Review: Wood Witch: The Awakening (2020)
I learned something from watching writer/director Courtney G. Jones’ film Wood Witch: The Awakening. It seems Odin turned other deities who rebelled against him into trees and planted them in the forests of Washington. And they say I’m wasting my life watching horror movies…
Wood Witch: The Awakening opens with title cards telling us the film edited together from the victim’s actual footage of the incident, footage from the show “I Survived: When Urban Legends Attacked”. And footage reenacted to complete the story. So it’s a found footage film that explains all those shots that usually have you asking, “Whose filming this, everyone is in front of the camera.”
Four friends, Chris (Bradley H. Tatum), Cari (Sydney Mitchell), Arianna ( Juliana Azcarate) and Jon (Cameron Walsworth) film their double marriage proposal on the beach. Then they go to visit Allan and Margot’s parents to celebrate. While there they hear the legend of Helvede who rebelled against Odin and is now a tree in the local forest.
Margot is a Vlogger and immediately wants to go looking for her, despite being warned against doing so by her parents and local historian Mr. Kensington (Tim Tully). Of they go looking and find she’s more than just a myth.
Shot in 2015 and just now getting released Wood Witch: The Awakening is seventy-five minutes long including mid-credit scenes. The characters don’t get into the woods until past the thirty-minute mark. It’s another twenty minutes before they find the right tree. So a lot of talking. Followed by walking through the woods and then running from a scarcely seen creature. In other words, your typical bad found footage film. Maybe not Hinsdale House or Missing in Greenwood bad, but still not good.
Granted at times the plot of Wood Witch: The Awakening gets so absurd and the creature is so goofy looking that I wondered if it was supposed to be a spoof of these films. But if it is, the film is still a failure because it isn’t funny either.
One thing that wasn’t standard is that this was filmed not on an iPhone, but in part with a Samsung 5 and a Galaxy Note 4. You can see several of the characters filming using their phone in a Beastgrip case. I’m curious though what apps they used though as all of the film’s footage looks good.
Beyond that though, there’s nothing remotely interesting going on in Wood Witch: The Awakening. If, like the film’s characters, you chose to disregard the warnings it’s available to stream.
A thank you to Bradley Tatum for correcting my errors on a couple of the characters and cast, And for having a sense of humour about my giving the film a bad review.