Witches aren’t meant to be evil these days. It’s all Wicca, auras, Tarot, and smudging, right? Well, this movie aims to bring the hideous hag witch back to the fore. And it’s about damn time...

Two Witches connects two gruesome tales of ancient witches with very similar plans: they want to gain possession of a younger, lovelier inheritor. It’s a flipside to The Love Witch from 2016, although in many ways just as kitschy and knowing. With a distinctly Giallo vibe, these cruel witches are direct descendants of the foul, baby-eating creature that skulked in the woods from Robert Eggers’ The Witch.

And the horror here is extremely effective, in that the moments of dread are truly nasty. There’s a good chance you’ll look through your fingers once or twice! When it does string out the tension, it does it extremely well. Typically, the most effective scares come when it grounds itself in something resembling reality, and sends it askew with glimpses of clawed fingernails, and hunched intruders with terrifying intentions.

However, the deeper horror comes from the victims’ growing loss of control, facing the oppressive threat of a possession that cannot be avoided. This seemed to work better in the first story, where the victim wasn’t batshit crazy from the start. Owing more than a little to Rosemary’s Baby, the pregnant heroine isn’t believed, her fears are dismissed, and the evil is invisible and yet all around her.

It does, however, get a little let down by very variable acting. And this is another call for a moratorium on using the grindhouse aesthetic to excuse a low budget and general schlockiness. Also, some scenes simply go on for much too long. But, it’s easy to forgive overall, as it’s a pretty solid twofer of creepiness, vicious witches, and mind-flaying, poisonous corruption. While the best scares are definitely in the opening story, they do work exceptionally well.

So if you’re in the mood for some slow-burn, self-consciously retro Euro-horror, with monstrous witches and occasionally goofy monster-hunting, then this is a very good bet.