyone in the forest.

Derek discovers Jill and Philip are having an affair. Derek and Philip accuse each other of failing to stop a teammate’s sexual assault on Alison. The tension creates ongoing argumentative conflict between Derek, Jill, and Philip.

Todd and Alison volunteer for a hike to find help. Derek, Jill, Philip, Matty, and Bree stay in the vehicle to keep warm as night falls.

Alison staggers back to the SUV with blood on her face and a clump of hair in her hand. Seemingly possessed, Alison bites Bree’s finger. Bree recoils and punctures her neck on a ski pole. The resulting blood loss causes Bree to collapse.

Matty sets off alone to look for his brother. Matty triggers one of John’s animal traps and eventually dies.

Tensions continue boiling over among Derek, Jill, and Philip after Derek repeatedly insists on restraining Alison for their safety. Hearing a ringtone in the distance, Derek, Jill, and Philip separately set out to find the dropped cellphone.

Bree regains consciousness. Alison kills her. Jill rushes back to the vehicle upon hearing Bree’s scream.

Alison attacks Derek in the forest. Derek flees. Startled by the sound of someone approaching, Derek inadvertently stabs Philip in his neck with a screwdriver. Philip dies.

Jill finds Bree dead. Derek returns to Jill at the SUV. Derek starts falling unconscious and ultimately dies of exposure.

Jill goes into the forest to look for help and finds Philip’s body. Alison suddenly confronts her. Although Alison pleads for her life by insisting nothing is wrong with her, Jill stabs Alison with a ski pole.

At gunpoint, John demands that Jill move away from Alison’s dead body. A state trooper takes Jill away from the crime scene at daybreak. Jill claims her friend was possessed.

---

Review:

Some of the actors in “Witches in the Woods” may be unfamiliar. The same can’t be said of the college kids they portray.

First up is Derek, the pretty boy football star whose alpha attitude winds him tight for angry outbursts. His girlfriend Jill has the good gal gusto of an optimistic activist. She exhibits the kind of consistent concern that gets her into an unsolicited argument with a hunter over inhumane use of animal traps.

Bree sits behind them. Prim and preppy with a pink poof on her winter coat, the cellphone inseparable from her hand defaults Bree to the status-obsessed b*tch of the bunch. Jill’s friend Alison is far more reserved, though that seems to stem from an implied assault and subsequent sex video scandal mentioned only in tiptoe terms.

Brothers Matty and Todd bring up the backseat. Other than being Bree’s mismatched boyfriend, there isn’t much that’s remarkable about Matty. Todd qualifies as the irresponsible goof. He casually calls a state trooper “bro” and smilingly tells the others “trust me” to get them to go along with his bad ideas.

Last but not least is Philip. Philip is Derek’s teammate. However, cryptic texts asking, “when are you going to tell him?” hint Philip may be something else to Derek’s girl Jill. Do you smell a scandalous love triangle brewing? I’ll never understand why anyone would think a holiday getaway with your best pals would be a fine moment to reveal a secret affair instead of, well, literally any other time. Yet here we are staring straight into the eyes of the tropiest trope imaginable for a group of headshot handsome young friends.

While we’re talking about tropes, what’s one way a horror movie can go about stranding its characters in the middle of nowhere? An unforeseen road closure detouring everyone down a remote route? Someone suggesting a sketchy shortcut past a ‘No Trespassing’ sign? A driver distractedly pointing his eyes somewhere else at the exact moment an obstacle rises in the road? “Witches in the Woods” employs all three at once to ensure these seven friends stay stuck in a snowy forest far from help. I’ll bet you already guessed they don’t have cellphone reception out there either, didn’t you?

At a gas station along the way, one of the girls picks up a pamphlet for a nearby historic site where the Stoughton Valley Witch Trials took place. A single paragraph summarizes the sad tale of a servant girl whose violent seizures were thought to be caused by demonic possession. Other villagers succumbed to similar symptoms, which the resulting panic attributed to a curse afflicting local land. These 40 seconds of exposition are all the film offers as an origin story. If you want any additional background beyond that, you’re going to be disappointed.

You’re also going to be disappointed if you expect “Witches in the Woods” to actually have witches in its woods. The movie’s dull dawdling around milquetoast material means you’ll probably come away underwhelmed no matter what. But given what the movie’s title seemingly advertises, it’s an important consumer alert to reiterate, “there are no witches in these woods!”

“Witches in the Woods” is primarily a lot of teen/twenty-something melodrama frosted at its edges by a standard “stranded in the cold” thriller. One person becomes oddly entranced. Her alarming behavior sets circumstances in motion that keep the crew in deepening danger as night falls and the temperature drops with it. Others are possibly influenced by the curse to do strange things too. Or it may merely be bad writing that has everyone scrambling for the silliest excuses to set off into the dark forest alone, which all seven people find a way to do at one point or another.

Snowy landscapes create a terrific setting, but clichéd conditions keep virtually everything else about “Witches in the Woods” completely cold in less appealing ways. Suspenseful scares are in short supply. Repetitive arguments between these frustrated and freezing friends are not. Suit up for petty squabbles, routine beats, and slow setups for splitting up and dying offscreen. For something genuinely witchy, you’d be better off venturing into a different set of trees.

Review Score: 40

---