Tag: Black Magic

Movie Review: HEREDITARY is the latest in the series of “SCARIEST MOVIE EVER!” clickbait headlines. It’s good, but too flawed to be great.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews2 Comments

If you’ll remember, going waaaaay back to February of 2018, one of the scariest movies EVER was released.  I’m talking about Veronica, the Spanish language movie about the cost of freeing malevolent entities via the old Ouija board.  I found it to be not only hackneyed and cliche, but also not scary at all – click the link to read my review.  Admittedly, I’m a horror movie fan and I’ve sat through some great horror, and the appreciation of horror (and what we find scary in general) is subjective.  So I’m not slamming people who genuinely did find Veronica scary, more the idiots who make up clickbait headlines to promote either product, their website, or themselves.  Hereditary arrived with such a campaign.

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Movie Review: PYEWACKET – It’s too bad the title will put a lot of people off, because this indie horror is a terrific watch.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews3 Comments

Yeah, so that title.  I can’t stand it, and I think it will put people off from giving the movie a fair shot.  Look, even I find it off-putting, and I know what it means! But the vast majority of people who see the title won’t.  It’ll just be a funny title that sounds like it could be some kind of slapstick comedy involving people getting hit in the face with custard pies and getting whacked on the behind with a paddle.  But of course, I’m British and grew up with these kind of vaudevillian shenanigans on the Beeb, so there you go.

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Movie Review: A DARK SONG – overlong and repetitive with a “WTF?!” ending, but pays dividends for those with knowledge of the occult

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Immodestly, I have a pretty wide knowledge of what’s considered “black magic” – it’s been an interest of mine since my very early teens.  I say this as someone who, simultaneously, has no belief whatsoever in the supernatural or magic, it’s just a subject that I’m endlessly fascinated by.  Recently, I saw a blurb on the internet claiming that a horror movie explored the Abremalin ritual in detail, so I had to see it for myself.  That movie is 2016’s A Dark Song.

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Movie Review: 7 WITCHES – low budget and a waaaaay too short running time dilute this indie horror’s potential. Could, and should, have been better.

On By ANDREW HOPEIn Movie Reviews22 Comments

One of my favourite horror elements is that of black magic, specifically witchcraft, and specifically performed by witches.  I never really took too much to the idea of wizards or warlocks – there’s just something about female practitioners of black magic that appeals to me, they seem darker, somehow.  Not that men can’t – the real world has a much higher ration of evil men to evil women, and maybe that’s where the appeal lies; it’s different in the world of the supernatural.  And I will be even more specific here – I prefer younger witches to the old ones.  Like the archetype of the vampire, there’s a strongly sexual appeal in the youthful-looking witch image.  They’re women who yield power confidently, unafraid, unrestrained.  I’ve always had a thing for Samantha from Bewitched, and Samantha Robinson as The Love Witch is about as sexy (and sociopathic) a practitioner as you could possibly find.  The movie 7 Witches features a another darkly sppealing witch, as part of a familial coven.  I watched this movie last night, knowing nothing about it, arriving as it did from a mysterious benefactor …

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Movie Review: THE LOVE WITCH – extremely faithful homage to the camp horror of the 60s and 70s, with a great performance from its star.

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I’ve seen some bizarre movies in my time, and I have to say, The Love Witch is up there.  If you haven’t heard of it, you’re not alone.  Released in November of 2016 it ended up with a domestic box office of less than a quarter million, but I feel it’s going to have an extended streaming shelf life through word of mouth.  Billed by many sites as a horror movie, I’ll tell you that it barely rises to meet that definition.  The witchcraft driven plot isn’t strong enough for it to be considered horror – it’s more of an occult thriller than anything else.

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