Director: Aaron B. Koontz
Year: 2020
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Witchcraft
Plot:
Deciding to pull off a train-robbery, a group of outlaws are shocked to learn their target is not gold but rather a chained-and-shackled young woman who offers to take them back to her home-town as a thank you, only to realize too late they’ve stumbled into a coven of witches and must fight to get away alive.
Review:
This was a decent if overall flawed effort. Among its better qualities is the enjoyable and explosive change-over that occurs where it stops being a western and turns into a witchcraft effort. Using the ravenous witches as more of a creature feature due to the unusual abilities they are shown to utilize, from turning into burnt-skin deformities and crawling on ceilings to prancing through the trees which makes for a great time overall here when mixed with more traditional spell-casting. That this livens up the final half with some solid confrontations and tons of gore as the viciousness of their straight-forward attacks or the eerieness of the supernatural spells in general really works nicely for this one this is really what the film does best is dish out the blood and gore for the action.
There are some big flaws featured here. One of the main problems is the utterly dreary and slow-gong pace that keeps this one stalled out for long periods of the running time. The first half takes forever to get into the main story, going overboard on overly talkative scenes showing the various problems and issues the family has in town with the bar confrontations and discussions that don’t spell anything out as to what’s happening or provide this with any kind of explanation as to what’s going on. The opening invasion and shootout that tries to provide this with some action yet ultimately is so confusing and disjointed that there’s nothing useful about it other than eating up running time, which is the issue.
As well, the film tends to struggle with how to resolve itself because it can’t mix the genres together all too well. The idea of the witchcraft angle taking place in the old-west could’ve been far more significant here but it just comes across as slightly lazy and uninspired with the finale resorting to maudlin speeches and tender reflections about the past which are incredibly contrived and cringe-inducing. They have so little room to be had placed inside a film about the goings-on in place as the series of revelations about what’s going on just stop the pace dead and could’ve been removed without meaning anything. There here manage to hold the film down quite a bit over the positives.
Overview: **.5/5
Despite some missteps here and there that are somewhat detrimental and hold it down quite a bit, the watchable moments are enough to save this from being completely worthwhile in the long run only give this one a go if you’re a die-hard fan of the genre crossover or look for these kinds of positives in the films while most others won’t be that impressed and should heed caution.
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