Two Witches premiered on the Arrow streaming subscription service on October 1st, and it had been a film I was looking forward to seeing. Directed by Pierre Tsigardis (I Who Have No One) in his feature length directorial debut, this, as the title vaguely implies, is actually made up of two different short films, each one roughly one half of this ninety five minute long movie. It was disappointing to find out that this wasn't that enjoyable, a horror devoid of likeable characters, and a sometimes meandering plot combined to make for a movie that outstayed its welcome.
So, there are two interconnected segments to Two Witches, the first of which is The Boogeywoman. While out at a restaurant with her boyfriend Simon (Ian Michaels), Sarah (Belle Adams) witnesses a creepy old woman watching her. After this she begins to experience strange hallucinations and becomes convinced that she was cursed by the woman. The couple end up visiting their mutual friends, Melissa (Dina Silva - I Who Have No One) and Dustin (Tim Fox) with hopes that Melissa, a practicing wiccan, can use her alleged psychic powers to cure Sarah of her curse.
Masha is the second segment, in this one Rachel (Kristina Klebe - Halloween) discovers that her new roommate Masha (Rebekah Kennedy - B*stard) is a very weird person. When she unavoidably gets on her bad side, Rachel discovers with horror the evil powers that this nasty person has control of.
It's hard to really say which was the better of the two segments. The first followed more of a well paced route, though it devolved into almost arthouse territory in its bizarre second half, in which Simon finds himself trapped within a surreal nightmare. Masha was the part I didn't enjoy, I couldn't stand the titular character, and it wasn't that I found her scary, more that I found her to be really irritating. That was a problem that the film kept going back to. It was really good at showing messed up and off kilter scenes, but these scenes failed to actually be scary. It didn't help that a recurring idea was to show the witches gurning and pulling faces at the camera, something which lost its effect the fifteenth or sixteenth time this was used. At least the effects for the pupil-less eyes was great. In this second segment we almost got a likeable character, I thought Rachel was a grounded and interesting person, so it was a shame that the protagonist becomes Masha herself, someone who just seemed to be evil for evil's sake, without any good reason for why she was acting the way she was.
I did appreciate how the two stories were linked, aside from incidental details such as a report playing over a radio, and a missing poster, we also got Melissa and Dustin appearing in both, the couple with real bad luck to get caught up with two seperate witch based nightmares. Even after the prologue the story isn't done, as after a brief credit sequence there is a further scene that plays out. For me, even before I had reached the prologue I was done with this, so I had to fight the urge to skip past these final sections.
The majority of the effects were practical ones, from severe burns, to slit bellies and severed fingers, the effects may not have looked superb but I did appreciate practical effects over CG, so Two Witches at least had that going for it.
I've never found the witch to be that interesting of a movie monster, and with the ones here bordering on annoying rather than scary, my mind wasn't changed. The Boogeywoman was the better of the two, with Masha feeling overlong due to the story not really going anywhere after the initial reveal of Masha's witch powers. It all ends on a 'to be continued', so if there is a sequel then hopefully that will build on the promise that this one sometimes showed.
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