Ariauna Albright | Through the Shattered Lens

When I first started writing for Through the Shattered Lens, I wasn’t sure how long my reviews should be. I went over to Rotten Tomatoes and I read their guidelines for reviews and I discovered that a review should be, at minimum, 300 words long.

300 words? I thought, I can do that!

Truth be told, sometimes I can’t. Sometimes, you see a movie where it’s a struggle to even come up with 300 words. When that happens, I resort to filler. I’ll tell you about my weekend. I’ll tell you about a funny thing that happened to me in high school. I’ll give you a long-winded story about my early days as a TSL reviewer. I’ll do whatever I need to do to make sure that I can reach at least 300 words.

The importance of filler was clearly on the mind of David DeCoteau when he directed the 1999 film, Witchouse. (And yes, that’s how the title is spelled.) Typically, a film has to run a minimum of 65 to 70 minutes for it to be considered a feature film. Witchouse features three minutes of opening credits, three minutes of closing credits, and a lot of stock footage from a film called Dark Angel: The Ascent. In fact, the film uses the Dark Angel stock footage not once but twice. The finished film runs 72 minutes so obviously David DeCoteau and Full Moon Pictures got what they needed out of all that filler. Fortunately, the audience gets what it needs as well. Witchouse is a film that announces from the start that it shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

The film takes place at a mansion in Dunwich, Massachusetts on a stormy night. Elizabeth (Ashley McKinney) has gathered together a group of friends for a party. When her friends arrived, I assumed they had all gone to high school together. Imagine my surprise when I learned that the characters were all supposed to still be in high school! Elizabeth wants to hold a seance so that she can contact the spirit of her ancestor, a witch named Lilith (Ariauna Albright). Centuries ago, Lilith was burned at the stake. Elizabeth is hoping to bring Lilith back from the dead and she’s willing to sacrifice her friends to do it. Her friends, for the most part, just want to have sex in a big creepy mansion and who can blame them?

If this plot sounds familiar, it’s probably because the story itself was largely lifted from Night of the Demons, with the horribly burned Lilith even resembling the decaying Angels from Kevin Tenney’s classic shocker. Witchouse is never quite as much fun as Night of the Demons. For instance, there’s nothing in Witchouse that can match the subversive oddness of the lipstick scene from Night of the Demons. At its best, Witchouse is occasionally atmospheric and it features decent performances from Ashley McKinney and Monica Serene Garnich. At its worst, the film is kind of boring.

That said, I will give Witchouse credit for totally frustrating my autocorrect. How does one pronounce Witchouse?

An old lady (Elizabeth Ince) stays at a boarding house at the turn of the 20th Century. At least, I think it was supposed to be the turn of the 20th Century. There weren’t any cars or telephones but, at the same time, everyone had contemporary hair styles and they wore clothes that looked like they were supposed to be vintage but actually weren’t. The movie could have just as easily been taking place in a hipster coffeehouse in 1997.

The old lady likes to walk up to people ask them if they want to see proof that demons are real and it never occurs to anyone to just say no. The woman’s back is stitched together and when those stitches are untied, she drops her skinsuit and reveals herself to be the Devil. At least, I think that’s what happened because this was one of those movies where they didn’t have the money to actually show you what happened. You just have to guess by the shadows on the wall. The film’s poster makes it look like a horrifying transformation but sometimes, posters lie.

When the old devil woman steals your soul, she turns you into a paper doll. The boarding house made decides to serve the old woman. That’s pretty much the entire story. Stretching all that out to 81 minutes took some effort and determination so I’ll give the movie credit for that.

I appreciated the movie’s ambition. It’s too bad the wooden acting and the slow pace kept this movie from being as interesting as it should have been. Today’s lesson is don’t hang out with old women who offer to show you a demon. No good will come from it.