Witch lives in basement. Witch kills inhabitants of house.
That’s pretty much all there is to Aaron Fradkin’s new film Beezel, and that premise would be entirely acceptable if it was implemented with any degree of cohesion. Instead, we have confusing cinematography, inconsistent performances and strange tonal choices that lead to a disjointed and curious finished film.
Over 60 years, centuries-old witch Beezel murders and eats various unfortunate residents and visitors aided by those she has either possessed or bewitched. The whys and the wherefores are of no concern to Fradkin; this is a simple, familiar story with smatterings of gore and with a finale that is intended to shock and surprise. And yet, you never really feel at all invested in any of it. Multiple filming styles don’t help, with Fradkin switching between grainy home video, traditional camera work and found footage, with there being scant justification for these variations. The found footage seems solely to serve as a tool to avoid showing the witch, which, as a technique utilised by fledgling filmmakers on low budgets, can be highly effective, but here, it quickly becomes tiresome and frustrating.
As for Beezel, while horror creatures don’t always require a firm motive, there doesn’t seem to be any discernible reason for her existence or continued presence in the house, with the foreshadowed ending adding further to the confusion.
With shallow characters acting oddly – at one point, a woman puts on her husband’s dead mother’s lingerie in order to seduce him – and a story with less flesh on its bones than the titular witch, Beezel is sadly rather disappointing and bland.
