“Spell” adds to the significant recent growth of African American horror cinema, though really only in casting terms. Otherwise, this reasonably suspenseful if implausible tale is just another variation on the familiar formula of “city folk” making a big mistake going to the country, where every primitive peril awaits them. Here, instead of homicidal hillbillies à la “Texas Chainsaw” and “The Hills Have Eyes,” it’s an Appalachian enclave of Black hoodoo practitioners, with upwardly mobile Omari Hardwick at the “Misery”-esque mercy of witchy Loretta Devine.
Shot in South Africa, British-Zimbabwean director Mark Tonderai and veteran Hollywood scribe Kurt Wimmer’s film isn’t aiming for regional authenticity, though it might have poured on the bad-dream atmospherics a bit thicker to make up for that lack. Nonetheless, this is a decently stylish thriller with occult elements that should satisfy viewers’ genre requirements, though few will demand a second watch...
Shot in South Africa, British-Zimbabwean director Mark Tonderai and veteran Hollywood scribe Kurt Wimmer’s film isn’t aiming for regional authenticity, though it might have poured on the bad-dream atmospherics a bit thicker to make up for that lack. Nonetheless, this is a decently stylish thriller with occult elements that should satisfy viewers’ genre requirements, though few will demand a second watch...
- 10/28/2020
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
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