Pyewacket

2018 "Be careful what you wish for. Someone might be listening."
5.8| 1h28m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 23 March 2018 Released
Producted By: Entertainment One
Country: Canada
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/pyewacket
Synopsis

A frustrated, angry teenage girl awakens something in the woods when she naively performs an occult ritual to invoke a witch to kill her mother.

... View More
Stream Online

Stream with Prime Video

Director

Producted By

Entertainment One

Trailers & Images

Reviews

beorhhouse A Goth girl is frustrated by her father's death and her mother's inability to collect herself after the passing of her loyal and loving husband. In a fit of fury, the girl takes seriously the Black Magic books all of her friends study and calls a demon forth called Pyewacket (one of the demons spoken about in Salem during the Witch Trials) to kill her mother. But the demon is smarter than the girl and pretends to have killed the mother and then masquerades as the dead woman. The teenager becomes confused, believing the body of her mother is real, when we know it was only Pyewacket pretending to be the dead woman. The Goth then encounters the sheer power of the demon while her mother is still away in the small town near where they live. She runs to the attic for safety, and the demon follows her in the shape of her mother. But is this really the demon? The girl thinks it is, and so takes a bucket of gasoline to her mother's bedroom--still believing her mother is dead--and douses the "demon" then sets it on fire. It turns out to be the girl's actual mother, and so insanity ensues as we see that Pyewacket has indeed done what it was summoned to do--kill the mother-- and then, as demons always do, has turned its ferocity on its summoner.
ommik I thought the beginning was more or less promising; I liked how the main character was already into the occult and it seemed like she knew what she was doing. However, the movie very quickly descended into your standard bunch of "am I going crazy or is something after me" horror cliches.The soundtrack and visual vibe was good, but as a whole the movie didn't impress me at all.
Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Pyewacket" is a relatively new Canadian film from 2017 written and directed by prolific actor Adam MacDonald and here we have his second full feature film. It's not a long movie by any means, barely makes it past the 80-minute mark not counting the pretty long closing credits section at the end. The cast does not include any known actors, at leastg to me I must admit, but that's not a problem at all, never really an issue for the horror genre either and pretty common there. It is the story of a teenage girl who took a turn for the dark side after the death of her father, not in the sense that she turned evil, but that she developed an interest in the occult. And tensions have been rough between her and her mother too in recent weeks, especially when she decides to take the daughter to a new home meaning she, to some extent, has to leave her friends behind. Still there are moments when she seems like a caring mother while in other moments she is a true beast. But she is not possessed or anything. The latter moments also include the one where she makes a truly cruel comment about the girl's father, which eventually results in our "heroine" performing a wicked spell that brings up a witch creature keen on killing the girl's mother. Maybe the extremes of the mother in terms of her behavior are a bit too much to be honest, but I believe Laurie Holden does a really good job here and easily gives the best performance from the cast. Very much a scene stealer. The scenes with the girl's friend, boyfriend and the other guy didn't do too much for me. When we see them all, it's tolerable, but the one with the best friend for example is just so-so, even if MacDonald makes decent use of the known horror film formulas that always work well like stoned teenagers acting as if something horrible happened, but in fact just playing pranks what we can never be sure of. The scene close to the ending with the witch having taken over the mother's body was really good and actually, they should have created a decent ending out of this one, maybe with the daughter giving the witch the knife and the witch killing her too. Or with the spell being performed back in the other direction setting things straight again in the sense of a happy ending could have been fine too. However, the path tehy took eventually with the big fire and the interrogation scene did very little for me unfortunately I must say and left another negative note on the already not too convincing horror element for me here. I don't need constant blood, death and violence, but I need more than what we got here. Like I wrote in the title, the non-supernatural scenes feel almost better than the core of the film, so yes it's not a film I'd recommend particularly to horror movie enthusiasts, let alone call it a must-see, but it is a pretty good watch for everybody who can stomach the more serious moments. The lead actress does what she needed to do too without ever really shining. I'd somehow even say after watching this one that I'd be curious to check out a non-horrror movie by MacDonald in the future. We'll see if it happens. Until then, go and watch Pyewacket. It's worth 90 minutes of your time.
dhruvjaggi Bad acting makes the protagonist's character irritating more than anything else. While watching you can easily preempt the plot and keep wondering why the charecter in the movie cant!!