Film Review: *Witch-Hunt*

By Jane Nightshade

Witch-Hunt is a low-budget, direct-to-video film currently streaming on Amazon Prime. The film, which stars a cast of seven largely unknowns, was written and directed by Philip Schaeffer, who is mostly known for his work on the series Criminal Minds. This film is Schaeffer's first feature. Cast members include Erin Curtis, Abby Eiland and Melinda Chadbourne.

Five young women from Southern California gather at an upscale house for evening wine and cake, to celebrate the birthday of Bridget, a writer who is into goth and occult themes. (The house is oddly decorated in giant clocks, which gives a surreal, creepy mood to the setting.) Four of the women have known each other since preschool, where they were involved in an 80s-style, Satantic hoax claim against their teacher, which caused her to commit suicide.

The fifth woman, Rebecca--who's the owner of the house--is a new friend of one party-goer. She has an ulterior motive for hosting the party, which gradually is revealed as the night wears on.

The film confines most of the action to a few rooms in Rebecca's house, obviously for budget reasons. The only other set is a corporate office at a book publisher. In the office, two other women, named Priscilla and Lizzie, are shown in flashbacks, plotting how to "use" the women at the party for a literary project. They are joined by a third woman later on, and their "project's" relationship with the party becomes clear when she appears in the office.

Back to the birthday party: after cake and wine, the party-goers settle down to play an interactive card game called "Witch-Hunt." Witch-Hunt is a rare, out-of-print game that's so old it comes with directions on a tape cassette instead of a CD. A cackling, ancient crone's voice directs the players' action from the cassette; the object of the game is to guess the player who holds the "witch" card by process of elimination.

However, as the women play five rounds of the game, they begin to notice strange happenings that become progressively more alarming. Eventually, they realize that an actual witch is among them, seeking to settle an old score. And they end up playing for their lives.

The acting is very professional and the dialog is clever, as the evening combines wine-drinking, bitchy gossip and eventually, murder. Most of the cast "uptalks" in that upper-middle-class, Southern California way of young, ambitious women. The "totallys" and "ohmygods" of the dialog, when delivered in that distinctive accent, adds both authenticity and a bit of dark comedy to the gathering. With a wink and a nod to inside jokery, all of the characters have the same names as real women who were executed for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials.

Witch-Hunt is a much better film than the average straight-to-video horror fare. This director bears watching. However, I recommend watching the film twice to really understand what's going on, as the dialog and flashbacks can be quite intricate.