Our next Season of the Witch was made earlier in this century, but it appears to take place in the 1970s.
If you decided to sell, say, all of your clothing, you would probably have the budget to finance a film of similar quality.
Title: Season of the Witch (2009)
Cast and Crew
Written and directed by Peter Goddard
Beth Kingston as Alice Blackwell
Tim McConnell as the Reverend Michael Howdy
Nicki Salmond as Mary Blackwell
Dominic Ellis and Rohan Gotobed as Sam Blackwell
Barry Robbins as Harry Price
Daniel Coffey as John Elliot
Andrew Ledger as Tom Hopkins
Claire Randall as Susanna Price
Hannah Cheetham as Kate Elliot
Geoff Kimmings as Dr. Richard Robbins
Rob Talbot as Terry Joplin
Kevin Hallett as Travis Jones
Premise
A woman returns to her childhood home to clean out the old house, and she brings along her children. The local vicar says “howdy” and begins showing an unholy interest in Alice’s teenage daughter, Mary. Needless to say, all is not as it seems, in either the village or the Reverend’s mind.
High Points
The film has a promising start, with credits and a (seemingly) deliberately bad performance that suggests we’re going to see a parody or pastiche of Hammer and other past horror fare. What follows is not a deadpan parody, but that’s probably the best way to watch this film.
The central premise has more serious potential and I admire how far it gets on an almost non-existent budget.
Low Points
The film features a good horror premise—for a short story or short film. It might have fared well as one entry in an anthology. It has neither the strength nor the budget for a feature film, and the result moves at a slow and painful pace to a passable but underfunded conclusion.
The Scores:
Originality: 2/6 The film features little that is original, and its conclusion riffs on one of the most famous final scenes in horror film history.
Effects: 4/6 Given what they had to work with, some of the effects are not bad.
Others are.
Production: 2/6 This film features very low production values that affect all aspects, including the sound.
Acting: 3/6 The acting is uneven to say the least. Some of the performers are pretty good. Other players would not pass the auditions for a small town community theatre.
Story: 3/6 Some of director/writer Goddard’s decisions baffle. People see Mary and ask why she looks familiar, but it takes them most of the film to realize that she’s a near-duplicate of the Reverend’s late wife, who died in a horrible accident. That’s not what would happen. They would say, “hey, Mary looks like the Reverend’s late wife.”
Emotional Response: 2/6
Overall: 3/6 This film tries to be an isolated village mystery and a Hammer horror tribute with a bit of The Wicker Man, 1but some viewers might require the liquor, man, to get through it. A few neat directorial flourishes appear, but the results aren’t good enough to make it a clever horror tribute, nor is the film bad enough to give us the horror-movie equivalent of The Room.
In total, Season of the Witch (2009) receives 19/42
Note
1. I refer here to the 1973 original, and not its terrible remake. Nicholas Cage fans can take heart, however; he appears in the fourth and final film by this title that we shall be reviewing.
The Schedule
October 5/6: Abigail (2024) and Abigail (2023): JD
October 12/13: Season of the Witch (1972) and Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) and Season of the Witch (2009) and Season of the Witch (2011) : JD
October 19/20: Hocus Pocus (1993) and Hocus Pocus (2022): ‘Lex
October 26/27: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023) and Humanist Vampire Seeks Suicidal Person (2023): JD
October 31: The Love Witch (2016): ‘Lex and Sleepaway Camp (1983): JD and Dark Gathering (2023): Alexander Case