Pyewacket 2017

Pyewacket | Magie Noire

Pyewacket-Magie Noire

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About the Pyewacket 💬

• When you're dealing with demons, be careful what you wish for.

A frustrated, angst-ridden teenage girl awakens something in the woods when she naively performs an occult ritual to evoke a witch to kill her mother.

Darkness, I charge you with this sign. Mother in the night, are mine. I teach you the mystery of rebirth, work my mysteries in mirth. Hear with my ears and speak with my tongue. Drawn to the heart and lip, five points to this fellowship. I bring you ecstasy and rebirth, all things living on my own. From me, they come, and to me, they go. I invoke you and call upon you, brought by seed and earth. Hear me with my ears and speak with my tongue. I invite you to come.

PYEWACKET follows the story of Leah Reyes (Nicole Muñoz), a teenage girl who is forced to move to a house in the woods by her unstable mother after the painful passing of her father. Feeling trapped and hopeless, Leah turns to Black Magic to release her anger. She naively performs an occult ritual found in a book on her bedroom shelf to evoke the spirit of a witch to kill her mother. Stricken by guilt, Leah desperately tries to reverse the spell, but soon realizes she has awoken something in the woods, and nothing can prepare Leah for the terror she has unleashed.

• PRODUCTION NOTES

An inspiration for a story can come from just about anywhere and for writer-director Adam MacDonald the idea for this psychological thriller emerged while he was reading the biography of Hollywood legend, William Friedkin, the Academy Award-winning director of The French Connection, as well as of The Exorcist, and most recently of Killer Joe. It was then that Adam was reminded that Friedkin had directed The Guardian, which inspired him to watch it again. And it was while Adam was watching the film that he heard the name PYEWACKET and an idea was born.

''I remember how powerful that name was when I heard it and it just filled me,'' Adam recalled, ''So where do my ideas come from? I feel like I'm an open vessel for ideas to come to me, just letting it happen. With this film, it just hit me. After I watched The Guardian, I went into my son's room and just stood in it. And then I started seeing Leah right away, and the ideas started coming fast.'' With the help of a little meditation and time listening to Norwegian black metal music, Adam found the twist in the ending he needed to finish the script.

But, for a filmmaker to be able to capture the genuine feeling of fear and get the audience to experience that same feeling that Adam did when he watched those iconic films isn't an easy thing to do. For Adam, the challenge was made easier by focusing on a concept that became the underlying theme. It's the concept that 'fear is anxiety aroused by ambiguity.'

It's in the same way his debut feature, the critically-acclaimed horror Backcountry, is a story based in reality with real people dealing with an event that could actually happen but with one unknown factor. In Backcountry the audience knows there is going to be a bear attack but how it's going to happen or when it's going to happen is unknown and unpredictable, in other words, it's ambiguous. And that's where the fear of a bear attack anxiety meets ambiguity.

In PYEWACKET Adam explores the black magic and admits that he's unsure if he believes in it or not, but as he explained going back to the theme, ''It's the ambiguity of if I find terrifying. The occult gives us that feeling of swimming in the ocean. We don't know if there's a shark in the water. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. Some people have had experiences where they've seen a shark fin, but others haven't seen it and don't know that it could be there. That's what I wanted to explore.'' In essence, it's about what you don't know you don't know.

But Adam also knows that in the end, there isn't an easy go-to formula or secret to building the sense of fear in storytelling. Adam explained from the Sault Ste. Marie set, ''It's got to come from me, from my own fears. I reflect on what scares me to death.''

While Adam stayed firmly rooted in that concept of 'anxiety through ambiguity,' he created a tone of the film that combines several elements, ''The tone is somber and dark and kind of serious but does have levity at time. It's takes you on a creepy journey from the perspective of Leah throughout the movie from the beginning to the end. In the end, it's a simple story of a young girl who evokes an evil force that changes her life forever and she doesn't understand how serious those forces can be.''

What does Adam want people to take away from the film, ''My goal is to do my best and make one of if not the scariest movie that deals with black magic. I guarantee that I will do my best because I care about the audience,'' explained Adam. ''And, my goal is that when someone sees this movie they're going to be - if that's real, if black magic is real, I'm not touching it with a ten-foot pole. Or, if they have an Ouija board, they'll go home and burn it.''

Pyewacket Movie Details 🎥

Directed by

Adam MacDonald

Writing Credits

Adam MacDonald

Starring

Laurie Holden

Nicole Muñoz

Chloe Rose

Eric Osborne

James McGowan

Music by

Lee Malia

Cinematography by

Christian Bielz

Genres: Drama, Horror, Thriller

Country: Canada

Pyewacket Official Trailer

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