Heir of the Witch (2023) - Horror Film Review

Heir of the Witch is the first full feature film from film production company, Pasha Entertainment. It was written and directed by Victoria U Bell, who also stars as the protagonist, and the idea was created from Bell's own personal experiences. The press release states in real life her Moldovan grandmother was a witch with a dark reputation, with a family legend being that she was unable to die until she had passed on her powers to someone else. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction! While this was the inspiration for the movie, Bell used her creativity to add elements to make it work better.

As a child, Anna (Bell) and her aunt left Moldova and moved to the United States, after an incident involving the death of her mother and the imprisonment of her father. Now grown up, the shy woman works as a seamstress for wealthy clients, living at the home of her elderly and terminally ill aunt (Vanessa Neff). Her work brings her to the attention of Chloe (Deanna Rashell), a conceited rich woman who sees the shy Anna as something of a pet project. Anna soon captures the attention of Chloe's husband, Nicholas (Ben Holtzmuller), and they secretly begin having an affair, which results in Anna getting pregnant. The woman holds a secret though, her grandmother back in Moldova had a history of witchcraft, and it is hinted that this is something that Anna has been fighting her whole life to get away from, and which is increasingly affecting her in the form of troubling nightmares, hallucinations, and dark thoughts.

After an intro screen of text describing a type of witch particular to Moldova, the film begins in earnest. Throughout the hour and a half run time this straddles the line between being a doomed romance plot, and the more horror based attempts by the evil spirit of Anna's grandmother (Lorayn DeLuca) to corrupt the girl. Frequent flashbacks reveal both what exactly happened with her parents, as well as the sinister ordeals she experienced at the hands of her grandmother. There was almost a dream like feel to aspects of the film, with it often, particularly in the second half, becoming hard to parse what was real and what was imagined. It all leads to a somewhat bizarre twist reveal, but one that I did think worked, especially with flashbacks to key scenes in the movie with a different perspective put on things.

Bell was great as the protagonist, though the character remained something of a mystery. She was prone to hysterics, with her coming across as not entirely balanced. I found the affair between her and Nicholas to feel a little off, I couldn't quite get on board with the idea she would cheat with a married man, and the way the film zoomed past periods of time with no indication of having done so, added to the strange feel. Between scenes for instance, Anna changes to being her normal self to being heavily pregnant. The way this often felt a bit dreamlike made this transition not as jarring as it could have been. I was never sure how this was all going to end up, thankfully it remained deliciously dark, even if I was getting a little lost prior to the big twist reveal
On the horror side of things I was pleased with what was shown. There was more blood than I had expected to see, and some fun death scenes, typically involving the ghost of an evil witch controlling victims into doing awful things to themselves, such as one scene that had a woman repeatedly stabbing a huge pair of scissors into her own leg. I thought the visual effects for these moments were neat, and the parts that had either the witch, or possessed people suddenly taking on a demonic look were fun, giving me Evil Dead deadite vibes.

With a cast of mostly horrible characters, it was hard to root too much for anyone, with the exception of Anna, who herself was shown to be very flawed. The murkiness around the edges of the story sometimes left me more confused than intrigued. I did however think the moments of horror were effective, they had a strong visual look to them which did create some nice messed up scenes. Heir of the Witch is streaming everywhere from August 4th 2023.

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