I first saw "Coven", the actual short film that is the subject of the documentary "American Movie" years ago, probably in a different cut, when or just after the documentary premiered in Chicago in 1999; this review is from the DVD release along with the documentary. I'd almost completely forgotten it, not because it's terrible or anything, but because it's so mediocre. It's obviously heartfelt, and it's really not a horror film despite the marketing - or if it is, it's more of a psychological horror film, with only a little bit of real violence at the end. Mark plays...Mark, a drug addict and alcoholic who wants to turn his life around, and gets involved in a 12-step type group that is obviously Christian in some ways (crosses all over) but also seems to be a cult. Or is it? Is Mark hallucinating the strange things that happen to him at the group meetings, and the "coven" (rhymes with "woven" of course) that at one point drags him through the mud in the woods, at another surrounds his car and beats on it with pipes. There's some interesting material here about addiction and delusion, but it's generally poorly acted and the lighting in the indoor scenes is such that things are often very indistinct, dark and ugly. Some of the outdoor sequences, the landscapes in particular, are rather beautiful. Shot on pretty grainy black and white 16mm.
Coven
(2000)
Pronounced like "woven", because "oven" sounds stupid...
20 February 2009
Warning: Spoilers