CASFFA NOTES: The Noonday Witch (2016, Dir. Jiří Sádek)

Hats off to first time Czech director, Jiří Sádek, for tilting at horror in the daylight hours. In a genre so heavily indebted to our fear of the dark, The Noonday Witch ( Polednice) stands apart. Or it would were it not for a little film called The Babadook.

To be fair, Sádek’s source material (Karel Jaromír Erben’s folk poem) is a long standing Czech classic and it is a field that has been ploughed before, most famously by Antonin Dvořák. But in updating this clingy mothers cautionary tale for the modern day, Sádek and his screenwriter Michal Samir bulk the psycho-drama with too much extraneous detail and too little point. That much of the detail aligns so closely with Jennifer Kent’s 2013 scarer is one thing, that Sádek fails to capitalise on the solid central performances from Anna Geislerová as disintegrating mummy, Eliska, and Karolína Lipowská as distressed daughter, Anetka, is a whole other.

Without a solid grasp *spoilers* on the psychological state of its protagonist, The Noonday Witch lags across the length of its narrative arc, ambling through the eerie prettiness then whipping out the demise in just a few short scenes. Taking a step back, it is easy to see the intent (remake The Babadook), but just as easy to see how far from the mark Sádek has landed.

On the upside, there are moody bits aplenty and evocative locations. It may not be enough to compensate for The Noonday Witch’s perfunctory downward spiral (or the letdown of its horror-eclipsing ending) but it gives one something to get into while the not-much-going-down goes down.

★★☆

Trailer:

The Noonday Witch opened the Czech and Slovak Film Festival in Australia 2016.