Summary
A group of High School/College girlfriends visit the home of one of the girl’s aunt’s, for the holidays. That wouldn’t be a problem if she wasn’t a child eating witch who has eaten all the girls from the nearby village.
Instant Go To
As soon as I finished this film, I knew it would be a go to Halloween film for me.
As a rule, I am not overly fond of the horror genre. When people ask which horror movies I like, I usually answer, ‘All of the good ones.’ Typically horror seems to care very little for story or true dread and fear and opts instead for cheap jump scares driven by loud music cues and gruesome obsession over violence for violence sake. While I find gruesome effects to be interesting from a how-did-they-do-that perspective, it isn’t something that can make a film for me, if that is its only significant trait.
This horror film wins me over in a way few other horror films have been able to manage. It won me over with its sense of whimsy and fun.
Trippy-Anime-Horror
This is not horror film like most others. You don’t walk away feeling dirty and and gross. You finish up feeling like you were just hanging on to a bumper car that went out of the rink and ran through a fun house. Its an experience that puts you through a range of emotions rather than just striking one single note the whole time.
This is partially because of its unusual structure but also due to the variety of ways this film exposes you to the terror of the witch and what she does. It’s pretty obvious right from the start that she is evil, but the girls she entertains don’t know and they seem bent on coming up with any plausible excuse in the book to set their minds at ease about the disappearance of their school mates.
Because of this we see many varieties of killings throughout the movie devolving into one long chase scene.
The killings themselves are also, not typical to the horror genre. They are playful, almost because the movie doesn’t care if a severed arm is obviously a mannequin hand. In fact, it revels in the low tech way the violence is portrayed. The blood in this film is as likely shown with watery red, obviously fake blood substitute, as it is by a cartoony pixelated red drip drawn in ms paint.
My Thoughts
That isn’t to say that there isn’t violence in this film, it’s just different than in most horror. It’s a fun movie meant to be enjoyed with a wink and a nod as the witch breaks the fourth wall to let you know that no one is leaving her house, alive. If you can go into it with that spirit, no expectations or complaints about it not being true horror, then you might find this film becoming a go to Halloween classic, like I did.
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