Witch Hunt (2017) Film Review

If you’re looking for a good movie, look elsewhere.

Witch Hunt is another independent horror movie that was apparently made in about two days (including writing, casting, filming, and editing). I think there may have been a point here, but it seems that the writer is the type to be easily distracted and began chasing squirrels.

Just about everything in this film is severely below par. I think we need to make a new category for these types of crap movies. This isn’t horror, it isn’t horror/comedy, it certainly shouldn’t be included in indie-horror that has pieces like VVitch or It Follows, I think we should just call these movies shit. Imagine a new category on our streaming services that just says “Worse than blood farts” or “Absolute shit,” wouldn’t this be nice? We should all start a petition.

Witch Hunt is about a group of female friends (or friends of friends) who are the most insufferable group of people. I have railed against poorly written characters in horror often—or perhaps constantly—and this is just another example. I hated every single one of them, there is honestly not a redeemable characteristic about any of them, and the caricature-like aspects of them border on sexist. Seriously, this seems to have written by a follower of the incel ideal. They are all vapid, stupid, licentious, and annoying. Further, the only one who seems to be highly educated is cast as a loser who we are meant to be annoyed with.

Once the group begins to play a board game, it is discovered that one of them must be an actual witch. All of this is done through dialogue, and the film is painfully boring. For a film to work with dialogue being the main driver of the action the writing has to be, you know, good. Here we have little more than a sophomoric attempt at “what-if horror” and nothing else. There is nothing I can say positive about this experience.

Perhaps most annoying is the numerous raving reviews about this that are obviously fake. Now, I recognize one must be careful to not call something they disagree with fake (as this is becoming a problem in this country), but we have copied and pasted user reviews on just about every site. I know that it is hard to be blasted for something you have created, but this just isn’t a good movie. When friends or family boost a score for no reason they are doing everyone involved a disservice. Instead of falsely praising, we should indicate how a movie could be better. Witch Hunt needs to go back to the drawing board on all fronts. Maybe there is a good movie buried here, but it will take a clear eye to carefully examine all of the numerous problems. As it is, this is not worth the time. 0/10