Like most horror movies, The Wretched never gets past its middle-of-the-road status. That’s not to say it’s terrible – there are things to enjoy, I won’t deny it – but, like so many others, it suffers from disappointing mediocrity when it could have been something of real substance. It manages a fair amount of tension, and the FX are a cut above, but it falls flat where it counts – story and execution. The ideas are there but they never reach their full potential, making it more frustrating than entirely unlikable.
The Wretched suffers from a half-cocked mythology that can’t decide whether it wants to be Stephen King’s It, The Witch (2016), a teenage Rear Window (1954), or a cobbled-together mish-mash of Supernatural season one episodes (no offense to Supernatural, I like that show). Too many elements are lifted from too many sources, resulting in an often confused and unfocused mess. Add to that the addition of completely unnecessary and cliched High School antics and things go from forgivably slapdash to annoyingly cringeworthy.
If you’ll indulge me in “should haves” for a moment, there are a few ways in which The Wretched could have been something spectacular. The way I see it, filmmakers Brett Pierce and Drew T. Pierce should have either cut the unnecessary fluff (of which there is a lot) and kept their film as a tight, succinct short, or expanded it into a six or eight-episode miniseries. I would prefer the latter, as a longer format would have allowed for a full exploration of the mythology and an opportunity to fully flesh out how to handle the film’s disastrous anti-climactic “twist” and its final shot swerve.
However, it’s not all bad. Many will find The Wretched worthwhile on the strength of the VFX alone. The “Dark Mother” is one creepy creature in the best old-school horror kind of way. With so much gaudy reliance on CGI, a traditional approach to effects is a welcomed change even if the rest of the film falls short.
Starring John-Paul Howard, Piper Curda, Jamison Jones, and Azie Tesfai.
VOD streaming available May 1, 2020.
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.