Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Casey Duggan It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

BA_Harrison As Grace Churchill (Anat Topal-Barzilai) gives birth to her son William, images of a pair of witches being burnt at the stake flash through her mind. On leaving hospital, Grace's husband John (Gary Sloan) informs her that she will be staying at his mother's home for a while until she is ready to cope by herself. Before long, Grace starts to experience strange occurrences that eventually lead her to believe that John and his mother, Elizabeth (Mary Shelley), are up to something strange.Rather unbelievably, this tepid supernatural thriller, which clearly takes its cues from Rosemary's Baby, has spawned fifteen sequels to date, apparently finding an appreciative audience by including plenty of nudity and soft-core sex. This first film, however, offers nothing in that department: it's dull, uneventful drivel for most of the running time, only coming to life in the final ten minutes where extremely patient viewers are rewarded with a spot of much needed gore, including a decapitation and an impalement.As a horror movie completist, I now feel compelled to watch the rest in the series, no matter how bad they get: wish me luck… I get the feeling I will need it.

Leofwine_draca Inexplicably producing an endless number of uncountable sequels, this is a cheaply-made and totally dull affair with direction and acting so amateurish in nature that it's extremely hard to sit through. It also happens to be a very slow-moving film, in which there are only a couple of death scenes up until the finale, which moves into Shakespearian tragedy with just about the entire cast being slaughtered in a sudden massacre.The plot, concerning a couple who move into a new home and are terrorised by witches who want to use their newborn baby in a ritual, seems to be content ripping off ROSEMARY'S BABY, but it couldn't be more different in feel to Polanski's film - mainly as it's totally lacking in atmosphere and suspense! The only supernatural special effects used are ones where our heroine sees some spooky visions in a mirror. We see transparent heads flying towards the camera, effects which look like they didn't cost anything to make. All this is accompanied by some silly over the top music which makes it very funny in an unintentional way.Along the way, lots of unexplained things happen, like our heroine seeing a vision of a woman eating a dead dog and her wrists suddenly being slashed for no apparent reason. A priest also pops up (in a role obviously modelled on Rod Steiger in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR), is subjected to facial burns, before climbing up a tree outside our heroine's house and committing suicide by jumping into a noose - it's as hilarious as it sounds. In terms of gore, the only minor instance is when a family friend is decapitated and we see her head bouncing along the floor in a cheesy way. The acting is abominable and extremely wooden, particularly in the case of Gary Sloan, who plays the stupid husband. Yet it's difficult to criticise a particular performance when all are poor. Aside from the somewhat amusing ending, this is a totally dry and pointless film, for those looking for a cure for insomnia only!

Michael_Elliott Witchcraft (1988) * 1/2 (out of 4) A mother (Anat Topol) brings her newborn son to her mother-in-law's house and sure enough the husband (Gary Sloan) and his mommy (Mary Shelley) are actually Satan worshipers wanting to make the newborn the next Antichrist. Believe it or not but WITCHCRAFT was actually a huge hit when it was released to video back in 1988 but I do wonder how many people rented this thing and could have guessed that twelve sequels would follow. Obviously, the film is just another rip-off of ROSEMARY'S BABY but we get a funny little goof in the opening credits when a title reads "Origional Screenplay by" but perhaps this error was done on purpose since the film certainly wasn't original. The film itself makes a few major mistakes in regards to a made-for-video exploitation film. The biggest is that it's pretty dull from start to finish with not much happening anywhere in the first hour. The film isn't shy about ripping off other devil-child movies so horror fans might get a few kicks out of spotting the various rips. The film really doesn't contain too much violence or blood and the real sin is that it doesn't even offer up any nudity making it quite tame all around and there's really nothing here we haven't seen much better many times before. Even those awful rip-offs from the 70s at least offered up violence, gore or nudity. The performances aren't too bad for this type of film and I'll at least give director Rob Spera credit by turning in a professional looking picture, which is something a lot of the made-for-VHS films from this era couldn't say. The film does offer up some campy moments including a priest whose face starts to mutate after entering the mother-in-law's house. Another campy moment happens with "visions" coming from a mirror, which is bound to get several laughs. Still, WITCHCRAFT doesn't have anything really going for it that separates it from the pact so there's no real need to see it.

Ben Larson How many Witchcraft films were there? 13? 14? I don't know, but this, the first, is not like the others. It is a repackaged Rosemary's Baby. and doesn't have the sex scenes of the later films in the Witchcraft series.This film has all the elements you would expect in a Gothic horror film: a creaky old house, mood music, a scary butler, strange dreams, and lots of screaming and blood. And, we need to mention the creepiest of them all, the Mother-in-Law.It may have been low budget, but it still was interesting and worth the time spent.