Falling Stars

Witches. They are one of my favorite icons of Halloween culture. Jack-o'-lanterns, vampires, ghosts, they are all a part of this wonderful holiday filled with myth and legend that's been around for hundreds of years. Witches are old! Their lore goes back to around the time Rome ruled the world. As for the broomstick-riding witch, well that's still quite old, but not that old.

Le Bafana, also Italian, is not a witch, though you'd be forgiven for thinking her one. I think she's even dubbed the Christmas witch, but she is more of a folklore legend. Bafana is not evil; in fact, she was invited by the Magi, who were lost, to walk with them to see the baby Jesus. She is an old crone with a broom, and she sweeps the house as an allegory for sweeping away the old problems and troubles of the past year.

Italy has no Santa Clause for Christmas, and so Bafana is there Christmas herald. And while she looks like a textbook witch, she is far from the evil witch we know in America. Somewhere along history the Halloween witch we've all come to know and love ripped off Le Bafana to a degree.

But I'm getting a bit in the weeds here. I wanted to talk about witches because I just saw one of the coolest witch movies I've seen in a very long time. It's called Falling Stars. At first I thought it was an alien/UFO movie. But after watching the trailer on Tubi I was hooked.

First things first, the story goes hard into creating a lore for this universe. This is a world very much like ours but come Autumn and the harvest season, the witches descend from the sky - looking like falling stars - and snatch people from their lives and their families and their friends. In the blink of an eye it could be you. Or me. Or anyone outside, it seems. Some of the lore is a little hazy or absent completely, but it paints a nice picture of what it means to live in a modern world with witches.

One of the characters accidentally drops a bottle of beer near the corpse of a dead, charred witch, and some spills onto her corpse. All of sudden things get serious. The boys (three brothers, Mike, Sal and Adam) are worried that they will be cursed now for disrespecting the corpse of a dead witch. Nothing is said, mind you, of the guy (Rob) who shot the witch out of the sky (on her broomstick and all!) with a rifle and buried her... Apparently the in-universe rules say that after disrespecting the corpse, even accidentally, the witch body should have been burned. But then we hear that this may not even be enough to appease the all-seeing witches. Maybe, just maybe, a blood sacrifice is the only thing today that will see you forgiven and not cursed. But this comes from a radio jockey, so is it the truth, or more here-say?

So the boys set out, after getting utterly lambasted by their mother for bringing a hex onto their family, head out for their final adventure of this first night of the harvest. Yes, this takes place on one single night in October during the harvest. They still have a month of this to get through...if they get through it at all. The boys hop back in the pickup (none of them will dare to sit in bed now...or perhaps ever again after what happened to their friend Rob) and head back to the witch's remains. They intend to burn her, just in case. And they need to do it before dawn.

I won't ruin the climax for anyone who wants to be nicely surprised. I've already watched this movie twice since finding it on Tubi. And I'm sure I'll watch this every Halloweentober henceforth.

I'd say the best thing about this film is the lore that the creators allude to or directly discuss throughout the movie. Another thing that stands out as exemplary is the actors and their acting. The characters put everything into these characters. They believe in this world. And it's wonderful to watch. There's a lot of emotion on display in this story, as the characters come to terms with the disappearances of friends and family.

Falling Stars is one of the coolest witch movies I have ever had the pleasure to watch. It gives us the viewer enough, but we constantly want more. It is the less-is-more story, and it works. I almost wish the creator would give us a book or manual on the lore of the witch and the harvest in Falling Stars because I could not get enough. Also, I hope that it gets a physical disc release, because this is too good not to add to the shelf. I am just so pleasantly surprised by this film in myriad ways. What a flick. Please, watch it.