The Witching Season

Happy Halloween! We wrap up our fifth and final Halloween episode of the season with The Witching Season, a micro-budget, Halloween-soaked horror anthology that began as a web series and plays like five connected episodes.

We talk about how the segments share a cohesive look, consistent cinematography, and clever little callbacks (radio/TV clips and visual nods) that tie everything together.

We break down each short, from the slasher to the killer stuffed animal tale, the alien abduction, the longer “writer in a haunted house” meta-story that later became a feature, and an urban-legend-style closer. We end by discussing uneven payoffs, overall ambition, and the news of a funded Part II.

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The Witching Season (2015)

Ep 512, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Happy Halloween, Craig.

Craig: Hey, man. Happy Halloween.

Todd: We made it.

Craig: How’s it treating you?

Todd: Oh, so far so good. I, I bought a couple Halloween decorations at the store, a little ghost and a little pumpkin. They’re sitting on my table, and I’m about to head out to the Philippines, and we’re gonna see how much Halloween they do there.

I- in Beijing, there’s Halloween horror nights. I’m going there with some buddies, and that’s always fun. They’ve, uh, boosted that this year. There are now seven walk-through haunts, so-

Craig: Nice …

Todd: that’s pretty huge for, you know, few years ago, this place was just kinda getting going on this thing, and now seven haunts, and they’re starting to look pretty professional considering what I saw last year.

I’m, I’m very excited. Nice. I even know someone who’s working in one of them. So, uh, yeah, should be a good time. A little bit of Halloween, uh, in Beijing. A little bit more than I experienced in Thailand, that’s for sure. I kind of assumed the opposite but, you know. As much as Thailand’s into horror, you’d think there’d be a lot more Halloween going on.

Yeah. But maybe we’re a few years out from that yet. How about you?

Craig: Oh, man, I’ve been enjoying it for a while. I, uh, I, I had to go to a dollar store for something in real early October for, for something for school, and they had just put out all of their Halloween decorations, and I went nuts, and I bought so much cheap crap.

Todd: You can do that on Halloween, right? The cheap crap’s the best. Yeah.

Craig: Oh, yeah. Like dollar, $1.50 skeleton skulls, so many skulls, spiders. Wow. Like every- I bought so much. I spent like, I don’t know, like $75 at the dollar store on cheap crap, and I decorated my classroom with it. And I love it because that’s Halloween to me.

Halloween isn’t fancy. No. Halloween is tacky. It’s supposed to be. And I, I like cheap, tacky Halloween decorations. I think they’re fun. They make me happy.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And so my classroom is covered in them. There’s, you know, like three-foot tall plastic, uh, s- skeletons in orange and green hanging in my big windows, and ghosts hanging around and, uh, it’s, it’s great.

That’s awesome. I’ll, I’ll send you some pictures. But yeah, I’m, I’m, uh, you know, I’ve got this new classroom that I love, and, uh, this is really the first time in my almost 25-year career that I’ve, like, decorated for the holidays ’cause I ac- you know, my, my space feels new and, and good, and it’s fun to decorate, so.

Todd: Yeah. That-

Craig: I’ve really been enjoying it. Yeah. And, and the weather is finally getting cold. Where I am, it’s really weird because it’ll be like in the low 40s overnight, but then by mid-afternoon it’s the 80s. So- Wow. I’m wearing a sweatshirt out in the morning, and then by the time I’m coming home from school I’m sweating, but it’s, it’s nice.

Oh my gosh. The leaves are finally starting to change. It’s, it’s really nice. I’m really, uh, I’m, I’m really settling into the season. I, I’m already through my annual reading of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Like, I’m

Todd: in

Craig: it. Oh.

Todd: That’s fantastic. Oh, Something Wicked This Way Comes. Oh, yeah, it’s funny. You know, I do an annual reading of Dandelion Wine.

Craig: Nice.

Todd: Two Ray Bradbury books. And, uh, book club’s going well. Having fun there, aren’t we?

Craig: Yeah, and we’re reading an interesting Halloween book. I don’t know. I ha- I, I’m reserving my judgment.

Todd: Hmm.

Craig: But yeah, it’s a 31-chapter book, one day for each day of Halloween. Told from the perspective of, I think, Jack Th- Jack the Ripper’s dog.

Uh And but then also there’s, like, all kinds of, like, Lovecraftian stuff going on. It’s, it’s interesting. I’m a little more than halfway through. That’s fun. But yeah, book club’s going great. Having a lot of fun with those guys, talking about books and movies and all kinds of stuff. It’s a good time.

Todd: Yeah, it’s very cool.

Well, we’re here on our fifth and final Halloween episode of the season. We picked these movies out pretty far in advance and realized we could do five this month instead of just four if we timed it all right. So, uh, here we are with the fifth one. This is The Witching Season. It’s a horror anthology.

Thought it might be kind of fun to do a wh- to end things on a horror anthology.

Craig: Yeah.

Todd: You know, we’ve got quite a few horror anthologies out there that we haven’t hit yet that have… We’ve got a long list, actually, but this one is very Halloween themed. I was a little nervous about it, only because I noticed, yeah, it’s one of these, like, lower budget movies.

It doesn’t seem like it’s… It’s definitely hasn’t hit the theaters. Right. Not that I’m aware of, anyway. But it’s up on streaming and stuff, so thought we’d give it a go. So this is the first time I had seen it. How about you, Craig?

Craig: I thought that I had seen it before, but I don’t think that I have. And I think probably the reason that I hadn’t seen it before is because I was under the impression that it was a feature film that was an anthology, but it’s not exactly, at least not depending on where you get it.

Todd: Supposedly, yeah.

Craig: It started out as a web series, independently, uh, produced. The, this guy Michael Ballif, Baylif, and, and a guy that he works with, you know, I guess, I don’t know if they’d been working together or they just k- kept working together after this, but a guy named James Morris- And it was a, uh, a, a web series.

And then I think that it did well enough or, or got enough attention that they did like a Kick- u- uh, a Kickstarter or like an Indiegogo or, or something, and they raised enough money for a physical release. And I think that when they did the physical release, they just stitched them all together. And so again, depending on where you get it, I found it on Tubi, where it’s listed as one season of an anthology with five separate episodes, and the episodes are separated out with, with opening and, and closing credits.

But nonetheless, an anthology that feels very much like… You know, there are some anthologies, V/H/S comes to mind, those where you get such diversity in the different directors that even the V/H/S movies are th- you know, each one has kind of a theme, but they can vary wildly in style from segment to segment.

Todd: Right.

Craig: These feel like parts of a whole.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: Th- this feels more like Trick r Treat, right?

Todd: Yeah. It, it does in a way, ’cause the, because of what

Craig: ties it together. The one that we really liked.

Todd: Yeah, yeah.

Craig: Right. And, and the stories don’t overlap as much here as they do in that movie, but there is some overlap and the style and, and, uh, many visuals and, and things of that nature are, are consistent throughout.

So it, it feels like it was made as a cohesive whole and, and …