The Wretched (Movie Review)

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

WATCH THE WRETCHED HERE!

PLOT: When an unruly teenager named Ben (John-Paul Howard) is sent to live with his father in a Michigan harbor town, he instantly senses something sinister about his female neighbor, Abby (Zarah Mahler). Is she a demon? A witch? A vampire? No, she’s THE WRETCHED!

REVIEW: Following an eight-year respite from the directorial chair (DEADHEADS), Brothers Brett and Drew Pierce have proven that above all else, quality necessitates time via their superbly produced sophomore effort THE WRETCHED, a witchy shapeshifting salvo set to blast the masses on May 1 courtesy of IFC Midnight. While hardly reinventing the subgenre, THE WRTECHED is a competently-crafted and credibly-acted horror assault that not only boasts two laudable and unforeseeably sideswiping plot twists, but also features two stellar lead performances from its brilliantly cast young stars John-Paul Howard and Piper Curda. There’s an appreciable intelligence to the screenplay that, in addition to the carefully laid plot, makes the two main characters relatable as can be through authentic and keenly-observed dialogue. With increasingly gruesome terror to behold as the film unspools, only an overambitious and unneeded final twist, not to mention some trampled iconography relating to villain’s spastic physiology, register as mentionable gripes. All tallied, THE WRETCHED is a wicked and well-made little indie horror wincer!

A jarring preamble plucked right from the denouement of the film opens up to give us a glimpse of the wretched threat to come. We then circle back five days prior, where we meet Ben (Howard), a recalcitrant teenager sent to live in with his father Liam (Jamison Jones) in Michigan. With a cast on his arm for falling out of a neighbor’s window after attempting to pilfer Vicodin, Ben goes to work as a dockhand for his father’s company at a nearby marina. Ben resents his parent’s fraying marriage and potential divorce, a sentiment he takes out on Liam’s new girlfriend Sara (Azie Tesfai). At and outside of work, Ben is harassed by yuppie douche-bag Gage (Richard Ellis), who, after a skinny dipping prank, refers to our hero as “turtle dick” and “midget dick.” Indeed, our sympathies are with Ben from the jump, with Howard striking the perfect balance of relatability by being neither too nerdy nor too douchey. So when he begins to sense something amiss with his female neighbor Abbie (Zarah Mahler), we’re implicitly on his side.

At the marina, Ben meets cute coworker Mallory (Piper Curda), whose flirtatious banter and witty dialogue draws the two together in ways that are neither mawkish nor predictable, but instead remain believable all the way until the end. I love how their sense of romance bucks traditional trends of a teenage template, never becoming sappy or sentimental yet still induces honest cheers in the end. The Pierce brothers have written two superb characters that have been perfectly cast. To wit, our sympathies for Ben, in particular, do not derive from sympathy, but rather through honest relatability. Ben is troubled but takes no shit, which gives him a powerful agency to steer his own destiny in a way that doesn’t feel forced or phony. This fuels Ben’s ultimate stand once he discovers a cryptic symbol on his neighbor’s house, which resembles an upside-down letter A. Upon researching the symbol, Ben uncovers the lore of a predatory Tree Witch who dwells under the roots and feeds on the souls of the forgotten. That is, once the witch targets a victim, all of their loved ones cease to remember the person. Therefore, the witch can prey on each soul without interruption. This cool little wrinkle allows for a much knottier twist, in fact, two or three of them, which keep the movie from falling into the listless well of over-trampled possession pieces. Without betraying the specifics, I found the first two twists to be genuinely unforeseeable and quite effective in terms of the storytelling. With the last, however, the Pierces’ ambition may have exceeded their grasp.

Also worth extolling is how the movie escalates in terror as it progresses. The Pierces wisely wait to unfurl their nasty bit of hyper-gory FX work until the final act, when the stakes are rightly raised. Although I found the twitchy, spastic neck-cracking and shoulder-shifting a bit too redolent of the ghostly villains in those damn RING pictures, by the time the wicked witch exposes her peak form, the imagery becomes truly unsettling. The practical FX work by Stephen Imhoff (TRON: LEGACY, ALIEN: COVENANT) and concomitant makeup job by Bianca Appice (SPRING, OUIJA: ORIGIN OF EVIL) and crew really augment and increase the terror quotient in the film. And while we’re on the technical, the striking cinematography by Conor Murphy (HOMEWARD, MICKEY AND THE BEAR) and the well-jogged pace of editor Terry Yates (DEADHEADS) all aggregate to a thoroughly absorbing 95-minute experience that never feels too slight or that it’s ever overstaying its welcome.

The grisly gestalt of THE WRETCHED equates to one of the better horror joints to come from IFC Midnight in quite a while. The script is more intelligent than most of its ilk, the plot-twists come as genuinely sneaky surprises, the two lead characters are deftly written and superbly acted by Howard and Curda, and the gory FX work and technical craftsmanship aptly reflect the aforesaid qualities. The only real issue with the film is that it tends to till familiar territory, recycle some tired J-horror imagery, and attempt one twist too many. Check THE WRETCHED when it streams on VOD on the first of May!