A disappointing and lackluster use of a city as a setting, within a movie of shifting structure.
By Bill Arceneaux
Director Chuck Russell is no stranger to making horror movie remakes in Louisiana. The Blob, one of his more popular films, was shot in Abbeville, a location that was used to great and resourceful extent. His version of the classic B-movie, filled with small-town characters battling mysterious government forces and an ever-growing creature of pure digestive faculties, upgraded the cheesiness to a 1980s aesthetic and atmosphere. Frankly, I’m surprised that sequels were never made.
His latest, another remake (though I would argue that “remake” is being loosely used these days), that this time is of a more obscure horror flick, switches production locations from a small town in Louisiana to the hottest spot in the Gulf South, our own New Orleans, which is a spooky place in its own right. Witchboard, it should be noted, is in no way related to the trademarked Ouija game, and any/all similarities are purely “coincidental.” This must be known before pressing play, so that audiences understand that a toy brand wasn’t to blame for anything.
And neither was New Orleans.
Witchboard, a Chuck Russell picture, is one of the finer dumb-as-a-rock films that I’ve seen this year. It’s also a notch below that, by being tedious and too familiar in crucial spots. Yes, a new Final Destination movie came out earlier in 2025, one that had a great opening sequence followed by signature franchise stupidity (the glorious kind), but this Witchboard won’t be remembered nearly as much. For this critic, the movie will be but a mark in a catalog of local cinema, with moments here and there that speak to its kooky nature. However, Witchboard will always make me smirk, as it, at the very least, made me laugh.
Was that intentional? I’m sure that director Chuck Russell was having a blast, so…maybe? I have my doubts, but…maybe.
The film is about a couple who, on the verge of opening a new hybrid-dining experience in the French Quarter, discover a “witchboard” out in a swamp. Previously, it was a piece at the city art museum that had been stolen in a botched robbery. More previously, it was a weapon of vengeance made by a scorned woman in centuries past France. And, despite local television news coverage, the couple is none the wiser, and keep the item on their dresser, at least until strange things begin to occur. You know, like death.
Witchboard‘s claim to schlocky “excellence” is in 1) how New Orleans is painfully used, and 2) how only a few characters act with reason and logic. The couple and their friends, who are preparing a restaurant on the second floor of a French Quarter building (the third floor is where the couple live), are more or less young Bohemians or, as I like to say, “bo-hos,” who are clearly too naive and too out of touch with the regional culture to do anything but try and get laid. For the first half of the film, this group of people constantly refer to the fact that they live in New Orleans, in dialogue like, “We have a restaurant to open, in the French Quarter” or, “Remember that the crawfish shipment is on the way, to our business in the French Quarter of New Orleans.”
I paraphrase and exaggerate, of course, but I swear to Mardi Gras that is close to how they all talk to each other. reducing New Orleans to a caricature rather than exploring its deeper issues like New Orleans gentrification. Still, they never mention Saints football or call the newspaper by its name. Here, it’s “the times.” Please correct me if that is how it used to be called, but I have some general suspicions.
Arms get sliced off, cats are all over the place, and funerals for incidental characters go on for far too long, until the board reveals a human finger bone in its middle. Not grossed out or shocked to oblivion, the bone is hung on a string above the board, on the couple’s dresser. For a cute ambience, I guess.
I hate to suggest this, but Witchboard could’ve been much better as a softcore adult movie on Skinemax. Where this more “legitimate” theatrical presentation is chaste, an “adult” version would be “exciting.” For starters, the script would be better and more restrained, the locations wouldn’t be comically in your face and one-dimensional, and the horror aspects would work in contrast with the sex stuff. It’d still be silly, but that would be understood from the get-go. That would be the excuse.
Witchboard has no excuse to be so dumb. It’s fun in places, but just too dumb.
There is one great scene, though, making the film worth sitting through. It’s the opening night of the couple’s restaurant (the one in the French Quarter of New Orleans), which I believe is called “Creole King’s Cafe” or some such thing. Well-dressed people file up the stairs and into the small but elegant space, ready for their hybrid-flavored meals. The only thing is, the witch from the titular witchboard has possessed someone, and is about to rampage through this night of fine dining.
A food critic, from “The Times,” is given a nice seat, a nice meal, and has a helping of blood and gore, as a massacre almost out of Kingsman: The Secret Service ensues. It’s not unintentionally funny, and it’s not poorly performed. This one scene is a thankful moment of horror genre peace and tranquility, something that would deserve genuine laughs and tearful cheers. Absolutely, it’s an example of just how far Witchboard could’ve gone had it turned up the blood and turned down the bull.
Far from being the worst thing I’ve seen this year (that record is attached to Kristi Noem’s PR video in front of a cage of prisoners), Witchboard does manage to be enjoyable in that weekend video rental kind of way – probably exactly how Russell’s The Blob was loved, but for different and better reasons. I won’t hesitate to recommend this movie to others, but I must warn of headaches and nausea. 2/5
Witchboard had a small local theatrical run and is now available for pre-order on digital platforms.
Bill Arceneaux has been writing about movies in Hollywood South since 2011. Follow him on Letterboxd and Bluesky and check out his blog newsletter, Moviegoing with Bill.
