Hood Witch Movie Review: Hex, Lies, & Viral Fear

Hood Witch is a gripping thriller where social media-fueled paranoia turns deadly. Golshifteh Farahani shines in this chilling tale of survival and power.

Golshifteh Farahani (Extraction) stars as Nour, a resourceful single mother who smuggles exotic animals from Morocco to Paris, where she lives with her young son, Amine. Her underground business is dangerous but lucrative: she sells to practitioners of occult ceremonies on the fringes of the legal system, which allows her to dream of something better for her child that doesn’t require reliance on support from ex-husband Dylan (Jérémy Ferrari, Brutus vs César). Her days of carrying dozens of bags filled with reptiles and amphibians on her body through airport security are over when she takes her business to the next level by developing Baraka, an app that connects clients directly to healers.

Nour’s calm is short-lived when an innocent consultation for a neighbor and his son goes horribly, horrifically wrong, igniting a paranoid firestorm that denounces her once-respected business as a front for dark magic. This accusation of witchcraft puts a target on Nour’s back, one that spreads throughout the city via social media and gets back to her ex and his allies in the local Muslim community. Unable to go anywhere without the threat of brutal retribution, Nour turns to the ancient traditions she has been accused of practicing to protect herself and her son from an aggressive wave of violence.

As a woman driven to the edge of her beliefs when her child is taken from her, Farahani is mesmerizing; the Iranian-French actress brings a ferocious maternal instinct to the role. The film is at its best when it zeroes in on her fierce determination to fight tooth and nail for the space she has carved out for her family. When she finds herself betrayed and cast aside by a world that wants to erase her, her transformation from capitalist to fugitive to retaliator is raw desperation at its fiercest. As the son is caught in a battle beyond his comprehension, young Zariouhi’s performance is authentic and affecting, the kind you wish all child actors could tackle with such self-awareness. It can be easy to play a hateful ex, but Ferrari plays him with an insidious resentment for Nour, the type of petty creature whose bitterness turns monstrous when given the right platform.

Belktibia’s urban setting is tense and alive, with Benoît Soler’s cinematography ensuring every dank alleyway and dimly lit apartment carries an air of unease. As Nour’s descent into chaos grows more frenetic, Soler’s camera grows more urgent as it keeps up with its breathless star.  Production designer Arnaud Roth has a sensational eye for detail, particularly in defining the spaces people live in. The bottle-lined walls of Jules’ (Denis Lavant, Holy Motors) cluttered apartment and the cold, clinical Rokya clinic run by Lyes (Karim Belkhadra, The Crimson Rivers) radiate different kinds of menacing isolation.

Hood Witch also exposes the grim truths of the illegal trade of exotic animals. While it doesn’t delve into the politics of this practice, it does use them to draw parallels to the life Nour is leading and attempting to break away from. In a way, there’s something pointedly devastating in how the animals she smuggles are seen as captive commodities rather than creatures in the wild. Similarly, Nour herself becomes a symbol rather than a woman and mother struggling to hold onto her freedom in the view of those who only get their information from a social media post.  Nour’s rapid fall isn’t just terrifying; it’s plausible.

The contrast between Nour and Dylan, who neglects his court-ordered child support while condemning her illegal activities, provides a sharp critique of how easily a woman can be vilified, underscoring the double standards mothers face compared to fathers. This ties into Hood Witch’s one nitpick: its struggle to balance genre elements with social critique. The title (unfortunately changed for English-speaking countries) suggests more supernatural horror, but the true terror on screen is all too human. Nour’s journey is more about survival than spell-casting, and the minimal occult elements at play may leave genre fans expecting traditional scares disappointed. The decision to lean away from pure horror grounds the film but also limits deeper exploration of religious extremism and cultural identity, themes that are hinted at rather than fully developed.

Dark and disturbing, Hood Witch is a gripping thriller with a sharp social commentary. Belktibia’s confident direction, paired with Farahani’s spellbinding performance, makes this tale of resilience timely, unnerving, and deeply engrossing.  

Hood Witch will be released in select US theatres and on digital platforms on March 21, 2025.

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