A strong, deeply personal feature directorial debut, “Heir of the Witch” offers much for fans of folklore and gothic, supernatural horror.
Heir of the Witch is a dark supernatural and psychological horror film about a young woman desperate to escape her family’s dark past — a past that torments her, making her life a living nightmare.
It begins with text on a black screen and a voiceover introducing us to a creature of Moldovan folklore, the Strigoaică.
Described as a witch that appears as a result of an unnatural, violent death, this being returns from the grave to haunt and torment the living, passing down a curse through the female bloodline, which forces women to either accept and wield the dark power they’ve been given or reject it and face a dreadful fate.
A Strigoaică is the female counterpart of a Strigoi, a shapeshifting vampire in Romanian lore and the basis for the bloodsucking vampires introduced to the world in Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula.
After the introduction, we get a flashback to Maldova, as fog covers a graveyard at night and a woman awakes in a coffin, finding herself buried alive.
Immediately after, a beautiful woman named Anna (played by writer/director Victoria U Bell) wakes screaming in terror, and we realize the previous scene took place in her nightmare.
We quickly learn that Anna believes herself to be cursed, and the fear and anguish caused by this curse have taken a heavy toll on her mental state.
She continuously hears sinister voices in her head and has disturbing visions involving her deceased grandmother (Lorayn DeLuca).
A struggling seamstress, Anna feels alone and aches for someone to help her carry her burden, someone who will love and accept her and keep her safe from harm. She’s desperate for love and a family of her own, which she later reveals to her client, a wealthy socialite named Chloe (Deanna Rashell).
The only person Anna has in her life is her elderly aunt Rosie (Vanessa Neff), whose house Anna lives in while she cares for her sick relative.
That begins to change when she attends the birthday party of her high society client and draws the attention of her handsome and very wealthy husband, Nicholas (Ben Holtzmuller). She’s also fancied by Chloe’s mentally challenged cousin, Dustin (Norwood Ezzell), whom Chloe asks Anna to begin tutoring.
It’s established early that most people Anna encounters, those who travel in elite circles, are despicable.
The women treat her with disdain and mock her appearance and lack of means, while the men treat her as an object to be used and discarded.
The worst stereotypes of women as vapid, gossiping gold-diggers and men as chauvinistic playboys are exploited.
Chloe tries to set Anna up with Nicholas’ business partner, a loathsome womanizer named Martin (Julian Brittano). Nicholas cautions against it, saying he’s not Anna’s type and is no good.
But Chloe insists all women really want is two things: good looks and money. Later, Martin repeats this thinking by insisting he can have any woman he wants because they only want money and dick.
Martin later meets a terrible demise at the hands of the witch terrorizing Anna. She disguises herself as a blonde bombshell, seduces Martin, and rips him limb to limb in one of the film’s most visceral scenes of horror.
Soon Nicholas and Anna begin having a passionate affair.
She at first refuses his advances but soon succumbs to her desire for him. The two fall in love, and Anna becomes pregnant. However, Nicholas refuses to leave his wife and is desperate to keep their affair secret for fear of upsetting Chloe.
Meanwhile, continued flashbacks reveal more of Anna’s backstory, the truth behind her mother’s death, and the reason why she has been cursed by her witch grandmother.
As people in Anna’s life continue to die in tragic and horrible ways, it all leads to a dark and horrifying climax where Anna is forced to confront her inescapable destiny.
Heir of the Witch was born out of Bell’s deepest fears and nightmares.
It’s a story crafted from the writer-director’s own familial horror story.
According to Bell, her paternal grandmother was a witch who sold her soul to the devil, doomed to haunt the family line until she was able to pass on her dark gift.
Bell’s family was terrorized by this sinister history. Bell herself grew up plagued by disturbing nightmares and stalked by a malevolent heaviness that filled her with dread. She felt trapped, as if there was no escape from the darkness that relentlessly pursued her.
Bell believes she was only saved from the curse by months of desperate prayer. She finally learned to embrace the darkness of her past and let go of the shame she carried with her. Once she stopped running, she was able to face her fears and find catharsis through the creation of this frightening film.
Bell explains:
HEIR OF THE WITCH is a story that was drawn from my own personal fears, anxieties, and individual experiences. In my youth, I learned to write from my heart and immersed myself in my deepest feelings. At times I was hesitant and ashamed to admit my family’s dark, malevolent past and reveal my worst nightmares.
Bell infuses her personal tale with ample tension, a dark atmosphere, and deeply disturbing imagery.
The scenes where Anna is visited by her wicked witch of a grandmother are absolutely chilling and often quite gruesome.
The ending is shocking and packs a punch. And this isn’t the kind of film that’s interested in tying everything up with a neat bow and letting the viewer off the hook with a feel-good, “it’s all going to be ok” kind of ending — a bold choice I truly appreciated.
As for Bell’s acting chops, she really delivers the goods as the slowly unraveling Anna, a role that requires her to deliver extreme duress and terror. She spends much of the film screaming or sobbing, and she’s extraordinary in her ability to really sell the depth of the character’s emotion.
It’s not perfect. Heir of the Witch can be disorienting and confusing at times, and I definitely picked up on many more clues and realizations after a second watch. It’s also the kind of gothic horror film that leans much more into making you feel a certain way through a moody atmosphere, unsettling imagery, and a haunting score rather than telling a rich, narrative story.
With that said, it is quite effective at doing exactly what it sets out to do, and the result is a dark and harrowing tale that’s twisty and unnerving.
I also love horror films like this that serve as metaphors for generational trauma and the pain of a seemingly inescapable fate — the “curse” of being born into a disadvantageous situation, such as poverty, abuse, or neglect.
There’s a lot to love about Heir of the Witch — a compelling and often spine-chilling exploration of unique folklore and religious beliefs from a culture rarely represented in Western horror.
Overall Rating (Out of 5 Butterflies): 3.5
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