Paramount’s Spell — from director Mark Tonderai — comes at a time when people across the world are longing to be able to visit their families, something they can’t do because of the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. Spell’s first trailer, though, presents the very real idea that sometimes, it’s best to skip the visits home.
Spell’s trailer introduces Marq (Omari Hardwick), a successful family man whose professional aspirations eventually led to his making it out of the rural Appalachian town where he grew up. When Marq’s father suddenly passes, however, he feels compelled to return to his roots and introduce his wife and kids to the people he came from — but the town’s remoteness requires that the family clamber into a tiny aeroplane that fits only them as they set off into the mountains.
When a freak storm hits and causes Marq’s plane to crash, he’s seemingly the only survivor, and is taken in by Eiloise (Loretta Devine) a rather strange medicine women who has a similar energy to Misery’s Annie Wilkes. As Eiloise tends to Marq’s wounds with ancient, traditional cures known only to her and the other members of her insular community, he can’t help but shake the feeling that something’s off about her and the other townspeople. He soon finds that the magic Eiloise is working on him might be much more literal and sinister than he feared.
Spell hits VOD on October 31.