Maybe I missed something, but there seem to be several witches in this so-so horror feature. All of them are the not-nice sort of witch: the kind who invade dreams, steal boyfriends, eat children and, in the film’s most delicious scene, wreak cruel and bloody vengeance on guests who spend too long hogging the toilet at parties.
Perhaps the title refers to the fact that the film is divided into two slightly overlapping but otherwise standalone parts, each one dominated by a different witch. The first, weaker, story revolves around Sarah (Belle Adams), who’s expecting a baby with her partner Simon (Ian Michaels). A middle-aged woman in a restaurant (Marina Parodi) unaccountably decides to bewitch poor Sarah, giving her all kinds of nightmares that mostly consist of jump scares piled on jump scares; it all starts to feel like one long, not-at-all-jump-inducing scare, and a noisy ghoulish makeup showreel with a loud soundtrack.
A couple of supporting characters from the first part (played by Dina Silva and Tim Fox) crop up in the second, a much more confidently handled chapter which revolves around young witch Masha (Rebekah Kennedy, wonderfully creepy). Roommate Rachel (Kristina Klebe) tries to be understanding of “weird” and “sort of lost” Masha, but when the latter goes all Single White Female on Rachel the relationship goes south, with inevitably brutal consequences. Although Kennedy’s crazed smile buoys the back half of the film considerably, it’s all pretty episodic and blurry.
• Two Witches is available on 17 October on Arrow.
