1/10
abomination with worst story, casting, locations, lighting so far
31 July 2023
I watched the 79:06 minute version on TubiTV, which might have had some scenes with nudity and sex cut, as the only such I recall is a brief medium shot near the beginning of a woman on a bed. Granted, it's not impossible I missed another due to a microsleep or stroke cause by the badness of it all.

About nine minutes are accounted for by the opening and end credits. Individual shots throughout the movie drag on needlessly. This was shot back-to-back with Witchcraft 15 and 16, and one suspects that there's really only a single bad movie's worth of material between the three, had there been better editing. Just staggeringly awful.

A deadpan young woman with huge eyes and a fake photography darkroom hobby that serves no purpose periodically inadvertently, unwittingly really curses people who make her angry. A couple detectives comment on a body that they say bled from every orifice that - as they are looking at it - clearly only bled from the mouth. Generic Hot Topic Will Spanner randomly shows up to be of little or no help every time. A yoga studio that is slightly bigger than a closet inside is the home of a coven that pretends to be a refuge for white magicians but in fact is interested in raising Kali or Samael or someone else - they seem to forget to use the same name from scene to scene. Maybe they decided it would be offensive to use Kali on top of the cultural appropriation of yoga, or to equate Hinduism with witchcraft - yet still couldn't be assed to redo that dialogue where she was already mentioned. Who knows.

Some external reviewers didn't absolutely hate this one, giving it a 3/10 or so. I can't fathom why. The average college TV production likely has better values, true even during the analog era. Perhaps if one binges the whole series with the assistance of alcohol it has an effect on the brain towards the end. But then not many have dared review the whole series anyway.

Even with 16 movies, Witchcraft isn't the longest horror series. Puppet Master is nearly there with 15, looks like and could eventually overtake it as Charles Band continues to be active. Shake, Rattle & Roll evidently ties it with 16, although SRR 16 is just a short. Troublesome Night evidently has 20 entries. Unfortunately, not all the entries of those two Asian series are all that widely available in the US or streaming internationally at present, AFAIK. The pseudo-series of Amityville movies, where they just throw the word in the title somewhere but don't deign to assign it a number (or necessarily even mention Amityville within the movie), is over fifty by some counts.

Here's an idea or two: have Witchcraft 18 (it will happen sooner or later, mark my words!) written, produced, and directed by actual practitioners of one or more forms of witchcraft, or by scholars of witchcraft history and witchcraft film history and folk horror.
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