The Coven
2024 · 8m
Directed by Melissa Vitello
Genres: comedy, dark comedy, fantasy
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
A documentary crew arrives to film Frances's scrapbooking hobby but quickly widens its scope when her roommates turn out to be two broke, cantankerous ancient witches, Hazel and Driscilla. The overenthusiastic Frances believes their love is reciprocated; the witches, meanwhile, are brewing a de-aging potion that does not turn out quite right.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be a cutesy character study but actually lands somewhere weirder—the de-aging potion disaster is genuinely unsettling in ways the film doesn't seem fully aware of, which is exactly when subversion works best.
Vitello's framing of the mockumentary conceit is tidy and assured, though the film sits comfortably in well-worn indie-comedy territory rather than pushing against the form itself.
The specificity of casting three actors with genuinely prickly chemistry—especially how Hazel and Driscilla's mutual irritation reads as the actual love story—transforms what could've been a one-joke premise into something with real texture.
Reviews
Melissa Vitello's The Coven, an 8-minute horror-comedy written by Adriana Natale, is queer, campy, and hilarious. Though it is easy to discount the character, it is her naive sincerity that is the backbone of the film's humour: the sweet contrast to Driscilla's sharp hollows and Hazel's pulverising bluntness.