Pyewacket and the Consequences of Rage

With his second feature film, Pyewacket (2017), Adam MacDonald is showing himself to be a distinctive director and writer of horror. His films offer spare plots centered on an intense, complicated relationship—a relationship then tested and torn apart by some kind of horrific force. His films are beautifully shot and make the most of the isolation of his characters.

MacDonald’s first film, Backcountry (2014), which I review here, centers on the strained relationship of Alex (Jeff Roop) and Jenn (Missy Peregrym) as they become lost in the deep woods on a camping trip Jenn never wanted to take. An encounter with a large grizzly bear, however, puts their troubled relationship in a very different perspective.

Pyewacket is similar in its focus on a tormented relationship, this time that of a mother and daughter.  Laurie Holden (Andrea from AMC’s The Walking Dead) plays mother to teen Leah (Nicole Muñoz), both of whom are suffering intense grief after the death of Leah’s father. Leah’s mother alternates between a wine-soaked indifference and palpable rage, screaming at Leah that she can’t move on because her daughter’s face reminds her of her dead husband. For her part, Leah has turned to heavy metal and a fascination with the occult which, she tells her mother, helps her to cope with her father’s death. Neither mother nor daughter turns to the other in their grief, and the hostility between them festers until Leah does something unthinkable: she performs a ritual to bring about her mother’s death.

Laurie Holden as Leah’s mother

The plot unfolds slowly and relentlessly from there, with some terrifying scenes that are all the more powerful for MacDonald’s restraint in what he shows. Indeed, there are some shots in Pyewacket–with something monstrous far away, in a corner, just obscured–that are among the creepiest I’ve seen in a while.

For all the undeniably supernatural nature of what Leah conjures up in the woods, MacDonald never lets go of the psychology of mother and daughter, and as Leah’s mother becomes (possibly) possessed by the spirit Leah has invoked, viewers remember how changeable she had been earlier, and we remain poised on the border between the real and the supernatural. Holden and Muñoz both do an exceptional job of conveying the complexity of their characters.

While Backcountry delivered perhaps more immediate and visceral dread—I was literally paralyzed with fear at moments—Pyewacket unfolds more slowly and its true horror doesn’t hit you until right at the end in an unforgettable and profoundly chilling scene. It’s what the film has been leading up to—what Leah and her mother have been leading up to. And yet it also isn’t. When the ending comes, you realize it’s not what anyone wanted. Some inexorable force was been set in motion that no one could stop. That force is “Pyewacket”—and in many ways it serves the same function as the grizzly bear in Backcountry. Except, in Pyewacket, the characters more openly invite the destructive force in.

Nicole Muñoz as Leah

In the end, what I love about Adam MacDonald’s work so far is how he shows us the ways in which humans get tangled up with things that are much bigger and much more powerful than they are—with unstoppable forces. The characters at first think they can manage or control these forces, but they very quickly learn they can’t. In some ways, that’s the essence of horror, and in both Backcountry and Pyewacket, MacDonald shows the frailty and powerlessness of humans in the face not only of the external world but also their own desires, resentments, and rage.

As of August 7, 2018, Pyewacket is available on Blu-ray:

You can stream Pyewacket on Amazon as of March 23, 2018:

And I also highly recommend Backcountry: