FALLING STARS (2023)

New On Demand and digital download from XYZ Films!
Directed by Gabriel Bienczycki, Richard Karpala.
Written by Richard Karpala.
Check out the trailer here!!

Three brothers Mike, Sal, and Adam (Shaun Duke Jr., Andrew Gabriel, Rene Leech) live in a world where witches exist. While they are highly elusive, it is common knowledge that at the beginning of the harvest each year, people suddenly disappear without a trace. Government even acknowledges this by issuing warnings to keep people from going outside during this time, as the witches appear as falling stars before they swoop down and snatch people up. A friend of the brothers, Rob (Greg Poppa) claims to have shot a witch and buried it out in the desert, but when the group go out to see the witch, they end up desecrating the corpse and become the targets of the witches swooping above.

FALLING STARS is an engrossing new take on witches. By bypassing the whole, do witches exist notion and accepting that they indeed exist, it opens the story up for all kinds of avenues to venture down. It shows how, despite knowing that there are terrors swooping in the skies, people still push the boundaries and break the rules, simply for the reason the rules are there. The group of guys go against all warnings to see a witch. They could have waited until daylight or later in the season, but instead, they choose to go out the first night of the harvest and pay the ultimate price. This film speaks a lot about human nature in that as soon as a barrier or rule is made, someone will be working on a way to break it.

On the technical front, this is a gorgeous film and while most likely FALLING STARS was made on a very low budget, it doesn’t look like it at all. This is done with some wonderful cinematography of the barren and dark desert and some expansive views of the clear night sky full of stars. Once the witches have been described as falling stars, it makes the viewer watch them differently, making these starry night scenes feel dangerous and full of horrors. On top of the way the film looks making this feel like a much bigger budgeted movie, it also focuses heavily on the interactions between the characters. While there are a few monologues, most of the time it is just comfortable conversations about the situation the characters are in. The casual manner with which the cast talk about the witches above them made the whole thing fascinating. This isn’t a film that spoonfeeds you details. They are hidden in co-director Richard Karpala’s masterful script and while there is a blurb at the beginning of the film about the witches, you can glean all of that information by the way people speak to one another, making you actually pay attention to every line so you can learn more about this bizarre situation. The cast, all unknowns, do a fantastically natural job of confortably talking about this strange world they live in and act as if they are talking about vague things that we have grown used to like the threat of nuclear war or a global pandemic. Everything feels natural, making the dangers above all the more terrifying.

The other genius move of FALLING STARS is that it shows you the witch that Rob buried in the desert, but it zooms in close. There’s never a clear, establishing shot of the entire thing. There are closeups of teeth and arms and maybe what looks like some kind of broom thing it is riding. But the camera never lingers on it long enough for your mind to put all of those pieces together. These scenes are reminiscent of the initial autopsy scene from JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING, where we are not exactly sure what we are looking at, but we know it’s gross and scary. By showing these glimpses, FALLING STARS immediately instills fear in the viewer, making them fill in the blanks and wonder, is that what is swooping around above our brothers stuck in the desert?

Directors Gabriel Bienczycki and Richard Karpala prove to be master manipulators. You’ll swear you see the witches, but really, all we do is get the idea of the witches in our heads and then the film rolls with the fear these guys feel going out in the night with tons of them swarming above. On such a small budget, FALLING STARS do so much in terms of instilling that fear of the unknown and building a world where darkness is real and scary. I highly recommend this ingeniously low fi take on witches and folk horror. I’m sure there will be those who will be frustrated that we never see the witches in action, but this film fascinated me at how it was able to realize big ideas on a small budget. FALLING STARS isn’t an effects bonanza, but the fear it awakens is better than any effects they could show on the screen.