Milica
is not necessarily wrong to suspect her father’s new girlfriend Svetlana is a
witch, because the strange woman’s apartment is filled with all sorts of weird New
Age organic remedies that can’t possibly work according to science. She has
enlisted her school friend Jovan the dispel the witch’s mojo, but at least they
don’t intend to burn her at the stake in Rasko Milijkovic’s The Witch Hunters, which screens during
the 2019 Sundance Film Festival.
Jovan
is shy and standoffish in school, because he is insecure about his physical condition.
However, Milica, the brash new girl, looks past all that. At first, Jovan is
aghast when she starts inviting herself over, but he eventually starts to
appreciate her tomboy attitude and self-assurance. Soon, Milica confides in
Jovan she suspects Svetlana has cast an enchantment on her hapless father. It
turns out, a video-game playing expert on all things super-hero like Jovan is
just the ally she needs to take on Svetlana, assuming he can work up the
confidence to take the bus by himself to carry out phases of their mission.
Frankly,
the key-art for Witch Hunter looks
much more genre than the film really is. Basically, it uses fantastical
elements in much the same way Ian Fitzgibbon’s Death of a Superhero did, but it takes the audience to a far
happier place. Marko Manojlovic & Milos Kreckovic’s screenplay is achingly
well-intentioned, but it skews considerably younger than a family film like the
nifty ghost story, Room 213.
Regardless,
Mihajlo Milavic and Silma Mahmuti are enormously sincere and appear quite
genuine on-screen as Jovan and Milica, respectively. They have a nice, believable
rapport together. Most of the adults a well-meaning dunderheads or cold figures
of scorn, but Jelena Jovanova shows some screen presence as Svetlana.
Nice
is definitely the word for Witch Hunters,
with everything it implies, good and bad. There are some nice messages about inclusion here, but nothing you couldn’t find elsewhere.
Mostly pleasant, but certainly not essential, The Witch Hunters screens again today (2/2) in Park City, as part
of this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
