Avidavr: Media Reviews

Tag: horror

  • Day 6: The Witches (1990)

    Goal: Find a horror movie I wish I’d seen as a kid.

    What I know about it:

    Based on a Roald Dahl book — which I never read — though I did start the graphic novel adaptation by Pénélope Bagieu. I loved that version. It felt like the perfect bedtime story to read to all the imaginary historical figures in my head who wanted to learn about modern life. That’s probably the best way to describe both that time in my life and the tone of the story itself.

    From the marketing I remember, The Witches looked like one of those kids’ movies built around the trope of adults conspiring over a terrified child — laughing maniacally, looming above him, and plotting his doom. The trailer had shots that could’ve been outtakes from A Clockwork Orange, which was probably close enough to my recurring nightmares that I wasn’t exactly rushing to buy a ticket. For reasons unknown, my dad — who took me to almost everything — skipped this one.

    After the movie:

    “Your grandmother just has a slight case of diabetes, that’s all.”

    What an odd way to introduce kids to diabetes. The movie hints that sugar is essentially poison for Grandma, yet nothing comes of it — no payoff, no consequence. Was that just a random subplot or a witch’s failed hex? Either way, it’s bizarrely specific for something so pointless.

    The Witches starts strong but has aged unevenly. The early 1990s were the dark ages of “clever kids versus magical villains” movies. We took what we got — and we liked it.

    Anjelica Huston gives one of her best-known performances as Miss Ernst, the Grand High Witch. If you don’t love watching her tear off that mask and putting it back on, adjusting her nose with perfectionistic concern, you and I probably wouldn’t get along. The makeup effects rule the movie, but it is Huston who owns it — she’s the part everyone still remembers 35 years later.

    The film loses steam once the mouse transformation happens. By today’s standards, the “mousecapade” section feels slow and static. Director Nicolas Roeg, best known for Don’t Look Now (one of the best and dullest horror films of the 1970s), brings striking cinematography but not much momentum. Jim Henson’s studio did the effects, and it shows — the witch makeup is brilliant, but the mice barely move.

    Realizing Henson’s studio was involved gives The Witches some weight in cinematic history. It’s often described as “intensely frightening,” though today’s kids — raised on Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings — would find it pretty tame. What ultimately holds it back is its small scale.

    There was a 2020 remake directed by Robert Zemeckis, starring Anne Hathaway as the Grand High Witch. It’s technically longer but adds no substance. IMDb reviewers called it “needless” and existing for “no good reason.” Hathaway’s wandering accent doesn’t help — part Russian, part Scottish, part… something.

    The acting in the 1990 version is otherwise strong, except for Jasen Fisher as the boy. He has that vague, untrained-kid energy common in early ’90s movies. My friend Josh pointed out he looks just like Macaulay Culkin, which only made me wonder why Culkin wasn’t cast instead. He would’ve worked great. Roeg probably just said, “Can you read these lines without tripping? Great — you’re a mouse!” Everyone else, though, is Harry Potter-level casting.

    So, who should watch The Witches in 2025?

    I go by the Goosebumps rule: those books were perfect for my inner eleven-year-old, but by twelve I’d already outgrown them. No respectable parent should show The Witches to a child under nine — but that’s exactly who will love it most. They’ll be just traumatized enough to think it’s great.

    A pretty good movie, but its usefulness today is limited.

    7/10

  • Weapons (2025) movie review

    Zach Creggor’s latest taps into many of the most expected small town fears.

    Early in the movie Arrival, the feeling of fear seemed very familiar. When Louise (Amy Adams) walks into her classroom to teach at her prestigious university, only a handful of students are present. Didn’t you hear? Alien spaceships are hovering over our largest cities. The human race might be done.

    Sigh… everyone go home.

    As Arrival was to 9/11, Weapons is to Columbine, or perhaps Sandy Hook. Early in the movie, there is a town hall meeting for all of the parents of the students who ran out the front door in the middle of the night into the darkness and haven’t been seen since. They were all from the same classroom, which drives the parents to dabble in conspiracy theories. Witchcraft?

    Julia Garner as Justine, one of the many lead characters that swap in and out in Weapons.

    The principal invited the teacher of the classroom, which quickly becomes a notable mistake. “Why is she here?,” exclaims Archer (Josh Brolin), as he explains, rather ignorantly, why she is the only plausible explanation for what happened. If there is one thing I know about town hall meetings from TV shows (Parks and Recreation), it’s that they tend to groupthink themselves into the lowest common denominator.

    The characters, who swap in and out as leads across a half-dozen overlapping stories, are rough clichés for this type of suburban town—which is probably the point. Everyone is drawn quickly and given a quirk or two, but there’s nothing to anyone that makes them feel like more than archetypes. This story could happen anywhere, we come to believe.

    The villain here is likely to be referenced among horror movie buffs as one of the best of the twenty-first century so far. Does the occult really work like this? How does one acquire the capabilities of a level 16 wizard? Could no one roll a die and escape the cold grasp of a terrifying lich that seems to acquire whatever they want?

    Cary Christopher as Alex. Terrified of terrifying?

    The movie doesn’t quite make sense. The biggest problem is the ease with which Archer triangulates the exact location of the destination point that the kids ran to in the middle of the night. He knows the degree by counting the number of concrete slabs the kids ran over. The problem? All of the kids ran out the front door and then straight ahead. What is the likelihood of that? Every kid’s house pointing directly to the same center point? It’s as though everyone built their home so they could walk out the door and be inspired by the emperor’s glorious house on a hill. City planning doesn’t work that conveniently for amateur sleuths trying to solve an implausible mystery.

    Nonetheless, Weapons is atmospheric and extremely satisfying. The split narrative works well, showing several different characters, flaws and all, in ways that overlap and converge unexpectedly. I thought of Doug Liman’s Go mixed with Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. I hope that reads like high praise, because it is. Director Zach Cregger almost convinces us that this silly premise contains a story that needed to be told. I don’t believe the evils of the world work this way—but this movie made me feel like they could, and that’s what makes it linger.

    7.5/10