It's tough, it really is. Making a horror movie that isn't a standard horror movie means that you risk upsetting both horror fans and non-horror fans alike. And when you're using some genre tropes to explore loss and grief then you end up being compared to some other films from the past decade or so that already took viewers on a very similar journey. So I went into The Noonday Witch with fairly low expectations.
Anna Geislerová is Eliska, a woman who moves to a fairly isolated home with her young daughter, Anetka (Karolína Lipowská). Eliska is trying to cope after the death of her husband, but she hasn't yet told Anetka that daddy won't be coming home. She maintains a lie about him working away. It is only a matter of time until the truth comes out though, surely.
Based on a bit of folklore, which is why Karel Jaromír Erben is credited for his poem, The Noonday Witch is the result of the direction and writing from Jiri Sádek, Matej Chlupacek, and Michal Samir. The end result is good enough to rate their collaborative work as a success, despite it veering close to those other movies alluded to in the opening paragraph (and, yes, I know some people will be rolling their eyes now, but I do think this is different enough to be worth your time).
Maybe it is the setting, the particular lore being used, or just the many scenes set in bright daylight, but The Noonday Witch manages to feel surprisingly unique as it covers what could easily have been dull and over-familiar ground. It could have been better, I wish there had been some more moments of raw emotion and creeping unease on the way to the predictable ending, but it does what it sets out to do very well. Anyone going into this with any high expectations is bound to be disappointed though.
Geislerová and Lipowská are both very good in their roles. They have a couple of excellent people supporting them, but the film really rests upon their shoulders. Believable as parent and child, and equally believable as two individuals processing their emotions in different ways, the two leads help to keep you invested in something that wouldn’t work with anyone less convincing.
Not unmissable, not one I will rush to recommend to anyone after a guaranteed great movie night, but still good enough to make me feel glad that I finally got around to it.
7/10
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