Home is certainly where the hurt is in director Aaron Fradkin’s supernatural horror film Beezel, where the home in question is concealing deadly secrets in its basement in the form of a horrific witch who devours people.
Spanning the decades from the 1960s, up to 2013, Beezel sets itself on the multigenerational family who dwell within the household and the visitors that come but may never leave. Presented almost like an anthology film, it begins in 1966 where the Weems family are enjoying quality time as filmed on their home camera. The segment ends in explicit gore and violence as the mother and son are decimated, leaving the father as the sole survivor. Cut to the 80s where the father, Harold Weems (Bob Gallagher) has now remarried to a woman called Deloris (Kimberly Salditt Poulin) and invites a documentarian into his home to tell his side of the story and prove his innocence in the crime of murdering his family that he has been implicated in.
Forward once again to an elderly and ailing Deloris in 2003 and a nurse Naomi (Caroline Quigley) arrives to fill in for another homecare worker who has mysteriously disappeared. Soon we are introduced to Deloris’ son Lucas (Nicolas Robin) and his wife Nova (co-writer Victoria Fratz Fradkin) in 2013 who are moving into the house temporarily to get his deceased mother’s estate in order. Whilst there, strange occurrences begin to happen and Nicolas is forced to reckon with his past and face this darkness head on.
Whilst Beezel should be applauded for its creature design and effects, its moments of gore and the pure horror created in visuals, set design and atmosphere, the time era hopping leaves the film feeling disjointed, never allowing the audience to fully immerse themselves in or get familiar with the story and the world being built. Whilst it's not always necessary to give monsters an origin story, the witch in Beezel has zero raison d’etre and unfortunately the film suffers for it. A tiny bit of background information on why and how she came to be in the basement of a white picket fenced New England home would have elevated this horror to new heights.
2 Screams out of 5
Beezel is now on digital from September 24th
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