Synergy Magazine

Witches Night

Hay Moon Pictures

R1 DVD

Witches Night opens with some sort of ceremony. A group of what one presumes to be witches are grinding and dancing around a male victim spread-eagled on a table. At one point one of the witches heats up a long poker and he receives it in the most unpleasant manner, so opens Witches Night.

With the witches in the background, we find a group of young men escaping to the country. It seems that Jim has been jilted at the altar by his fiancé and his mates have decided to take him away from the city for a good time with some booze, drugs and maybe some broads, if they can find any.

We are introduced to a motley crew, Jim, the rather young and inexperienced would be husband, his brother, divorced and living on cheap booze and pot, making his living in a dead end job. Rick, a rather aggro and questionable strip club owner and Ted, the married man.

The film creates a nice easy going mood between these characters which seems credible and believable, the acting is solid and for a while it seems like a strange buddy film. There is lots of smart dialogue, mate talk and humour which cements the bonds of friendship which will be strained later in the film.

However, when they go to a local store to get some more beer, of which they are constantly running out, the owner has a cross drawn in salt on the table and strange items hanging around the store, he also seems to have a book on witches he is studying. There are a range of subtle visual clues set into to the film which hint at future horrors.

The store sets the tone for this film, carefully created and textured mood pieces which use the environment, colour, light and inference to get across the message. It uses limited special effects and relies on solid acting, character development and plain old suspense and from these it weaves a very successful tale.

Looking for something to do, they meet a local woman Marge (Betsy Baker of Evil Dead) who rents them some canoes to go down river and this is where things get weird. During their first night of partying they meet four young woman but they are nothing like any of them have encountered before. These women are not only sexually aggressive but seem to have a resonance with nature, they seem earthy and pagan and seem to ridicule the men’s emotional and sexual pretentions.

This constant “conflict between the sexes” runs through the film and gives it an added depth. From Jim being left at the altar to the men’s sexism, to the women’s native sexual paganism and later Sapphic worship of the Horned God, there is a constant thread exploring male female dynamics.

When the men awake in the morning everything has changed, they cannot remember the night before and each one has a re-occurrence of earlier illnesses. Ted is going blind, Bill is crippled with a stomach illness while Rick is becoming more and more addicted to sex and violence. Jim is the only one resisting the spell but his arm is already scarred and things are going downhill.

The film is a great example of careful editing and suspenseful filmmaking. It uses very few special effects and the first real shock in terms of a body (putting aside the one right at the beginning) appears at around the 50 minute mark. While there is some solid action and some gore, a lot is left to the imagination. Indeed I would suggest most of the film works by using shadows, colour, light and sound, by hinting rather than showing and this is certainly an impressive achievement.

The climatic ceremony is again impressive by using careful editing and lighting and a great strong drum sound track, it creates a real sense of wild abandon with a limited number of props, primarily masks.

The conclusion of the film with the confrontation between Jim and the Witches is interesting, perhaps a little anti-climatic but overall satisfying. I found this an innovative and creative film which relied on the good old skills of storytelling, plot, character and mood to create a suspenseful viewing experience.

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