Writer(s): Adam MacDonald
Starring: Laurie Holden, Nicole Munoz, Chloe Rose and Eric Osborne
Pyewacket is about teenage angst as filtered through the lens of a horror movie. The experience of watching it is almost like waking up groggy on a train, with no idea how you got there. Everything is blurry, and out of focus; your destination unknown. Then, slowly, you start piecing the plot together, and think you know where it’s headed, but you’re just praying you’re wrong. Then the train heads to its final destination, with you on board, powerless to steer it away from the ending you knew was coming. But, to its credit, whether you see it coming or not, it still packs a punch, thanks partly to a creepy atmosphere and genuine scares.
Leah Reyes is a high schooler whose mother just hasn’t been herself since the (presumably) recent death of her husband. She seems uncaring, at one point telling her daughter “you can do whatever you want, I don’t care,” advice that no child of any age should ever hear.
Both of them have chosen different ways of expressing their sadness: Leah turned to the occult, finding some comfort in the ideologies and beliefs of the dark arts. Her mother, on the other hand, resorts to a more straightforward approach, shutting down and succumbing to her grief. Neither one understands the others’ coping mechanisms, with Leah feeling like her mother is permanently a shadow of her former self, and her mother feeling like her daughter is irredeemably lost in a world that is all hocus pocus.
All of these emotions reach a fever pitch when Mrs. Reyes informs her daughter that she needs a change of scenery; she can’t stay in a house filled with so many hurtful memories of their past. This decision - which comes as rather sudden to Leah - further serves as proof that her mother doesn’t care about her. She thinks about having to uproot her life, and start all over with new friends. High school is already a tough time for a lot of people, and having to completely start from scratch somewhere else - with no one to turn to for immediate support - doesn’t really ease any of those feelings.
Leah reluctantly agrees to check out the new house. It’s a secluded, rustic house surrounded by woods and nothing else. The isolated setting alone could probably drive a wedge between two people, but the wedge has already been driven; the house only serves as the perfect setting for some rather excellent scares.
To show that she might not be as bad as Leah believes, her mother extends an olive branch to her daughter: Rather than uproot her life straightaway, Mrs. Reyes agrees to drive Leah to and from school - an hour each way - until the end of the school year to give her daughter some time to come to grips with the move. This isn’t enough for Leah, though, who still resents her; this leads to a fierce argument between the two which pushes the daughter over the edge.
Fed up with what she perceives as a mother who is too far gone, she uses a spell to summon Pyewacket, an entity to kill her mother. Strange things immediately start happening. They’re relatively innocent at first: footsteps moving around in the attic, dirt showing up on the floor of their house. But soon, the events start getting a little more…personal, and Leah soon starts to regret her spur-of-the-moment decision. But how can you undo something that you’ve done?
The film cleverly focuses on the relationship between them in its current state, without any past references to draw upon. It’s a portrait of two people in very different emotional states, but ones that many can relate to: A mother wracked with grief, and a daughter who is on the cusp of adulthood, trying to come to grips with her evolving emotions. Like many teens, she’s temperamental, trying to understand herself as well as the evolving world around her. Gradually, we learn the reasons behind the way things are, and it’s not as cut and dry as one would think. It’s the perfect setup for the scares that eventually unfold, some of which - like the first appearance of Pyewacket - will haunt even the most hardened horror fan.
What makes Pyewacket work so well is that the dramatic foundation is solid, even before the scares come into play. The relationship between mother and daughter is believable enough that, even if you remove the supernatural elements, the story would still be gripping. This is mainly thanks to a breakout performance from Nicole Munoz as Leah, who is convincing as a high schooler trying to make sense of a world that simply doesn’t always make sense.
She learns that the hard way.
RATING: 7/10
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