Night of the Witches - Das Hexenritual

One of my favorite horror anthologies is "Southbound" (2015), which features a round-robin of bizarre vignettes set in the inland empire of Southern California and narrated in part by Larry Fessenden (playing a Wolfman Jack-style radio host).

"Falling Stars" easily could have been a short in that film. Set in the border between Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, Falling Stars focuses upon three brothers (Mike, Sal, Adam) who run out of the herb valerian and drive out to the mobile home of "Rob" (Greg Poppa) to obtain more. Why do they need valerian?

Well, that's precisely the thing: We are now in a world, otherwise familiar to us, in which there is an annual event called "Harvest." During Harvest, the winds pick up and witches fall from the skies like shooting stars to pluck unsuspecting humans from the earth and whisk them off to who-knows-where.

Falling Stars does not spell out in any detail when this first started to happen or what, exactly, humans have been doing to deal with it. However, we are able to piece together enough of it to realize that Harvest is treated something like an earthquake: stay inside and hope for the best. But there are hints that the affected humans have taken some, umm, much more drastic measures as well.

So, back to the valerian: The brothers need the herb to build a "fairy ring," which, we presume, will somehow offer their family protection during Harvest. However, by the time they arrive at Rob's mobile home the plans have changed. Instead, Rob takes them out to Joshua Tree to view the remains of a witch that he just happened to shoot out of the sky with one of his long guns.

With equal measures of curiosity and fear, the brothers and Rob view the remains. But they quickly become concerned that they may have committed some manner of transgression. A small amount of beer was spilled and, further, there appears to be a "ceremony ring" in the soil around the body. Someone else was here to make that ring, and the implications might be dire. They depart in haste, and the balance of the movie is about the effects of the perceived transgression.

The main story, then, is always about the brothers and their collective effort to survive the effects of Harvest. However, in addition to Rob and his wife, we also meet the siblings' mother (Diane Box Worman); a radio host, "Barry" (J. Aaron Boykin); and a rather odd hitchhiker, "Ouami" (Piotr Adamczy), each of whom has their own view of the witches and how we should deal with them.

The acting is solid. And Adamczy and Poppa deserve special mention for their portrayals. But Falling Stars is definitely a slow burn. It is also film that rests as much upon mood and atmosphere as dialogue. And much of that atmosphere is the work of director - cinematographer Gabriel Bienczycki. Now, for at least the past fifteen years, the official hues of horror films have been olive greens, muted blues and grey, preferably set in a Pacific Northwest mid-century modern residence.

Falling Stars in contrast, favors the natural beauty of the Mojave area and hues of sienna, muted yellow and burnished red. For example, much of the dialogue takes place in Mike's pickup truck, where warm bottom-lighting is employed to highlight the faces of the occupants. But during the outdoor establishing shots, Bienczycki also takes in a wide swathe of the natural beauty of the desert. This type of lighting scheme is a welcome relief for this viewer, and I might compare it favorably to the work of someone like Marden Dean ("Boys in the Trees" (2016)).

I highly recommend this film. It really stuck with me, and I found myself circling back to earlier moments in the film in order to piece together the relationship between its disparate parts. In other words, it is absolutely the type of film I think will profit from a second viewing.

Knowing it's nearly that special time of year, brothers set out on a journey to watch over the grave of a woman suspected to be a local witch, but after disrupting the grave and setting the witch free are forced into dealing with the witch and her deadly plans for the community.

This was a really decent genre effort that gets let down slightly. Among the better features here is the immensely strong and effective visual atmosphere created here which makes the film immensely chilling. With the eerie locations and overall tone of the rural setting gives everything a fantastic setup that goes well alongside the connections with the folklore established within this universe involving how the witches operate, this creates a highly effective folk-horror grounding which gets quite involved. Detailing how the harvest works, how it all started, and the implications for humanity in a world where they have to offer themselves up to witches to avoid a worldwide apocalypse lets this one come together quite nicely as it leads unto the fun finale battling the creature. There are some slight issues that hold this one down. One of the main factors against this one comes from the unnecessary deviations in the story to the couple at the radio-station who are perfect at expanding the lore of the universe with the wrenches but also does this at the expense of the tempo. This is already a slow enough genre effort where very little happens but to then interrupt everything for this kind of useless world-building makes the film feel far less intense than it should. It all makes for an occasion where this one really should've been expanded with the world being far too intriguing to leave everything as limp as it does here which is somewhat disappointing and brings this one down enough to the point where it's serviceable enough but still underwhelming.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language and Violence.

At first I was excited about this movie. I love sci-fi, supernatural, horror and fantasy. So acording to the description I thought that this was going to be a good fit for me. Unfortunately what I got was a bad acting nothing ever happens movie. There is no witches, no suspense no nothing. There is just a mumified corpse, a guy disapearing a mother who must be high on something and 3 guys driving in a car. And whatever was the deal with that prolonged radioscene that did not add anything to the story?

I kept counting down the minutes and thinking "Okey, now its like 15 min left - is something going to happen soon?"

Movie begin powerful in plot but In the following it become boring in every aspect. The only thing that i love about the movie was the music. The music of the film was excellent and captivating in every way. It conveyed the feeling of an eerie and at the same time very calm and relaxing. The 4 stars that I gave to movie were only because of this beautiful music. The rest of the film is nothing but a waste of the viewer's time. As a movie buff, I do not recommend this movie to anyone who doesn't like movies with a monotonous and boring rhythm. But if you're interested in melancholic themes and an eerie atmosphere, it's not bad to watch.

But with brooms? Well no pun intended and no secrets revealed ... it's funny by the way that the German title has the W word in it - Witch that is ... ah the word plays. Most if not all of them not really allowed here - which is a good thing I reckon.

But back to this movie and "stars" that are not wishing, but Witching ... also have way more power than one may think they have ... as in magic power. But this is more witches as in ... nymphs that eat (or lets say kill) people. So if you are into low budget horror movies - well the concept is may be high (had to, you know it) ... as long it doesn't fall down ... well flat on its face ... I thought this was neatly and decently made ... give it a go and decide after the first 5-10 minutes if it is worth your time.