‘Inherit the Witch’ Review: Death Unburies Family Secrets
We’ve said it once and we’ll say it a thousand times: families are messy. Siblings squabble. Cousins form alliances. Drama erupts in the Fam Squad group chat over passive-aggressive memes and sus punctuation.
But even if you come from a loving and supportive family, complications will likely arise after a death. The family needs to make funeral arrangements, someone needs to clean out the deceased’s home, and, of course, there’s that little issue of inheritance. Cradeaux Alexander explores these themes in his debut feature Inherit the Witch, in which a fractured family reunites after the death of the patriarch.
The film begins in 1984. A family celebration of the 14th birthday of twins Cory (Max Dimitrov) and Jessie (Maddie Crofts) seems fairly normal. The twins blow their birthday candles out, they play a game of Twister, and family members exchange lighthearted banter.
A half-brother, Rex (Hugo Wilkinson), captures much of it on a camcorder. He also sees family friend Pamela (Elizabeth Arends) take Cory aside, hold his hands in hers, and silently cast a spell. “A very special spell for a birthday boy on his very special day,” she says. Pamela gives Rex a spell, too. This one is different; it involves Pamela drinking a drop of his blood. “With a drop of blood bound for good, we, too, are one,” she proclaims. Later on, Pamela takes the camera to record Cory opening the gift she brought for him. We don’t see the present, but we do see Cory’s confused and mildly horrified reaction to it.
We cut to the present. Cory (played by writer and director Cradeaux Alexander), now an adult, lives in New York and rarely speaks to his family. His father (Fergus Foster), while successful and wealthy, was cold and disapproving. When his father dies, he travels to a remote house near his father’s cabin in the New Forest of Southern England with his boyfriend Lars (Christopher Sherwood). We learn that Pamela (played in the present by Imogen Smith) and his father had maintained a close relationship throughout the years. Pamela even organized the funeral and the wake. According to Rex (Rohan Quine), Pamela had been their father’s caretaker at the end of his life and has been living in the cabin. Cory had heard a different story from various relatives: Pamela had been throwing parties on the property and isolating their dad from the rest of the clan.
Unlike Cory, Rex seems to have stayed close to home—and also quite close with Pamela. Their older sister Fiona (Heather Cairns as an adult and Lily Barkes as a teenager), on the other hand, emancipated herself at age 16. She’s been estranged for the past few decades. Despite this, Fiona is coming to the wake. Cory strongly suspects that her interests lie in their dad’s estate.
Cory’s twin sister Jessie and their mother (Michelle Hudson) have both been dead for a long time. Their causes of death are not discussed.
When Fiona arrives, Cory is less than thrilled and airs out his long-held resentments toward his sister. Fiona insists that she doesn’t care about inheritance. She’s been recovering buried memories and trauma through therapy—memories that Cory claims to have no recollection of.
After their reunion, strange and malicious occurrences begin to plague Cory. It quickly becomes clear that he must confront the past and acknowledge the truth behind his family’s wealth and the deaths of Jessie and their mother.
Inherit the Witch has an intriguing premise with familiar themes and an interesting location. The New Forest has a storied past of witchcraft and occult activities. It’s a perfect tie-in that grounds the film in a measure of plausibility. Unfortunately, the execution doesn’t quite work. Too much is revealed too soon, eliminating any mystery that the story could have held and dampening moments that could have been suspenseful.
The overall tone is also confusing. At times, it feels like an earnest foray into horror. But much of the film seems to have an almost campy overlay that leaves the filmmaker’s intent unclear. The lively score exacerbates this confusion; it’s overused to the detriment of scenes that could have been impactful otherwise. The film might have a subtle comment about greed and corruption, but it gets lost in the action.
Despite its flaws, the stars of Inherit the Witch are genuinely enjoyable to watch. Alexander and Cairns play well off each other and are believable as estranged siblings. Smith and Arends both give beautifully witchy performances in their shared role. Quine and Sherwood are also entertaining, as is the rest of the supporting cast. Additionally, it’s always nice to see a horror film center queer characters without focusing on the fact that they’re queer.
Inherit the Witch is now available to stream online in the United States.
Summary
‘Inherit the Witch’ has an intriguing premise, but the execution could have been better.
