Coven of Evil follows Joe (John Thacker), a budding journalist just out of school, still living with his folks, who writes an article about a strange cult of witches. When the head of the cult (Samantha Moorhouse) confronts him at his home, she invites him to their remote island location to see just how innocuous they really are. As ominous as this invitation sounds, the lure of escaping the more ominous fate of living with his folks any longer causes him to take her up on that offer; but when he finds a beautiful girl (Laura Peterson) possibly being held against her will, will he be able to save her and him?
I saw on IMDb and Letterboxd that reviewers killed this, and I don't know that it deserved that fate, but I believe it ultimately had a fatal flaw. The beginning of the film shows a satanic ritual from the late 18th century, effectively Chekhov's Gunning Lawrence's story. If we see the ritual at the beginning, we know in the present day that that's where we're headed. So with that in mind, the film's 100-minute runtime feels even longer; not to mention, around the hour-twenty mark, there's some plot exposition where loose ends start flying together, and to some extent I don't know if we even needed all of those nuances that were added to the story. Just the same, I thought this was well-shot, well-acted, and the score added a depth to it that I really appreciated. Again, this is not a 1- or 2-star IMDb hatchet-job review kind of movie, it deserves much better treatment than that; but also again, the 90-minute rule wins, and I think it wins that much more convincingly because we know where we're headed.
Director/writer Matthew J. Lawrence did give me some background on the process. In particular, he talked about the budgetary constraints, which, on the one hand is something that needs to be taken into consideration; but on the other, if my main concern is the film's length, usually low-budget films clock in lower than 90 minutes, not higher. Often where a low-budget film runs into issues is in the performances, especially if the cast is inexperienced, and that didn't happen here; or in the way it was shot, with bad takes needing to be left in to save costs, I didn't see any bad takes here. With that in mind, while I feel like it's important to grade a low-budget film on a curve and in so doing respect the effort and earnestness that the cast and crew bring to a project like this, this is an overall entertaining film, and even if I weren't grading on a curve, I'd be giving it high marks for all of the things it did well. It's just I never quite understood the idea of going onto IMDb or Letterboxd and killing a movie like this. Yes, a Marvel movie that has a budget so high a rounding error could cover my outstanding student loan debt deserves to be killed if it misses the mark, but not something like this that's doing the best it can to turn out a quality film despite the roadblocks in its way. (I'll step off my soapbox now.)
Another interesting thing that I had a hunch people would be upset about, is the fact that the coven pretends to be a harmless Wiccan group as a cover for their deadly Satanic exercises. In a 100-minute film, the plot exposition where we hear someone in the group mention that they were pretending to be Wiccan to throw Joe the intrepid reporter off the scent, is something that could easily be missed, especially considering how witchcraft-y the coven seem to be. I think that was another source of bad reviews for this film, but I want anyone to know that may be considering watching this that it's in no way meant to slander the Wicca faith. If anything, it's another mark in the "bad" column for our baddies, the fact that they would try to give the Wicca faith a bad name, giving us more reason to root against them.
One other thing Lawrence talked about is the moorland in Yorkshire where he grew up, and how it was both beautiful and eerie. That paralleled my own experience, growing up in a York of my own, York County, Maine, because Maine has similar qualities, which Stephen King has made millions of dollars off depicting so well. This film could have used more of that element, like when Joe sees a villager staring at him when he first arrives, but we never hear from him again. Throwing in a creepy elderly person here or there, a cat hissing, little touches to set the atmosphere a bit more, I think could have enhanced what Lawrence was going for even more.
Finally, a friend of mine a few years back told me about a linguistic study he read that said the Yorkshire accent in the 18th century would have sounded more like a Massachusetts accent does today. I understand that with the budgetary constraints they couldn't have flown in any actors from Boston, MA to do that opening scene, but how amazing would that have have been? One actor who we've seen in another screener we had here, Slip and Fall, comes to mind, and that's William DeCoff, who played the lawyer in that one. Imagining him with his Mass accent as the satanic priest is fantastic.
Since I'm recasting the opening sequence with Boston character actors, it's probably time to wrap this up. I think this has some real solid performances, great sets, a haunting score, plus the way it was shot really worked; ultimately though, the runtime coupled with the fact that the opening scene has to foreshadow what the end will be, otherwise it wouldn't be there, betrays it a bit and can make that 100-minute runtime a tougher sit. Just the same, I think this is worth giving a look, especially since right now you can get it on Amazon Prime. Thank you again to Matthew J. Lawrence for sending this over, I really appreciated it!
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6714558
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