I really enjoyed The Wretched mainly because it’s evocative of movies produced in the early to mid-eighties by directors like Steven Spielberg and Tom Holland, which is to say it’s a true horror film, but it’s also a pretty charming one.

It’s also not a mean-spirited despite the subject matter – a witch preys (literally, as in eats) children every 35 years – and would make a really good horror movie for a young person who’s really in to horror movies in that there’s violence, but it isn’t too violent or gory.

It’s worth mentioning that I grew up on movies like The Blood On Satan’s Claw (1971), which is certainly more intense than anything you’ll see in The Wretched.

Though the movie that it most brings to mind is Tom Holland’s Fright Night (1985), which it’s also very similar to story-wise and thematically.

Though the fact that you have essentially seen the story it depicts elsewhere is less relevant than the fact that the directors assemble those familiar elements in a way that’s none and interesting though if you’re not a huge fan of horror movies you might not be aware of that, in which case you should still be able to have a good time with it.