TWO WITCHES

There is an indie film that's been generating quite a bit of buzz lately. It's called "Two Witches," and Arrow video recently release it on Blu-Ray. It's an indie horror film that really manages to be creepy cool. 

I feel that I do need to address one thing going into this, though. There are those who say that horror stories and movies about evil witches stigmatize Wiccans and other similar pagans, and that they continue dangerous stereotypes. As someone who at one time was following a Wiccan path, I can absolutely see that as a valid point. The thing is, there is an incredibly wide range of pagan beliefs, and to assume that all so called witches are of the evil variety shown in fiction seems a leap to me. Still, perhaps for someone with less knowledge and experience, it might be different. I guess I take the point of view that it's just a piece of fiction and people know that. I certainly respect other opinions on it, though. 

With that out of the way, let's get to the movie itself. This film is divided into two chapters. You can look at it as two individual stories, I suppose, but they do tie in together, and according to the film-makers, the whole thing is a prequel to another story yet to be told. If there is an aspect of the film that doesn't  work, it's the story telling. 

I say that because in some ways I'm not sure about some pretty important parts of the story after watching. I get that the first half is about a pregnant woman who is being stalked and tormented by a witch who wants to eat her baby, and the second is about a young woman who inherits her magical powers when her grandmother dies. I'm not going to go into any more details than that in order to avoid spoilers, but as I said these story lines tie together. Well, spoilers is part of the reason I won't go into more details, but another reason is that there are things about the story that were unclear to me even after I finished watching the film. Then again, that might have been a choice the filmmakers made to leave some things unexplained awaiting further exposition in the sequel. 

All that said, this movie really does a great job of being incredibly spooky and scary. It seems to try to capture a lot of styles of horror film, and is pretty darned effective. Parts of this are all about existential dread and foreboding. To me, that's probably the core of what makes horror, really. 

Still, they manage to bring in plenty of gore, and there are a lot of jump scares, too. You can tell that the people responsible for this film have seen a lot of horror and have a reverence and love of the genre. Every scene seems to just drip "creepy."

Overall, this is the kind of horror movie that just feels like a love letter to the genre. It is dark, it is spooky and it is so cool. It honestly didn't matter to me that I didn't get all of the story details figured out or explained to me. The journey was the point, and what a journey it was.  Like the cenobites in "Hellraiser," the film makers had such sights to show us, and show us they did. This blu-ray includes a number of bonus features, with the making of pieces and the interview with Dina Silva my favorites of the bunch. All in all, if you are horror fan, you are very likely to enjoy the dark, nightmarish ride they take you on here.