The Wretched

Solid and atmospheric witch horror! I've been waiting for The Wretched for quite a long time and the positive feedback from festivals only confirmed that this is a really good piece of work. The story focuses on a young teenager who notices the strange behaviour of his neighbour, who transforms into a 1000 year old witch, and an atmospheric old school inferno begins. The film has a very good atmosphere, an interesting mythological backstory, perfect make-up work, enough suspense and likeable actors to keep the viewer's attention. The finale underground is quite possibly the scariest sequence of the year so far. Surprise. Story***, Action***, Humor>No, Violence***, Entertainment****, Music***, Visual****, Atmosphere****, Suspense****. 7.5/10. (05/01/2020)

I had hoped to be more forgiving when Pierce ditched the slapstick, that crunchy girl at the end is pretty cool, and crawling through underground tunnels with a gun always gives me flashbacks to the Vietcong. But it's really not worth it. The film spends most of its time trying to build some sort of rapport between the characters, revealing what terrible dead wood everyone involved is in terms of acting. Plus, a third of the dialogue is about food, because people probably don't have any other topics these days. The film could have ended about halfway through if the protagonist hadn't started babbling complete nonsense and instead just mentioned the neighbors' missing child. It feels artificial because the medium close-ups and close-ups have an exaggerated depth of field that pulls the characters out of their surroundings, and if I'm trying to create the illusion of menace coming from the forest, it’s simply not going to work unless I can shoot the forest in such a way that it doesn't feel like an city park. (10/27/2020)

After his parents divorce, Ben moves to a small town to live with his father. He soon discovers that there is a mysterious evil lurking in the local woods, which ha set its sights on his little neighbour. Will he be able to stop it? The Wretched is a horror film with good scares, interesting characters and a fine eerie atmosphere. It's all the more disappointing that the makers decided to tell the audience practically everything important in the first quarter of an hour and then let the main character spend an hour revealing what the viewer already knows. Too bad. Otherwise, it’s really quite good. (05/26/2020)

A generally tolerable horror flick with some interesting visual ideas and, most of all, relatively sympathetic central characters (which similar movies often don’t have). It borrows various elements from Fright Night, Evil Dead and Disturbia, except The Wretched does not specify the powers and limitations of the witch, so that new things happen more or less all the time, as if the screenwriters had thrown in anything that came handy. For a while, I wondered if the story twist in the last third of the film made any sense. But I then concluded that it simply doesn’t matter, because the twist is completely irrelevant and futile, doesn’t take the movie anywhere nor does it redistribute the cards—it only creates that instant WTF effect, which dissolves as quick as it came. With a cohesive concept, it could have been very decent. (08/14/2020)

In terms of style, I didn’t find anything interesting in The Wretched, it felt like made in some sort of horror directors’ mill. Everything is rather passable, but not very creatively or innovatively executed. But this is enough for an average and mildly laudatory rating, taking into account that it’s a harmless consumer B-movie that hardly any fan will find offensive. What is definitely worth praise is one little twist related to the unreliable narrator, with I found very nicely put together, and for a moment took me by surprise because I was not expecting it in this not very ambitious type of film. (05/03/2020)