An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at the 2018’s The Witch in the Window
A father and son work together to fix up their new house but discover the previous owner was a witch with a malevolent past.
Is The Witch in the Window Scary?
The Witch in the Window has some pretty good scares and a few predictable jumpscares but does a good job at setting up a creepy atmosphere. In the end, you might leave The Witch in the Window scared of the dark especially if you have a habit of living in homes that once belonged to witches.
Plot Synopsis:
The film opens with Beverly (played by Arija Bareikis) telling her ex-husband Simon (played by Alex Draper) about some ground rules for their 12-year-old son Finn (played by Charlie Tacker). Simon is taking Finn to Vermont for 6 weeks and we get the impression that Simon hasn’t been around a lot. We also find out that Finn has your typical teenager attitude and recently did something so he’s punished and not allowed to use his phone.
Simon asks Beverly to calm down and she sort of loses it. Beverly makes it clear that she is stressed with a capital S and lists everything wrong with the world in general, which made me want to take a look at what year this film was made. Turns out it was 2018 so Beverly is going to have a rough 2020.
Simon and Finn set off to Vermont and arrive at the new house that Simon reveals he bought in order to fix up and then flip. While Finn looks around the area, Simon gets a call from the electrician who tells him he’ll be by later to check the house. Simon lets him know he’ll leave the house open for him so he can do what needs to be done.
Simon and Finn tour the house, spotting things they’ll need to fix and Finn learns that Simon has filled his room with all his old toys. Wandering around on his own, Finn enters the master bedroom and hears thumping coming from the walls.
Later Finn and Simon check out the dark basement and discover the heater doesn’t work. While they’re down there the power goes out and in a jump scare, the electrician appears from the darkness. Why wouldn’t the electrician have a flashlight especially when he shuts off the power? Because jump scares!
A little bit later the electrician, Louis (played by Greg Naughton), and Simon are having a cigar by the pond a few yards from the house. Louis says that someone must have cut the power lines but that he can repair them. Simon quickly surmises that Louis is afraid of the house and Finn, who has a fascination with morbid stuff, asks if someone died in the house. Louis confirms this is the case but the woman who died was also a witch.
Louis continues the story and says the witch who lived in the house had a husband and son but they were killed in a hay bale accident though many assumed it was her doing. After their deaths, all the witch would do is sit in a chair facing out the window of the second floor. One summer Louis and his friends realized that she never moved from the spot.
When others investigated, it was revealed that the witch had been dead for three weeks and, to be fair, that does hamper movement. Finn asks what the witch’s name was and with a worried look, Louis says her name was Lydia.
That night Simon tells Finn that he has a hole in his heart but also says there’s a better chance of an asteroid hitting them in their sleep than it killing him. So we’re either that hole in the heart is going to come back into play or we’re going to see one big asteroid before the end of this movie.
A few hours later Finn wakes up and hears thumping once again coming from the walls but also hears what sounds like something crawling inside.
The following day Simon and Finn work together to fix up several parts of the house in a mini-montage scene. That night Simon is alone installing some fresh lightbulbs when he hears something in the other room. Looking over to the door he sees a hand holding onto the door before being pulled away.
Simon opens the door and Finn exits his room asking who Simon was talking to. Simon says no one but Finn isn’t having any of that horror movie trope shit and reveals he’s seen a woman in the mirror. The two wonder if they’re being haunted by Lydia and they look over to the chair by the window which for some reason wasn’t burned the moment Louis told them about the legend.
Sensing his son is scared, Simon offers to let Finn sleep in his room but he refuses and claims he isn’t scared. A short time later, Finn heads to Simon’s room and sleeps next to his dad. The following morning we see Finn in bed and we hear Simon try to wake him up. We don’t see Simon so this is already suspicious.
Simon tells Finn to wake up and says that he had a dream last night where he asked someone if they could stay in the house. Simon sounds like he starts crying when he remembers it was Lydia he was asking. Finn shoots up in bed and it’s revealed Simon isn’t in the room. Looking out the window, Finn sees Simon cutting wood outside.
Later Simon and Finn are clearing the barn when Finn reveals the reason he got in trouble was that he was looking at stuff on the internet. He then says it was a video of someone getting murdered which causes Simon to flip out. And that sucks and all but the two don’t notice Lydia watching them from the window.
Simon tells Finn that the world is fucked up and that he isn’t truly safe which probably isn’t the best life lesson for a 12-year-old. Simon adds that adults lie all the time and we cut to a little bit later where Simon is telling Finn all the lies he’s ever told. Meanwhile, Lydia is once again watching them from down the hall.
Next, Simon and Finn fix the window on the second floor and Simon reveals he was never planning on flipping the house. The house was supposed to be a new home for the family and an attempt to escape the stresses of city life. The two are interrupted when the power goes out and they hear sounds coming from the basement.
The power returns and Simon is shocked that the heat has returned as well. Finn gets a bit freaked out since neither one of them turned on the heater meaning someone else did it. Simon senses his fear and suggests the two go out for a late lunch instead of ordering in. Before they leave, Finn heads upstairs to get his rain jacket and spots Lydia sitting in the chair by the window.
Finn calls over Simon and the two approach her despite her being a legit ghost witch. They literally get about 6 inches away from her face and are shocked when she jumpscares them. The two finally run out of the house as Lydia chases after them yelling at them to stay.
After grabbing some pizza Simon calls Beverly and tells her he is putting Finn on a bus back to the city the next day. Finn begs him not to do it but Simon is adamant that he can’t put Finn in danger. Simon tells Finn he plans on finishing the repairs on his own and then will decide what to do with the house after.
The two head to Louis’s house to spend the night and Louis reveals to Simon that he is the one who cut the power lines some time ago. Louis says that he saw Lydia once staring out of her window after her death and from that day, he started sleepwalking. Often he would wake up on the road heading toward Lydia’s house and every time he would be a little bit closer.
One winter an ice storm knocked out the power and Louis didn’t have any sleepwalking episodes which led him to believe that cutting the power would also stop them. The plan worked but then Simon moved in and Louis was too scared to stop him or warn him. Louis sucks.
Louis warns Simon to stop fixing up the house as it’s giving her more power but Simon refuses to stop. Apparently, Simon thinks if he fixes up the house that will convince Beverly to give the family a second chance and it will help Beverly’s stress. You know what else is stressful though? A haunted house with a witch in it.
Louis tries again to warn him but Simon asks what can Lydia do to him and makes the point that no one’s cause of death has ever been “haunted house”.
The next day Simon drops Finn off at the bus and heads back to the house to continue fixing it up. Later Simon is throwing out some wood when Finn appears and reveals he got off the bus and walked back to the house. Simon is disappointed but agrees to let Finn stay until the next day.
Simon continues working while Finn is on the lookout just in case Lydia returns. A short time later, Finn tells Simon he is his favorite person but doesn’t understand why he always leaves. Simon tearfully says he’s just afraid of ruining things and would rather be missed than hated. As they reconcile, Simon gets a call from Beverly who reveals Finn is with her.
Simon realizes this means the Finn next to him isn’t actually Finn.
Finn reveals himself to be Lydia causing Simon to run out of the house but he forgets to grab his keys. Instead of going back inside, Simon runs to Louis’s house but Louis refuses to help him. He then reveals that Simon never left the house and Simon wakes up back in the house.
This time grabbing his keys Simon runs out of the house and starts the car. Before he can drive off he hears banging coming from the house and sees another Simon banging on the window from inside the house. The Simon in the car turns around and Lydia pops up in a jump scare causing him to wake up as the Simon in the house.
Simon once again runs out of the house but this time Lydia disguises herself as Beverly. Lydia says Simon can leave whenever he wants but judging from the last few scenes, that sounds like bullshit. Lydia says if Simon leaves he’ll go back to a world where he has no money, his family lives in a hell hole (there’s a lot of city hate in this movie), and where he’ll just end up disappointing his family again.
Simon asks what will happen to Lydia if he stays and she tells him she’ll be free. Apparently, Simon isn’t the strongest character because he agrees to stay as long as he gets to finish the house first. Sometime later Simon finishes fixing up the house and after a phone call with the real Beverly, he tells Lydia he is ready.
At dawn, a sleepwalking Louis wakes up outside the house and sees Simon dead sitting in the chair on the second floor. This part doesn’t make sense since Lydia was causing Louis’s sleepwalking in order to get him to switch places with her. Now that Simon has switched places with her, why would she or Simon still need to do this to Louis?
Several days later Beverly and Finn drive up to the house and we learn that this is sometime after Simon’s funeral. Beverly expects to sell the house but Finn finds he likes it and doesn’t feel Lydia’s presence anymore. In his room, Finn finds a note left by Simon telling him he hasn’t left the house and never will.
Beverly and Finn decide to live in the house and that night after Beverly puts Finn to bed, Finn hears thumping coming from the walls and he says goodnight to his dad.
Review:
The Witch in the Window is pretty good and does a good job at being a haunted house movie, unfortunately, the other aspects don’t feel fleshed out enough. This isn’t unsurprising since the movie is only about 77 minutes and it’s a movie that should have been longer in order to explore some of the character motivations and to give us more of the horror it was doing so well at.
The movie is well-acted, has good punchy dialogue, and its main premise is a good one. Where the story suffers is the motivation of its characters. For example, Simon’s motivation for fixing up the house is poorly shown/told to the audience until about halfway through. Sure we know that he’s trying to fix up the house to either sell it or hopefully get Beverly to give the family a second chance but we don’t know how realistic that is.
Beverly is never shown to be willing to give him another chance, we don’t know why they even divorced or separated in the first place. Since we don’t even learn that’s his main motivation till halfway through the movie, we’re not invested in it.
There’s also a lot of random city hate in this movie that doesn’t make sense. Beverly is stressed out at the start of the movie and she lists everything that’s wrong but nothing she lists are things that only happen in cities. She lists things like climate change and the president but living away from the city won’t change either one of those things. This goes back to the motivation of the characters, why does Simon think moving Beverly outside the city would fix anything?
Other than that the movie has an effective atmosphere and some creepy scenes especially when you realize that Lydia is watching them before they spot her in the house. Simon’s character arc is also a great example of “it’s not what the character wants, it’s what they need”.
Simon wants to stay with his family and try to work it out with them but, we get hints that Beverly doesn’t want that when Louis asks Simon if Beverly still loves him and he doesn’t answer. In the end, Simon takes Lydia’s deal because it’s what he needs. Earlier in the film, he says he’s afraid of ruining things so he always runs away but by staying trapped in the house he’ll never leave his family and this completes his character arc.
Overall I highly recommend giving The Witch in the Window a watch. It’s not the best horror movie you’ll see but it’s entertaining and will fill that quick need for horror especially when it’s only 77 minutes long.
Cast IMDB
Stuff to Ignore
Metacritic – No Page