Pyewacket is a 2018 horror / thriller about a frustrated, angst-ridden teenage girl who awakens something in the woods when she naively performs an occult ritual to evoke a witch to kill her mother.
Equating the turbulent coming of age teen years to the horror of the dark arts is nearly a trope all its own with a number of films masking the personal hardships of finding oneself and fighting back against those that seem bent on ruining you with powers born from evil. With Adam MacDonald‘s latest oddly titled Pyewacket, we come around again with a deliciously weighty story that is limited by its budget but not by its ambition. This is an honest look at a troubling subject that then throws in some genuine frights and panic when a simple plan goes completely off the rails.
We follow Leah (Nicole Muñoz), literally, as she enters her high school, practically invisible to the masses bumping into her as she heads to class. Her father died suddenly a year ago and it’s devastated her and her mother Mrs. Reyes (Laurie Holden), who is worse for wear, sunk deep into depression, shutting herself into seclusion. Leah finds solace in her friends Janice (Chloe Rose) and boyfriend Aaron (Eric Osborne), who share her interest in metal and the occult, reading books and discussing black magic. However, this is upset when Mrs. Reyes decides to pack it up and move into the woods to try and start again, though this only causes conflict and then verbal abuse, having Leah fall to spells to seek revenge, awakening a beast in the trees sent to destroy her mother.
This all may sound like your standard, slick, visual effects-driven teeny revenge film with lots of sass and attitude but in truth is nothing of the sort. MacDonald takes this very seriously, putting a great amount of effort into building the constricting world around Leah, giving her routines and daily existence an urgent sense of authenticity. The film avoids the pillars of your typical teen angst fervor, the story lacking a set of bullies or a larger goal that will somehow give the star some chance to shine, instead keeping Leah’s tale much more grounded.
The loss of a father is already traumatic, but uprooting and moving is, for a girl already clinging to fragile handholds, equally distressing. These early moments are handled very well and lend MacDonald’s film a terrific set of hooks to get you invested in where it’s going. It’s refreshing to be in a setting that feels legit. The shift into the woods is an obvious genre marker and yet again MacDonald plays with expectations, keeping this mostly a psychological thriller than a straight-up horror flick. Is the monster in the woods, the titular ‘Pyewacket’ for real? Has Leah conmened her mother to death at the hands of real evil?
You might know actor MacDonald’s only other feature length film, Backcountry, another small scale film about a couple in the woods who face a more realistic creature in the woods, but his second film proves his slowburn, claustrophobic style is no fluke in terms of generating genuine dread. Pyewacket is a deliberately paced cooker that benefits greatly from a strong turn by Muñoz and a haunting story that grips right from the start.