James W. Roberson

(In French, On Cable TV, September 2022) Supernatural slasher films are often far more interesting than “realistic” psycho-with-a-knife ones, but films like Superstition temper that assessment. Dating from the heydays of the slasher films, it’s a horror movie that’s all about the escalating body count… except that it’s all due to a supernatural witch. Which, when you think about it, makes the entire thing feel even more pointless: while a human psycho-with-a-knife still has to somehow physically move through space and time to kill his victims, the supernatural entity can pretty much do anything to anyone at any time, which makes the elaborate staging of the film’s deaths feel even more arbitrary than in normal slashers. But oh well. Plot-wise, there’s nothing to Superstition: characters waiting to be butchered, environments optimized for their killing-staging potential. There’s some amusement in noting that “the serial killer is a witch from earlier centuries!” premise is what the recent Fear Street trilogy played with. Otherwise, well, even with its supernatural justification, Superstition is nothing more than a slasher—cruel, brutal, pointless, and a chore to watch. Psycho with a knife; witch with unlimited power—in the hands of director James W. Roberson, there’s not much of a difference. Nice poster, though.