The Wretched, 2020.
Directed by Brett Pierce and Drew T. Pierce.
Starring John-Paul Howard, Piper Curda, Jamison Jones, Azie Tesfai, Zarah Mahler, Kevin Bigley, Gabriela Quezada Bloomgarden, Richard Ellis and Blane Crockarell.
SYNOPSIS:
A defiant teenage boy, struggling with his parent’s imminent divorce, faces off with a thousand year-old witch, who is living beneath the skin of and posing as the woman next door.
When I describe The Wretched as “accessible,” I say that leaning towards positive takeaways. Brett and Drew T. Pierce, henceforth known as the Pierce brothers, poke around soilborne folklore by serving earthy bites of horror instead of a cohesive multi-course meal. It’s simplistic yet scattershot, but executes under brooding nightfall pressures. Emotional broken-family beats meet expectations, inhuman contortions represent what should not be, and spooky-scary elements supersede jump-about narration. Tune in for Wife Swap: Damnation Edition, leave satisfied.
After one troublemaking decision leads to injury, Ben (John-Paul Howard) finds himself at his father’s vacation home (papa Liam, played by Jamison Jones). Mom resides elsewhere, as the “bachelors” plan a summer of working at the local harbor. It’s a sleepy, quiet town, that gets a little louder when Ben thinks he glimpses a strange creature roaming around his father’s property lines. With a history of breaking and entering, Ben isn’t believed when he uncovers something “odd” – an effigial twig alter – in neighbor Abbie’s basement (Abbie, played by Zarah Mahler). That’s when children start disappearing, and Ben’s paranoia becomes a waking nightmare.
What’s scripted is black woodland magic that accentuates mysticism, skin-stealing, and an immediate portal into the unexplained. The Pierce brothers utilize grotesque imagery of decaying foliage or carcasses to introduce their Wendigo-esque monster, and it works to drive home the wickedness of intentions. When you catch a gander of this clawed, gangly demon with twisted horns staring through Ben, quite early on, the game is afoot. A battle of wills between a normal boy and the carnivorous entity living underneath manifested tree-root dwellings. Enter the “Wretched’s” backstory. Eerily and environmentally circumstantial – stealing flesh suits, appearing at random, making families forget their kin – but, as alluded to above, functional within ancient horror contexts.
At times, The Wretched can present itself as one of those eye-rolly horror flicks where characters stay within their impenetrable bubbles, and mythology can’t explain away our cocked heads. Ben does everything wrong at the right time, investigating alone or tumbling down proverbial rabbit holes (Wretched burrows?) that evolve with convolution. A hellacious “mother” villain, who feasts on children, is able to body-snatch, and also whispers lies that erase your memory if pictures with scratched-out eyes are placed on – yeah, let me stop there. You catch my drift. There’s plenty of backstory in motion, which once again ties back into how the Pierce brothers work best when servicing singular moments. Lesser in the grand scheme.
I call upon the performance of Zarah Mahler, a “Burning Man Mamma” who becomes the Wretched’s earliest mark. Not only are viewers subjected to nanny-cam home invasion beats worth a chilling fright, but Mahler transforms into a “Wretched Woman,” we’ll say. Abbie sheds her natural humanity and disconnects from routine because there’s a fabled creature inside pretending to be human. Even a simple act – naked Abbie caught gazing at the moon by her impressionable son – stirs this “wolf in sheep’s clothing” fear as her posture resembles something unwell. Through the eyes of a child, Abbie’s animalish gait and uncertain movements are a boogeyman reimagining that accentuates The Wretched. The paralyzing paranoia that infiltrates your mind when you’re camping, separated from the pack, and a branch snaps in the distance? That’s The Wretched. That’s what The Wretched does exceptionally well.
Regarding teenage angst, particularly Ben’s romantic woes and parental scars, let me again repeat how The Wretched is best as a horror film. Mallory’s (Piper Curda) inclusion as Ben’s romantic agent of chaos is vital to the film, albeit filled with sped-through tweeny benchmarks. Ben’s treatment of his father’s new fling Sara (Azie Tesfai) is knee-jerk spiteful, but necessary when driving a wedge between father and outwardly acting son. Abbie’s actions intend to be oddball and alien, like an X-Files episode where invaders are living amongst civilization but with the camouflaged stealth of Rob Gronkowski in a Tibetan monastery. It’s not the savviest approach, but it’s what’s on the outside that counts (right?).
The Wretched, in the end, elevates itself by full-circling Ben’s journey in a way that, admittedly, this critic applauds with genuine shock. For every cheesy family dinner argument, there’s an adversely sweet “candy apology” between Ben and Mallory. Whenever Mrs. Wretched reveals another curveball ability, payoffs reward Abbie’s bewitching primality and skeletal features. Neither Pierce loses focus on the trauma at hand. That ever-saving grace keeps obscure suspense in play, whether rad-dad is outside grilling to metal tunes or Abbie spies an underage peeper peering through her windows with binoculars. Always a yin to a yang, an aware and opposite reaction. You take the good with the bad, and luckily, there’s far more of the former in this cautionary wade into maliciously maintained waters.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Matt spends his after-work hours posting nonsense on the internet instead of sleeping like a normal human. He seems like a pretty cool guy, but don’t feed him after midnight just to be safe (beers are allowed/encouraged). Follow him on Twitter/Instagram/Letterboxd (@DoNatoBomb).
