October Horror Movie Challenge: Witches of Blackwood (2020)

Is anyone up for Australian Witches? Sure, let's give it a go!

Witches of Blackwood (2020)

Originally released as The Unlit in Australia.  

Claire Nash (played by Cassandra Magrath) is having trouble. We know right away she is on leave for the police force and it has something to do with Luke and her fellow officers think she had something to do with it. Either way, she is depressed and feels guilty.

While she is under investigation she hears from her uncle that her father has died and she should return home to clear up his affairs. Leaving her boyfriend at home she drives to the idyllic town of Blackwood.  She begins to notice right away that the town seems empty. All she finds are listless, hollow-eyed women. No men. No children.

After talking to her uncle she goes to the local police station, but no one is there. She goes to the local bar and sees that there are only women there.  Walking out she meets up with an old high school friend who seems in a daze while pushing a baby stroller. They talk, but Claire notices that there is only a stick in the stroller. Her friend tells her that "She" took her son, but the trade was worth it.  There is a subtle hint that the "She" might be Claire's long-dead mother.

We get flashbacks to Claire's childhood. Her mother was likely a little crazy (something later confirmed by her uncle) and there were Pagan overtones to her upbringing.  She also has flashbacks to the time when she found Luke getting ready to kill himself.

Claire begins to see things in the woods, thinking it is her mother. There is some sort of meeting of all the women in town that she feels drawn too where the only cop left in town is sacrificed.

Her pasts and present all get mixed up. She ends up talking to her mother's ghost who appears all evil. Then to the ghost of Luke who is happy she "killed" him.   Though we see the scene where he does kill himself in flashbacks, it looks almost like Claire has him talked down and he is going to go back then a force possesses Clair making her look and sound all evil and demonic. She then convinces Luke that he should die and he has been asking for it for a while.

It is all rather slow going until the last 20 minutes when it really turns up the horrors. Claire's mom is alive, but has been hiding out. There is some sort of malevolent force and the only way to stop is for Claire's mom, the witch with the force in her, to kill herself by burning. This will stop it from going into Claire. 

We end six (or so) years later. Claire has a new daughter (no husband in sight) and it looks like she is free of the force, but we are not 100% sure her daughter is.

So not a bad movie really. A bit of folk horror and a southern (WAY southern) gothic feel to it all. 

It's not a scare-fest, but certainly a slow burn. So slow though that I almost gave up on it a couple of times, but it did pay off in the end. 

This is another pick from my list of "movies with a pentagram on the cover" though I will admit the original poster is much cooler.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
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