THE SALEM CHRONICLES (2025)

New On Demand and digital download from Lionsgate!
Directed/Written by Thomas J. Churchill.
Check out the trailer here!!

A police detective, Shane (Nathan Kehn) finds out his estranged mother has passed and travels to her house with his wife Johanna (Gina Vitori) to settle her estate, only to realize he has inherited a sizable inheritance, including his mother’s house and a sickly old grandmother living in the top floor. Once there, the couple find out that Shane’s mother was heavily into the wiccan culture—a culture leading all the way back to the Salem Witch Trials.

Looking at that poster, I thought I was in for some raw and ragged, witchy folk horror. That’s what the poster suggests with its handmade masks looming over at you from above. I mean, look at that. Waking up to that would make my pants full forthwith-ly. Unfortunately, THE SALEM CHRONICLES is another common case of the cover or in this case the poster not being representational of the contents inside.

Paced snail-ly, THE SALEM CHONICLES takes about forty-minutes to get to the true point of the story. Looking at my watch (and I did that a lot with this movie), it wasn’t until the forty-five minute mark until Shane and Johanne actually get the house and start experiencing weird things. The film moves along slowly after that, but a lot of the info we receive in the first half hour to forty five minutes of this hour and a half movie is repetitive and seems to serve as padding for a film that feels as if it has about forty minutes of meaty material, surrounded by another forty of fluff. The opener takes place during the Salem Witch trials, then we have an extended stint showing Shane investigating a ritualistic murder, then there is the exposition drop about his mother. A lot of that could have been shaved off to make it more succinct and allowing it to get to the good stuff.

The problem is that there really isn’t a lot of original or potent content in THE SALEM CHRONICLES. I hate to say it, because this is a low budget movie made by people who obviously didn’t want to make a cheap horror film. There are moments where it seems the cast really tries to sell the drama, especially the two leads Kehn and Vitori. It’s just that everything from the witch stuff to the ghostly apparitions that appear in the background just don’t work on the gotcha/jump scare level I think they were going for. Some of the witchy stuff works, as with the over the top acting of the grandmother and the final scene where the coven reveals itself, but the lead in to then is a very long and well-trodden road.

It feels as if THE SALEM CHONICLES wants to be a low fi HEREDITARY. But the scares didn’t work for me. A lot of the witchy stuff doesn’t offer anything new or shocking. Everything moves kind of like a bland Lifetime version of a horror movie. Save for a few shocking jump scares and an admittedly shocking ending that really does “go there,” THE SALEM CHRONICLES didn’t really do anything for me and definitely doesn’t live up to that awesome poster.