"Death is invited to their party..."

Two women join their longtime friend, Stevie, at her house while she is filming a documentary about Wicca and occult sciences in general. She is interested by the phenomena and questions herself on the obsession certain have with this lifestyle.

One of the girls, Annie, isn’t feeling too well. Her boyfriend recently beat her up and she fears going back home. The same night, the three girls drown their problems in alcohol. Once drunk, Stevie brags about her project and invites her friends to observe a witchcraft session.

They sit around a pentagram, concentrate and perform an incantation. The spirit they call shows its presence, scaring the girls. They have trouble believing that their incantation worked and try to convince themselves that this wasn’t group hysteria. However, the portal they have just opened has not been closed and Lilith, a demon, has taken advantage of the situation to join them.

The apparitions are first concentrated on Rose, then on the others. Stevie feels that the girls believed and feared so hard that they have created what haunts them. If this is the case, they might just have caused their doom…

The tight link between the first to episodes in the Witchouse series remains with the character of Lilith, this time interpreted by Brinke Stevens. No attention is put on the series in general so no one will be lost.

The filming locations are minimized; so is the number of actors. The special effects appear only when necessary and don’t uselessly try to hide the events. The lighting is of surprising quality for a low budget production. Usually, the lighting is a production team’s last preoccupation. Sadly, from time to time, an unrealistic pretext is used to plunge the characters into darkness.

First, the scene where Rose goes to work before the other employees, in the middle of the night, dead tired, leaving the lights closed especially to worsen the situation. Second, the one where she and Stevie investigate a specter’s infiltration into a bedroom where they make sure not to open any lights just in case the culprit would want to remain hidden and attack them from behind. Was this forgotten? Was it due to a lack of attention during the filming, negligence or was it a wink to simplistic horror fans? It is hard to tell.

I love watching three women with strong personalities fight for the leading role in a movie. Tina Krause, Debbie Rochon and Tanya Dempsey play three women bonded by surprisingly realistic friendship. The reason for this is that all too often, we are presented a group of friends with no actual reason to be together and the producers try to bring the spectator to bond with one of the excessive and typical personalities. Thankfully, this is not the case in Witchouse 3. Between two inappropriate songs (the soundtrack is awful), we have the chance to discover who they really are.

Rose is a young woman deprived of patience, resistance to alcohol and any taste in clothing. She does office work in the what curiously recalls a film distribution studio (even more if we notice the movie posters on the right wall) ! Tina Krause pulls her cutest faces and incarnates the role with feverish pleasure. As for Debbie Rochon, she inherits of a role that is as strong as she is: Stevie. I prefer seeing her in such a role, as opposed to the role of the evil murderer. Tanya Dempsy is the blonde of the group but she isn’t there to contrast with the others. Her performance becomes more and more remarkable as the story progresses. In fact, the story in the background revolves around her.

Sadly, the three women spend their time talking in each other’s back, quarreling or screaming at each other. The notion of friendship is quickly ditched and replaced by paranoia. Furthermore, while Lilith should be the ultimate menace in the story, she is pushed to the background by the violent boyfriend, the murder-mystery feel of the development and Stevie’s disturbing feminism. This makes it hard to fear the sole true monster in Witchouse 3.