The Widow

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Gabriel S @Sanarel 11/26/2024 The Widow, originally called Vdova — which I assume is Russian—, is Ivan Minin’s debut film, according to all sources I researched; if he has any other entries to his portfolio, there didn’t make the catalog cut. Ivan clearly took inspiration by The Blair Witch Project, trying to spin it off with a few new ideas. In the end, we get a decent story. In the Widow, we follow an independent recue team specialized on finding missing people on a dense forest North off St. Petersburg. Luckly for them, the forest is known for being cursed, as we see in the beginning montage that plays like a documentary. Of course, quickly things go South. Fans of horror will find the story interesting and familiar. Cursed woods, some witch-like creature haunting prey, a group stranded on the forest trying to figure out what-the-hell. A key difference is that, in The Widow, the group is unaware of the hole they got themselves into, whereas in The Blair Witch Project, the group is somewhat investigating the witch dismissing it as urban legend. But the cinematography elements are there. In fact, that element is quite annoying, it is not clear if Ivan wanted to film the movie in first person or third person. In the end, we get a mix of both that usually do not work well on movies. Another detractor, this one not really attached to the movie itself, was the dubbing. Poor, mediocre dubbing makes characters feel planky, emotionless. If you can watch with the original audio, do it — the American dubbing just sucked. Plot-wise, is The Blair Witch Project all over, with some nice additions. Character Zoya is a new mix thrown into the blender, adding suspense and tension because she can’t stop warning about how they all are going to die. And the scene at the shack, a clear tribute to Blair Witch, was nicely done, an interesting twist that sort of ended abruptly, unfortunately. Overall, The Widow is fair game for horror fans. Shallow on scariness and lore, but quite interesting at points. With a somewhat predictable ending, this movie is only recommendable to die-hard horror fanatics, ones that just consume anything and everything. See more Paty R @RT58562776 06/05/2024 The film is neither good nor bad but it is entertaining and somewhat understandable. See more brad p @Bradster69 04/25/2021 Warts and All, ‘The Widow' Proves to Be an Eerie Supernatural Horror Movie See more Read all reviews

The Widow

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