Movie Review – The Witch 2: The Other One (2022)

Posted on November 8, 2022 in Movie Reviews

The Witch 2: The Other One is a two-and-a-half-hour movie that has very little to offer. The story is incoherent, the action is mindless, and the gore seems to be more for shock value than anything else. I would say you could “turn your brain off” for this one, but you’d quickly lose track of the various plot lines.

Ark 1 (Cynthia) is a genetically modified human. After escaping a clandestine research facility, she finds herself hiding out on a farm with civilians Kyung-hee (Park Eun-bin) and her younger brother Dae-gil unaware that assassins, mercenaries, and thugs have tracked them down.

That is the most concise plot summary I could devise from this overstuffed narrative. There’s a hit squad that appears out of nowhere and happens to have the same powers as Ark 1. Kyung-hee and a gangster Yong-Du (Jin Goo) have family drama when he reveals that he is responsible for her father’s death. There are two competing organizations that might have been responsible for the development of Ark 1. Jang (Lee Jong-Suk) and her unnamed lacky (played by Justin John Harvey) seem to be in another movie altogether as the buddy-cop duo. On top of that, Dae-gil and Ark 1 have a budding romance. I’m sure there are several other plot threads left dangling. I want to say that this movie doesn’t have much of a plot, but the biggest problem here is the movie has very little time or interest to follow through on what they setup.

In addition to the rambling narrative, the movie makes it unclear which characters have been genetically modified. Other than Kyung-hee and her brother, it seems like everyone has some sort of ridiculously overpowered regeneration ability. For example, Harvey fights two henchmen in the woods, but all three of them have superhuman strength, which allow them all to throw one another around as if this were Dragon Ball Z. The fight ends with one of the thugs impaled on a thick, spikey tree branch. It sticks out of him where his heart should be, but all he does is break off the protruding tree limb and get back up.

The movie ends on a cliffhanger and has a post credit scene that suggests there will be a third Witch (or movie). After sitting through this one, I have no interest in seeing 2018’s “The Witch: Subversion” much less another installment to this franchise.

Rating: 1/5.