Director/Screenplay – Adam MacDonald, Producers – Jonathan Bronfman & Victoria Sanchez-Mandryk, Photography – Christian Bielz, Music – Lee Malia, Visual Effects – Marz VFX (Supervisor – Geoff D.E. Scott), Special Effects Supervisor – Max MacDonald, Makeup Effects Design – David Scott, Production Design – Damian Zuch. Production Company – JoBro/Just Believe/Tajj Media/Cave Painting Pictures/Telefilm Canada.
Cast
Nicole Muñoz (Leah Reyes), Laurie Holden (Mrs Reyes), Chloe Rose (Janice), Eric Osbourn (Aaron), Romeo Carere (Rob), James McGowan (Rowen Dove)
Plot
Leah Reyes is a teenager in high school. She has been exploring Goth and the occult since the death of her father but constantly argues with her mother. Seeking to leave behind the memories of her late husband, Leah’s mother announces that she is selling the house and moving to a rural area an hour’s drive away. The thought of being wrenched away from her friends is greatly upsetting to Leah. Her mother agrees to a compromise – that she will drive Leah to school and pick her up for the rest of the year. Following an argument, Leah goes out into the woods and casts a spell to kill her mother. Soon afterwards, she starts to see sinister things. Leah becomes terrified at what she has done and seeks to undo the spell.
Pyewacket was the second film for Adam MacDonald, who previously made the backwoods survival drama Backcountry (2014) and went on to work in particular on the tv series Slasher (2016- ). He later returned to the horror genre with the wilderness survival thriller Out Come the Wolves (2024).
Pyewacket falls into a certain fad for films about witchcraft stirring in the woods – not the backwoods but the ones bordering rural and urban areas. You can point to similar recent films such as The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015). The Deeper You Dig (2019), Sator (2019) and From Black (2023). Although probably the progenitor of these was Pumpkinhead (1988), as well as the more obvious examples to be found in The Evil Dead (1981).
Nicole Muñoz casts a spell in the woods
The film is slow to start. In these scenes though, Adam MacDonald draws the relationship between mother Laurie Holden and daughter Nicole Muñoz with fine strength, eliciting very good performances from either. Pyewacket is very much of a slow burn film. Almost an hour goes by with the basic set-up introduced and nothing significant happening. What we keep expecting and wanting MacDonald to do is something akin to the summoning in Candyman (1992) and have sinister things start happening. However, that is not the game he is playing.
It eventually becomes apparent that Adam MacDonald is playing a long game instead of giving us a film of quick jumps. Things finally gain their effect in the latter quarter when [PLOT SPOILERS] Nicole Muñoz tries to reverse the spell and suddenly finds her mother’s dead body in the woods – only to suddenly be given to wonder who it is that is calling her name from back at the house. It is in the last section with Nicole Muñoz pursued through the house by her mother and what looks like a black shape and her turning to kill the demon figure that MacDonald starts to deliver the horror element. It is only at the fade out that leaves you entirely unsure what was real and the sudden implications that hits Nicole that the film’s full effect hits you like a gut punch.
