Starring, written and directed by Cradeaux Alexander, this is a low-budget tale of the occult, and not a very good one at that. If you’re a fan of Garth Marenghi it is potentially of some interest, because it’s not too often that you see the actual kind of characters Marenghi is based on in their natural habitat. Pseudo-schlock of the Sharknado type is of course available in abundance, but those films are trying to be so bad they’re good, which Inherit the Witch doesn’t seem to be.
The plot concerns Cory (Cradeaux) and his family, to whom we are introduced in flashback at Cory’s birthday party in 1984, which he shares with his twin sister Fiona. We then jump to the New Forest in the present day, where we learn that Cory and Fiona’s father has died, meaning that the family must gather once more. There follows much chat and wearisome parsing of intergenerational drama, followed by interminable occult business and ripe scenes of hysteria (“We are monsters!” “Kneel before mother!” and so on). The dialogue is heavy on declamatory speeches and would-be witty asides, but none of it really lands.
Inherit the Witch may not quite be in the same league as Tommy Wiseau’s The Room – what could? – but the use of split-screen footage that doesn’t seem to have been filmed with split screen in mind, so that faces are cut in half, is truly an aesthetic all its own. There’s also an unfortunate amount of shots with maladjusted white balance, so that entire backgrounds are subjected to a kind of white-out effect, giving the impression that characters moving towards a window are drifting heaven-wards. Someone has also discovered the vignette setting in iMovies or similar, and there’s a bit of sepia filtering from time to time that recalls Instagram circa 2013. Apparently a real coven was involved in this project, but the effect is more of an am-dram theatre group doing a murder mystery dinner party in a Dorset Airbnb, which is all well and good until the moment that you expect other people to sit through it.
• Inherit the Witch is on digital platforms now.
