‘The North Witch’ DVD Review

Stars: Anna Shields, Jessy Holtermann, Kaitlyn Lunardi, Ameerah Briggs, Brianna Cala | Written by Anna Shields | Directed by Bruce Wemple

Since 1972 over forty people have gone missing in a remote stretch of Canada known as The Barren Lands. Their disappearance, according to locals, is linked to The Barren Cabin which disappeared in 1963, occasionally reappearing only to vanish again.

That’s what the title card at the beginning of The North Witch, the latest film from director Bruce Wemple (Island Escape, The Retreat) and writer Anna Shields (Dawn of the Beast, Little Bi Peep). Shields also plays Madison, whose roommates have just given her the boot and needs a place to stay, she calls her friend Gemma (Jessy Holtermann; War of the Worlds: Extinction, The Christmas Brew) and wrangles an invitation to the expedition she’s going on.

So, along with Talia (Kaitlyn Lunardi; Romance with My Vampire Brother, The Hangman), Alice (Ameerah Briggs; The Church, Population Purge) and Laura (Brianna Cala; The 27 Club, The Flip Side) she finds herself hiking across the Canadian wilderness looking for, you guessed it, The Barren Cabin. It doesn’t take long for them to see signs that something isn’t right. Things like strange symbols hanging from trees and the wallet of a YouTuber who recently went missing looking for the cabin.

Thankfully, The North Witch doesn’t waste a lot of time having its cast wandering through the forest snapping at each other Blair Witch style. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do anything original either. A storm blows up, the women are separated and one of them, yes it’s Anna, finds the cabin. From here it just becomes a list of things we’ve seen before. She finds one of the other women in the forest, just in time for her to die an agonising death, another of the group shows up, attempts to leave bring them back to where they started, etc. And of course, they find a book full of creepy drawings.

One of the things I liked about Wemple’s previous films is his tendency to take familiar plots and give them interesting twists, and I kept waiting for The North Witch to go off in an unexpected direction. Instead, it just stumbles along soullessly, pulling ideas from other films, especially The Evil Dead, without much effect. It feels like neither he nor Shields, who I know can write a much better script than this, were even trying here.

When the film does work up some atmosphere and feeling of dread, it’s as much due to the unsettling score by Wemple’s regular composer Nate VanDeusen (Altered Hours, The Tomorrow Job) and some of the cinematography. There’s no credit for cinematographer on either the print or IMDB, though the director has shot some of his own films, but whoever it was does get some effective shots of the dark cabin, even if nothing comes of them.

There are also a lot of shots that are deliberately out of focus in order to try and build suspense as to what we’re actually seeing. It really doesn’t work after the first time and gets to be annoying by the time the credits roll. The filmmakers may have realised this after the fact, as a title card at the end claims that footage from all the cameras and cell phones used on location suffered from mysterious glitches and image corruption.

I was hoping that this would be a return to form after The Hangman turned out to be a lacklustre affair. Unfortunately, it’s another step backwards, failing to raise to even that film’s level. This is Wemple’s fifth film in two years and hopefully, it’s simply a touch of burnout, and he just needs to relax and take a vacation to recharge. I’d hate to think that one of the more reliable genre filmmakers of the past few years has run out of ideas.

The North Witch is available on DVD and Digital now from High Fliers.