Official synopsis: Over six tumultuous decades, three unwitting guests of a cursed New England home stumble upon a sinister secret dwelling beneath its floors — an eternal witch with an insatiable thirst for the souls of the living.
Director Aaron Fradkin’s Beezel is a take-no-prisoners occult horror movie — just ask the little boy who gets offed within the first few minutes — that deals in otherworldly eeriness and impressive practical effects work. With the film’s lean, mean 82-minutes running time, Fradkin, who cowrote the screenplay with Victoria Fratz, keeps the suspense coming at a fine clip.
Beezel plays like an anthology film with a strong connection between its three stories: the titular blind witch and the house that contains the basement in which she lurks. Beezel is a bloodthirsty one, and she gets her cravings met in a variety of gruesome ways.
The film opens with what I feel is the strongest segment, which finds a budding documentarian (LeJon Woods) hired by the house’s owner (Bob Gallagher), who many people blame for the murder of his first wife and their young son. The man claims to want to set the record straight, but he has other deadly motives in store for the cinematographer. The ambience set in this segment is truly chilling, and the foreboding is heavy.
Naturally, if I find that to be the strongest story in Beezel, that means the rest of the film didn’t work quite as well for me. That’s not to say that the rest of the film isn’t good, though. The second segment involves a hospice nurse (Caroline Quigley) who is assigned to take care of the aforementioned man’s second wife after the sudden disappearance of the previous nurse, and the third segment features Fratz as the wife of Lucas (Nicolas Robin), the latter of whom inherited the hell house. The couple decide to live there temporarily while trying to sell it, but this being a horror movie, they may be staying there forever.
Viewers don’t get a lot of time to invest in characters, but the solid performances from the cast members help make up for their characters’ short backstories, and we definitely have folks to cheer for and against. Beezel is one nasty, vicious, wicked witch, and the journey through the decades to see what lies in store for her and her victims is one worth taking.
Beezel began a limited theatrical run on September 20, 2024, and is available to rent or purchase on video-on-demand (VOD) from September 24.
