FALLING STARS - Mark Reviews Movies

Falling Stars, XYZ Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 10, 2024

Witches exist, according to the opening text of Falling Stars, and they come every year at the harvest to capture and do who-knows-what to mere mortals. It's probably not good, whatever it may be.

The mood of co-directors Gabriel Bienczycki and Richard Karpala's debut feature runs on this sense of mystery, which initially tells us only as much as we need to know for the suggestion of the presence of a constant, unseen threat. It becomes more than just a suggestion as Karpala's screenplay unfolds, of course, but even then, we're left with more tantalizing questions than direct answers.

The big question, obviously, is how far the filmmakers' dedication to creating this atmosphere takes the material. It's surprisingly far, considering that there's barely a plot of which to speak, the characters are so thinly developed that they might as well be witch fodder from the start, and the minimal story that does exist here doesn't even seem to hold much sway over the filmmakers themselves. The entire third act of this tale, about a group of brothers trying to figure out what to do about the witches above and possibly amongst them, just lays it all out in a repetitive and awkwardly structured way.

When it is focused on those central characters and the air of dread that hangs over this remote region of the California desert, the movie gets at the feeling of a creepy campfire story, told with the flair for delaying—or dragging out, if one is feeling less generous—the payoff that some storytellers in that situation possess. It's not about trying to scare us with shocks or to disgust us with bloody sights. The movie is more about trying to get under our skin with a premise that's unlikely but treated with sincere seriousness, and because of that grounded approach, it occasionally does, too.

The basic plot—very basic, indeed—revolves around a trio brothers, living on a ranch near Joshua Tree National Park with their parents. It's the first night of the harvest, and that apparently means the night when witches come to harvest anyone unfortunate enough to be out and about in the open at night. The siblings—eldest Mike (Shaun Duke Jr.), middle brother Sal (Andrew Gabriel), and youngest Adam (Rene Leech)—know the stories and the legends and the significance of official but ominous weather reports, warning locals of strong winds through the night and a curfew for the region (It doesn't seem too windy, so does that mean the National Weather Service is in on some conspiracy to keep the existence of witches quiet?).

A lot of the information takes on the form of folklore and rumor. The sight of a falling star might be a natural atmospheric phenomenon, but it could, especially on this night, be a witch descending from the sky to snatch some unfortunate soul. People have disappeared over the years and decades, and there's an amusingly strange scene in which the brothers come across a hitchhiker, who has come to the area to take things from the homes of those who have been nabbed. After all, it's not as if they'll need a television anymore.

The whole of this insulated little world of the movie seems quite believable, simply because Karpala's script doesn't tell us too much about the witches or their plans—but does have small details like that scavenger. As the brothers sit around a fire talking about the witches and how the date of the harvest has fluctuated in recent years, Mike mentions that someone known to all of the brothers claims to have shot a witch last year and buried the body in the desert.

Of all the nights to see if Rob (Greg Poppa) will show them the corpse, this is probably the least ideal one, unless, of course, the whole point is to keep up and escalate the creepy mood of telling spooky stories around a fire. Since that is the primary goal of the movie, we'll allow it.

The rest of the story is about a trip to the desert, with Rob—a married man with a 2-year-old kid—in tow as a guide for the brothers, and to the burial site, where the young men get a good look at something that looks human enough but not quite entirely so, and a return trip home. Something possibly goes wrong while they're observing the corpse, and soon enough, the brothers believe they might be cursed and need to rectify it by way of some form of sacrifice.

Bienczycki and Karpala don't trust their minimalist storytelling and control of tone quite enough, however. The backend of their narrative is filled with, not one, but two lengthy scenes of redundant exposition. One of them features the brothers' mother (played by Diane Worman) explaining the curse, the threat to the brothers and everyone they know, and the ways of stopping it.

The other features a radio DJ named Barry (J. Aaron Boykin), who spends the night of the harvest talking about witch mythology, telling the brothers about the curse, the threat, and why one method of ending the curse might not be as effective as another. The early success of Falling Stars depends on its mystery, so it should be clear why two long scenes of explanation, right at the height of its eeriness, undo that success.

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