'Spell' (2020) Movie Review

Spell is a horror movie directed by Mark Tonderai and starring Omari Hardwick.

Spell is an interesting thriller that is not overly interesting and has such good ideas and aesthetic background that it leaves us wanting more plot.

Storyline

A lawyer who has everything receives the news of the death of his father, who he has not seen since he was a child. He travels with his family to the place and, after a tragic accident, he is injured and treated by people whose customs are very different from those of the big cities.

Review: it’s missing a script

Spell is a good film that gets stuck more in the setting than in the plot development, slipping into clichés about voodoo all the time and with a rhythm that does not end up being interesting because the script isn’t, but it has an elaborate staging and a more than adequate setting that make it a film worth seeing for its production.

Omari Hardwick makes a good go of it as far as he can and with the role he is given, which doesn’t go beyond opening his mouth and looking surprised: he does it well and nor could he do anything else anyway. It has good photography, good characterization, sets… the film could be really worthwhile if someone had started to write a story (it seems that no one was interested). It gets too bogged down in recreating itself in the setting and in the supposed suspense… of something that has not actually really been created.

We learn that the inhabitants of that region have strange practices, okay… and then what? Then it gets lost again in scenes that don’t make sense (although it must be said, they are well filmed).

Many times the scenes are strung together, one to another, almost without making that much sense, as if the final editing had received too many cuts or the film had been too long (we think not, but by proxy…).

It leaves us with a very bittersweet taste of a story yet to be told and developed.