My review for
#TheWitchHuntersAreComing, a British film that won for Best Comedic Horror Short Film in the 2019 Tabloid Witch Awards ...
We received several
#Mocumentaries this year, parodying different television formats. The Witch Hunters Are Coming targets reality shows such as COPS. But instead of following police on patrol, this film tracks two witch hunters who work for Britain's Occult Management Department.
#Witchcraft is once again illegal in the United Kingdom. Siddarth and "Dorothy from Kansas" are tasked to investigate accused witches, collect evidence, and if circumstances warrant, terminate with extreme prejudice. Dorothy is ever prepared with her bucket of water for just such eventualities.
The Witch Hunters Are Coming succeeds on three levels. It successfully satirizes witches in popular culture, making references to Snow White and The Wizard of Oz. It also parodies
#RealityTV. There's the hyper-dramatic music, the producers trying to squeeze tension from every mundane incident. The hosts who address the camera during slow moments when nothing's happening, either with filler material or a promise of something exciting soon to happen. It's all very cute and entertaining.
But we also discern a theme. The term "witch hunt" has come to mean persecution of a politically unpopular person or group. And so, on a third level, the film functions as political commentary.
By some reports, Britain is becoming an increasingly PC society, speech ever more restricted, the police and local authorities ever more intrusive. Siddarth and Dorothy work in cooperation with London's local councils (a real political entity). They are government agents going after politically unpopular -- or even imaginary? -- villains.
The Witch Hunters Are Coming can be enjoyed as an innocent comedy. Yet its thematic content, intentional or not, gives the film an added dimension, raising it above mere laughs, into something intriguing and thought provoking. Written and directed by
#JamesAtkins.
-- review written by Thomas M. Sipos
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