Witch Hunt

Witch Hunt

97 Minutes / Not Rated

Written and Directed by Elle Callahan

Synopsis:

In a modern America where witches are real and witchcraft is illegal, a sheltered teenager must face her own demons and prejudices as she helps two young witches avoid law enforcement and cross the southern border to asylum in Mexico.

There are going to be a lot of comparisons made concerning this movie.

It’s rabidly anti, anti-woman (because, Witches) if that makes sense, so the words “Handmaid’s Tale” will pop up.

Analogies to LGBTQIA+ issues, BIPOC rights, and assertions of contemporary fascism are all there to be made…

Here’s the problem:

You don’t need to assign such current-event symbolism to Witch Hunt to understand its most basic point: people shouldn’t be lumped together for any reason as a means to define or control them.

They should be judged as individuals based on their own behaviors.

There. I said it.

Whoever watches this can and will use it as “evidence” of whatever socio-political cause they hold dear, and bludgeon anyone who shows the slightest deviation from that particular point of view with it.

Which only proves the central premise of the damned film.

Now, to finally talk about it as an actual film; Witch Hunt is really good. A solid script based on an alternate American history, where the anti-witch hysteria in New England never died out, and, in fact, grew into a central tenet of the United States governmental system.

And apparently, the good old US of A is on its own in that regard, as the film find witches fleeing south across the Mexican border where they won’t, presumably, be subjected to “prick tests,” “float tests,” or any other pseudo-scientific methods of detecting witches.

(“She turned me into a newt!”)

Elizabeth Mitchell, as the mother to a troubled teen in a border community, provides a solid base for the family unit, until a BWI agent (that’s Bureau of Witchcraft Investigations) comes sniffing around. This is super bad because he’s a multi-generation witch-hunter with a pocket barometer, another bit of “science” used to detect the presence of magic, and thus, witches.

Mix into all of this the normal teenage angst of Claire (Gideon Adlon), who’s trying desperately to survive an otherwise typically terrible high school life as her mother uses their home as a stop on the underground witches railroad, and the cauldron is primed for an explosive climax…

…which also ends up being a nice homage to a classic feminist film.

I’m not sure where Witch Hunt will end up being seen, but if it was up to me, I’d buy it, turn it into a 2-hour pilot, and then a 10-episode series (to begin with, anyway).

It just feels like this is a solid underpinning for an ongoing series, just like, and I can’t believe I’m saying it after what I said above: The Handmaid’s Tale.

Check it out.

Witch Hunt stars Gideon Adlon, Elizabeth Mitchell, Abigail Cowen, Nicholas & Cameron Crovetti, and Christian Camargo.

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