Falling Stars

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.

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.

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?"

This is one of the most original movies I've seen in a long time. Most of the reviews you'll see online praise it for its world-building, and for good reason. It creates a unique mythology that few movies have the guts to attempt these days, and I think it deserves massive amounts of praise for that. Bravo to its creators. And while that element is arguably the strongest, it's by no means the only thing the movie has going for it. It's a solid, gripping horror story throughout.

It only has one real issue worth mentioning, and, for me at least, it was a big one. For whatever reason, they've cast actress Rene Leech as a teenage boy named Adam. To get the obvious question out of the way, no, this is neither a trans actor nor a trans character. It's just a woman playing a boy, and it really doesn't work. To be honest, I don't care what performers play what characters as long as they do it convincingly... race, gender, none of it matters as long as the person on the screen comes across completely as who they are in the story, otherwise it's a distraction that distances the viewer from the experience. In this case, Leech is simply too distinctly feminine to pull it off. She seems to have worked hard to capture male mannerisms and carriage, and she did very well, but her posture and her occasionally unmissable breasts ruined the illusion. If the role had been a younger boy and Leech herself were younger, I think she would have done admirably, but as it is I spent the entire movie waiting for the fact that this brother was female to become relevant to the plot. It wasn't until it was nearly over that I realized it wasn't going to happen and the character really was supposed to be male. It was an insurmountable distraction from the actual story, and I would have enjoyed the whole thing a lot more had I not been waiting for the reveal.

It's hard to know what to rate it. I'd like to give it an 8, but the casting seriously affected my enjoyment, so it has to be lower than the midpoint. Four stars it is, though in almost all ways it deserves more.

For context, I love folk horror, so keep that in mind while I fawn over this movie.

In this world witches are real and there is a lot of folklore surrounding them, but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on how to approach them. We do know that they come with the harvest and they have been coming earlier every year.

We follow three brothers who are brash enough to follow their friend to a grave of witch killed by the said friend. However, things go haywire and suddenly the brothers are in peril.

One thing to note is that not much happens in this 80 minute movie. It moves slowly. We kind of understand the dymanics between the three brothers, but not really. Especially the middle one doesn't really get much in the way of characterization.

Still, I like the world building, no matter how fragmented and inconsistent it is. Considering how varied the understanding regarding witches in different areas of the world has always been, this should not be a surprise.

Also, we never really see a witch, except for the dead one. There is no gore or violence, but I can't really call this psychological horror either, because we do learn at the very beginning that the danger is very real if badly understood.

We also have a b-story of a radio DJ and his producer on a nightshift taking calls. They don't necessarily add much except conflicting worldbuilding, which is interesting as a lot of people seem to know quite a bit, but how is any of this verifiable in any way?

Again, I liked it quite bit, but I can't really recommend it too strongly except for people specifically interested in this kind of weird horror, although it doesn't really go that far with the weirdness.