pecorini
Please, do not hate on this movie - it caps off Britt's amazing career, so show it some respect. She was a beautiful , if profoundly troubled, soul. RIP Britt, you are beautiful.
begob
Strange case of messing up the story to hide the reveal.The first half of this feels like three different stories. None of the characters is likable. The shape of things only comes clear in the end, but it just left me wondering why, WHY? I tried to think of a logline for the movie, but every angle makes me puzzle over what they were trying to do. Plenty of Shakespeare references, so maybe I missed something, but it looks like an effort to spread maximum confusion and make sure the revenge ending wouldn't be given away too early.On top of that there's a hard element of cheese with the mid-western rock music and lumber mill raw honesty. Plus a hint of the supernatural. And what's with the "successful publishing business"? Random.Total mess. And a sad ending for Brittany Murphy and her lips.
First Name Last Name
I must sadly warn my fellow horror/thriller fans to keep away from this release. If you are looking for a good and scary time filled with suspense you will be disappointed. It is actually impossible to even accept the basic setup for several reasons. While the cinematography is arguably one notch over a passable High School project, everything else pulls the movie down into an amateur ditch – it sinks even lower than many of the other unfortunate horror-releases of newer time. The direction is awful and the acting is really quite terrible. The script problems are obvious and nothing has been done to attempt to fix cringe-worthy plot holes. It really makes no sense. The movie is also full of hand-me-down elements from many previous horror movies, and it does a remarkably terrible job copying them. Something Wicked boils down to an unengaging experience due to the general poor quality, and it is not worth neither time nor money. It is particularly sad to see the last rolls of film of the late Brittany Murphy, which, without a doubt, was the only reason that this was ever released. Murphy looks tired, strung out – and it can be argued that it is in poor taste to publish this unfinished and confused nonsense in her wake. I think this movie is cursed. If this is the case it may be a good horror movie after all. But it is still a three... Stay clear of this release, friends!
Mr_Ectoplasma
I have a soft spot for B-horror films— it's not just that I am usually very entertained by them, but I really just find them charming. Maybe I have an underdog complex. Regardless, I'm not even sure why I am dispensing this information, because I don't know if I can classify "Something Wicked" as a B-movie completely, given the relatively high production values and moderately well-known cast (including the late and great Brittany Murphy). Even if "Something Wicked" isn't a B-movie entirely, it feels like one, and works within this framework. The plot follows a young woman, Christine (Shantel VanSanten) who loses her parents in an accident; she survives, however, as does her boyfriend, James (John Robinson). Christine moves in with her older brother, Bill (James Patrick Stuart), a local cop, and his wife, psychologist Susan (Brittany Murphy), and attends the local university. She and James begin to plan a future together beginning with a marriage, but Christine begins experiencing personal attacks and believes herself to be haunted by demons of the past and stalked by a real-life attacker. Where does Christine's truth lie?It is without question that the main reason "Something Wicked" is even seeing the light of day at Regal Cinemas right now is because it marks Brittany Murphy's final performance before her untimely death. Had Murphy not passed away, the film would likely have been relegated to the land of straight-to-DVD Redbox specials, but it is currently having an extremely limited theatrical run in the Pacific Northwest, and is one of the few indie films to surface in quite some time from my beautiful home state of Oregon (it was filmed in Eugene, a college town about three hours south of Portland, where I am from). And you know what? I'm glad the film is playing in a mainstream cinema, no matter how limited. It's just a shame that it took Murphy's death to get it there.The reasons behind the film's delay are ambiguous (it was filmed in 2009), but regardless, what we have here is a no-holds-barred indie horror thriller that is not quite serious enough to be taken at face value, but classy enough that it cannot be dismissed by genre fans. The script plays with genre setups and conventions galore, but they don't appear as clichés because the film refuses to let them be— it walks the line between a made-for-TV movie and a first-rate thriller, which is bizarre, but also extremely absorbing for people who are into this kind of thing. As someone who watches these films all the time, I should have seen the plot twists coming, but I didn't— the script quickly throws the audience into a disorienting snake pit of red-herrings and spends the rest of its time clawing its way out to the conclusion. The performances in the film are also worth taking note of; Shantel VanSanten leads the film and is vulnerable and believable, paired with John Robinson ("Elephant") as her husband-to-be. James Patrick Stewart plays her (perhaps too) protective cop brother quite believably, and Julian Morris ("Cry_Wolf") appears as the ominous and sexy stalker boy on campus— and then of course there is Murphy, who is completely alive and engaging in all of her scenes, her range oscillating between upper-class psychologist and prescription-addled madwoman.All this said, I don't know who the audience for "Something Wicked" is, as it's not flashy enough to attract a mainstream horror audience, and it is not something that has enough draw for the general public either. It perhaps has a niche market of diehards and B-horror fans like myself, as well as those who are ardent fans of Murphy's and want to see her last hurrah. At its heart, "Something Wicked" is nothing more than a self-aware indie horror flick with a series of twists and turns that aren't particularly profound, but I'll be damned if they don't make for an enjoyable and entertaining ninety minutes. If Murphy's untimely death gave us anything, it was the chance for an earnest and underrepresented indie horror film such as this to see the light of day— no matter how small or large that may be. 7/10.
