The Wretched (2020)

**1/2 /*****

 This was on my radar when some horror podcasters I follow on the Tube mentioned it in a conversation over it's box office run during the beginning stages of Covid-19 theater closures and pandemic lockdowns instituted. This film's evil antagonist is a witch from the woods (a tree with a "mouth" is it's home where it "eats") that possesses women, feasts on kids, whispers in the ears of men spellcasting them to do it's bidding. As flowers wither, the flesh begins to weaken, and the spine and bones crackle, the witch moves to the next woman, always occupying a host and commanding those close to it to do whatever is necessary to survive.

Mallory

Ben, the protagonist

Ben's dad sees the truth

The witch's "refuge"

The film lost me with the revelations at the end. The other brother that had been forgotten just seemed like a twist wholly unnecessary while the fate of Mallory is puzzling because Ben's dad crushed the witch with a direct hit into her tree. Not quite sure how the whole possession from one host to the next works when the witch in question is obliterated by a car at high speed into a big tree. Only for rescue of another child besides Mallory's sister seems to be the rationale behind Ben having a brother, with an included grotesque feeding session of the neighborhood boy Ben desperately tried and failed to protect. Not bad, though, is the hideous design of the witch absent a host female body, and one gnarly special effects sequence has it actually exiting Ben's dad's girlfriend. The sound effects of the witch's difficult process of acclimating to hosts give us an understanding of how occupying human bodies not it's own is a problem never mastered. The witch will never be able to use a host body full time, so it would continue to kill, possess, kill, so on and so forth. 

Still think the twist with Mallory doesn't stick the landing with me personally because of what happens to the witch through a car crash. Ben nearly drowning and almost shot by a cop dealing with a spell placed on him is quite suspenseful. 

Not too bad, with a good cast making the characters likeable, although it just feels like the relationships among some of them, such as Ben and his dad's girlfriend, Ben and Mallory, Ben and the teenagers busting his chops, could have used just a bit more development. The film does have an effective monster. I think I felt this film just lacked a bit more meat on the bone. I think this just misses the mark. A certain symbol seems be it's mark, seen where it thrives. The film opens in the 80s, pointing out that the witch has been at this for quite some time, as a family has fallen victim to it.