Institute History
Description
Something strange is going on in Dolores’s apartment house. Or perhaps it’s mainly in Dolores’s head that the strangeness lies. This is only the first of many ambiguities in Daniel Gruener’s surreal and mystical film All of Them Witches. Dolores is obviously emotionally unstable, and since we share her perspective, we are unsure how much of what is happening is real and how much delusion. Gruener’s use of high or off-angle shots, diffused lighting, and eerie, ritualistic music only increases our disorientation.
Still when Dolores’s best friend Eva is murdered on her doorstep, and her husband begins to have violent nightmares, it appears there is definitely something amiss. Dolores breaks into Eva’s apartment and discovers some strange powder and a cryptic message: “You know what you want. 9 Academia Street.” Then there’s the dark man who’s lurking around with his vicious dog every time she goes out, and the movie that shows up on her TV is Rosemary’s Baby.“ There are no such thing as witches,” Mia Farrow is saying. All of Them Witches, with its striking and sensual imagery, atmospheric settings, and richly layered sound track, takes us on an exotic excursion into dark, unexplored corners of our own psyches.