Witchboard (2025)

1 Star (out of 4)

Witch Bored

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Chuck Russell's remake/reboot Witchboard is the fourth in a sub-par horror series, and, like its predecessors, it doesn't work due to dumb characters, dumb situations, and not-scary villains.

Chef Christian (Aaron Dominguez) is preparing to open a Creole restaurant in New Orleans with his girlfriend Emily (Madison Iseman) and pals Richie (Charlie Tahan) and Zack (Jamal Azémar). While picking mushrooms, Emily finds a spirit board. She decides to take it back and display it in the restaurant.

Christian's ex-girlfriend Brooke (Melanie Jarnson) — an expert in antiquities — comes to a tasting party and teaches Emily about the board. Later Emily finds a pendulum, made out of a human finger, inside it, and uses it to find her missing engagement ring. At the same time, Richie is killed in a bizarre kitchen accident involving a kitchen slicer.

Worried that Emily is becoming obsessed with the board, Christian seeks help from Brooke, who takes him to meet Alexander Babtiste (Jamie Campbell Bower), an expert on witch and pagan culture. Alexander agrees to meet with Emily, and puts her in a trance. When she comes out again, she seems normal, but the real horror is just beginning.

Witchboard doesn't have much to do with the 1986 movie it purports to be a remake of, and even the board looks different; this one is an antique, rounded "pendulum board" as opposed to a store-bought Oujia board.

After a silly flashback and a laughable sequence in which two bumbling robbers improbably steal the board from a museum, we are introduced to the characters with stiff dialogue. They explain things to each other that they should already know, a lazy way of imparting information to the audience. In fact, at no point do characters ever appear to be talking to each other in a natural way.

The villain is a typical smarmy fellow, who says things like "Wakey wakey! Eggs and bakey!" when his kidnapped victim re-achieves consciousness, and the villainous plot makes little sense. Moreover, the heroes rarely behave in any intelligent way, either, continuously making the worst possible choices and ignoring the obvious.

It goes without saying that, with no emotional involvement, there is no suspense, no tingles, and nothing even remotely frightening. (It contains not one, but two, jump-scares involving cats, a very old, tired tactic.) Witchboard is also absurdly long.

It's worth noting that the director here is Chuck Russell, who directed two vintage 1980s horror movies with cult followings, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and The Blob, but who seems long past being able to re-capture their charms. This movie is more "bored" than board.