Rent The Haunting of Pendle Hill (2022)

Absolutely Rubbish! - The Haunting of Pendle Hill review by RH

Actors (American) trying (and failing miserably!) to portray North East Lancashire characters. No attempt at correct dialect.

I used to live at the foot of Pendle Hill - the actual hill is not used at all in any of the scenes, and the substitute landscape shows hills/mountains that are certainly not in the UK and bear no visual resemblance whatsoever to the actual landscape.

Toe-curlingly bad! If you want to know the real story of the Pendle Witches, I would recommend that you read the book 'Mist Over Pendle' by Robert Neill (ISBN-10 : 0099557037;

ISBN-13 : 978-0099557036).

If I had gone to the cinema to see this, I would have walked out after 10 minutes and demanded my money back :-(

Slow and spooky ... - The Haunting of Pendle Hill review by NP

This independent film betrays its low budget in the first few moments. Not with the cinematography, which is excellent, or the soundtrack, which is terrifically creepy, but with the flat acting from many of the cast. Asking many of them to assume American accents (for overseas sales, presumably) is a little too much. While not entirely unconvincing, the performances struggle occasionally.

Apart from that, I really enjoyed this, although the story is often too slow for its own good. Set in two timelines, we have some attempts at authentic 1612 ways of speaking. While this is commendable, the dialogue can be a little clumsy.

The beautiful locations, and Richard John Taylor’s arty direction, lift a film that concentrates on being a mood piece rather than a series of scares – while we do get occasionally shocking moments, they are few and far between; there is also a good, and commendably restrained, pay-off at the end. My score is 6 out of 10.