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''Pyewacket'' is a 2017 Canadian horror
thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
written and directed by
Adam MacDonald Adam MacDonald (born May 16, 1977) is a Canadian actor, writer, and director. He is known for portraying Josh MacIntosh on the CBC show ''Being Erica'', Peter McGregor on '' Wild Roses'', and Detective Steve Peck on ''Rookie Blue'', and for hi ...
. It stars
Laurie Holden Heather Laurie Holden (born December 17, 1969) is a Canadian-American actress, producer, and human rights activist, known for her roles as Marita Covarrubias in ''The X-Files'' (1996–2002), Adele Stanton in '' The Majestic'' (2001), Cybil Benn ...
and Nicole Muñoz. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the
2017 Toronto International Film Festival The 42nd annual Toronto International Film Festival was held from 7 to 17 September 2017. There were fourteen programmes, with the Vanguard and City to City programmes both being retired from previous years, with the total number of films down b ...
.


Plot

Leah Reyes is a teenager fascinated with black magic and occult practices. Following the death of Leah's father, her grieving mother decides to move to a remote woodland house for a fresh start, forcing Leah to leave her school friends behind and join her. After a fierce argument with her mother, Leah wishes death on her and performs an occult ritual in the forest from one of her books, to summon the demon Pyewacket to kill her mother. However, Leah bonds with her mother shortly afterwards, and she soon regrets her actions. She begins to notice strange occurrences, including noises coming from the attic and piles of dirt on the floors. One night, Pyewacket appears as a shadowy entity in Leah's bedroom while she sleeps, and drags her into the forest. Waking up the next day covered in blood, Leah turns to her school friends for help, and her best friend Janice agrees to stay at Leah's house overnight to help her lift the curse. However, the following morning Leah and her mother find Janice cowering in the car, too terrified to say what happened to her. Leah contacts paranormalist Rowan Dove, who advises that the only way to stop the demon is to perform the same summoning ritual in the same place, but in reverse. He also warns that Pyewacket is a devious shape-shifter and Leah must not trust anyone until the curse is lifted. Leah returns to the forest and begins the reverse ritual, but stops when she sees her mother lying dead nearby, but also hears her mother calling out for her. In a panic, Leah calls 911, and then her friend Aaron to pick her up. Returning to the house, Leah is confronted by Pyewacket, who first takes the form of Leah's mother, then of a monstrous hag. Leah hides in the attic, and when her mother returns home, Leah is convinced that she is another of Pyewacket's illusions, so that night she douses her mother with gasoline and sets her on fire, believing that she is killing the demon. This in turn sets the house on fire, and when Aaron arrives he finds Leah unconscious outside as the house burns down. Leah is interviewed by a police detective about her mother's death. After playing a recording of Leah's 911 call where she said her mother's body was in the woods, the detective reveals that the only body the police found was a burned one in the ruins of the house.


Cast

*
Laurie Holden Heather Laurie Holden (born December 17, 1969) is a Canadian-American actress, producer, and human rights activist, known for her roles as Marita Covarrubias in ''The X-Files'' (1996–2002), Adele Stanton in '' The Majestic'' (2001), Cybil Benn ...
as Mrs. Reyes * Nicole Muñoz as Leah Reyes * Chloe Rose as Janice * Eric Osborne as Aaron * Romeo Carere as Rob * James McGowan as Rowan Dove * Bianca Melchior as Pyewacket


Reception

On review aggregation website
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 84% based on 32 reviews, and an average rating of 6.98/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "''Pyewacket'' builds its atmospheric, patiently encroaching chills on a well-told story concerned more with emotional trauma than supernatural threats."
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
gives the film a weighted average score of 56 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


References


External links

* {{Adam MacDonald 2017 films 2017 horror films 2017 horror thriller films English-language Canadian films Canadian horror thriller films Demons in film Films set in forests Films shot in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Folk horror films 2010s English-language films 2010s Canadian films Canadian supernatural horror films