Here are a few I watched starting on Friday till tonight.
The Coven (2015)
Take the Craft (sorta) and put them in an English boarding school. No not Hogwarts, but they do name-drop Margaret Murray, Robert Cochrane, and Gerald Gardner (though they call him Joe) so that is something.
There is a new teacher, Mrs. Belial, who takes over the class and teaches them about Uri Clef (an anagram for Lucifer). We see her eating raw meat later on.
The girls head out to Queens Woods where Robert Cochrane used to meet with his Wiccan group. They are joined by two boys, Eddie and Louie, the five girls and two boys realize their first names all spell out Lucifer. Now strange things start to happen. They are joined by the at first uninvited Eve (who has been at home researching all of this) and soon they are being chased through the woods by the guy on the motorcycle...who might be Eddie? All the names appear including Eve's but not Eddie's and they all get sucked into a burning tree.
Yeah. Ok, that one was rather bad, to be honest. I had such hopes for it in the beginning.
This one is "What if the girls from the Craft were in college with an Ouija board.
And man is this one starting out bad. There are two characters who look like they are some time in the past, running through the woods. The woman uses magic to try to heal the man but it doesn't work. What else that doesn't work is their acting. Cause they are both terrible. Not a great start here. Anyway, there is a demon girl of some sort and an Ouija board.
Fast forward to the present day. Abby, Rory, and Jess are in a barn somewhere practicing magic. Jess is trying to get a spell to work with only a little success, Abby and Rory, along with Abby's boyfriend Sam, are making potions. Abby and Rory are obviously better at magic. Rory drinks a potion and is able to levitate for a bit. Abby decides she wants to mix a temporary immortality potion with a healing potion to live forever. The potion seems to work at first, but soon she is convulsing. I guess she never saw the Potion Miscibility table in the 1st Ed DMG because she rolls a 01% and her whole chest blows up.
At the wake, Rory and Jess are each dealing with grief in different ways. Jess keeps thinking she hears Abby. Finally, she does and she wants her and Rory to take the Ouija board to the graveyard where she is buried and try to contact her. This is of course breaking the rules of Ouija. Anyway, Abby comes back but needs a real life so she has to kill someone who saw her die, Rory or Jess. There are some magic battles between the three and in the process, Sam is killed and Abby brings him back.
They learn from the ghosts from the opener they have to burn the Ouija board. Oh and that Jess is not a witch but a psychic. Jess gets stabbed by Sam, but Rory gives up her life force so she can live. Since Jess didn't see Sam die he falls to dust. Now Jess and Abby fight it out and Jess is able to TK the board into a fire burning it and Abby, but not before Abby stabs Jess. JEss drinks the temporary immortality potion and passes out waiting for the paramedics.
Months later Jess is still recovering and she sees Abby's ghost who apologizes for everything. She tells Jess that she could become a very powerful psychic, but Jess takes all her books and potions and witchy stuff outside and burns them all.
Ok. Not great and some really terrible acting. I felt though the two leads Jess and Rory, Ivy Rhodes and Lacy Hartselle respectively were actually fairly good and made the movie watchable.
Also known as Akelarre and Coven of Sisters it is not to be confused with the 2019 movie Coven.
This one just sneaks in with the theme. Maybe Great-Great Grandmothers of the Craft is a better descriptor for this one.
This one is horror, but not for the reasons the first two are.
In 1609 in the Basque Country of Spain five girls are all arrested and charged with witchcraft. One of their friends tries to rescue them and she is captured too. At first, the girls are afraid but then they begin to joke about it, not believing that this is happening to them. Then the torture begins.
It's all rather horrible to be honest. Worse, because you knew this sort of thing happened all the time.
Amaia Aberasturi stars as Ana and she is the real stand-out here. She keeps stringing along her accusers to drag out the proceedings to help save the other girls. Ana easily strings along the horny men till the full moon.
The girls decide that in order to delay their execution longer they tell the judge they will re-enact the Black Mass, or the Sabbath, for his records. They do so and get him all involved as Lucifer. Once they had frightened the men, or turned them on, enough they run into the woods. They are chased by the men and soldiers till they get to the edge of a cliff over the ocean. The other women, the ones not accused of witchcraft, sing a song about the full moon and the high tide. Ana, realizing the message, tells the other girls they can jump.
They jump over the side, not knowing if they lived or died.
I thought this movie was great honestly. Not the typical sort of horror, but also not exactly what I thought it was going to be either.
Really good to have this one the last of the night to wash the taste out of my mouth from the first one.
Of course, I have heard this word, Akelarre, before and named a witch-focused demon after it.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2022
Viewed: 22
First Time Views: 17
