Beezel
Directed by Aaron Fradkin
Written by Aaron Fradkin and Victoria Fratz Fradkin
Starring Nicolas Robin, Victoria Fratz Fradkin, and LeJon Woods
Unrated
81 minutes
Available to rent or purchase September 24

by Kate Beach, Staff Writer

There’s something special about the old family home. The warm glow of the fireplace. Your dad’s favorite chair. The grotesque, human-devouring witch in the basement.

Beezel spans six decades in the same house, and multiple generations of the same family, along with the outsiders they invite in. At its center is Beezel herself, an impressive bit of effects and prosthetics that make for a genuinely freaky-looking creature. The film is essentially an anthology, with brief segments set in 1966, 1987, 2003, and 2013. While the house and Beezel herself connect the stories and the decades, the film often feels disjointed and scattered.

We begin in 1966, with the seemingly idyllic Weems family in the house. The clicking sound of home movie reels turning walk us through images of a boy and his mother at play, dad presumably behind the camera. It’s a short segment, with a boldly violent ending that sets the tone for the rest of the film. Beezel doesn’t offer constant violence but rather well-timed moments of gore carefully distributed between its segments.

Twenty-one years pass, and Harold Weems (Bob Gallagher), husband and father, is the sole survivor (and prime suspect) of the violence that took place in 1966. He remains in the house with his second wife, Deloris (Kimberly Salditt Poulin) , scaring neighborhood kids who are convinced a witch lives there. Intent on clearing his name, he hires a documentarian, Apollo (LeJon Woods), to visit the house and hear his side of the story.

The story jumps forward to 2003, as Deloris lays dying in the house. Her new home healthcare worker, Naomi (Caroline Quigley), arrives late one night to take over from a previous aide, who seems to have mysteriously disappeared. Finally, in 2013, Deloris’s son Lucas, (Nicolas Robin) and daughter-in-law Nova (Victoria Fratz Fradkin, who also co-wrote the film) arrive at the house to settle her estate and get it ready to be sold. That final story has the most potential for greatness. Confused and frustrated by the choices his mother made, Lucas has never been to the house and never met the now-deceased Harold Weems, his mother’s husband. He believes Deloris joined some kind of cult when she married Harold, and devoted her life to him and that house instead of raising him. Unfortunately, the film is less interested in Lucas navigating this against the backdrop of the house, and more interested in how the house begins to affect his wife, Nova. While it does offer some fun scares, it wastes a more compelling story.

The film also isn’t terribly interested in the lore of Beezel herself. We don’t learn how she got into the house, why she’s stuck in the basement, or whether or not she pays rent. She’s just kind of there, in perpetuity, and if you own this house, she’s your problem. It’s true that sometimes not knowing can be more frightening than knowing. But in this case, a little more exposition about Beezel’s origins and the family’s understanding of her would go a long way.

There are some moments of real style and flair, particular in the earlier segments, and one third act moment of gore that made me laugh with delight. Each segment uses technology to indicate its decade: home movie reels in the 60s, a camcorder in the 80s, a tape recorder in 2003, and finally a small handheld camera in 2013. The film doesn’t do much else to define each era; the costuming, hair, and makeup do little to suggest any difference between the styles of the late 80s and the mid-00s. It feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity, but the occasional jump to a more found-footage vibe via the various cameras is still a fun bit of business.

Beezel is the second feature from Fradkin and Fratz Fradkin via their production company, Social House Films. They’ve amassed millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers, and shared over two dozen horror shorts via YouTube. They know how to make a good looking film with beautiful gore. It’s not an especially deep story, but horror fans will find something to enjoy across the decades.