Being forgotten. Isn’t that one of our greatest fears? We want to be remembered, our desperate “Kilroy was here”s scribbled on the impermanent earth. This is the fear that’s at play in The Wretched. This fairly low budget horror film came to hold the record of being a box-office top earner for six consecutive weeks in 2020. This was a technicality, of course. The pandemic was in full swing and other major motion pictures were put on hold. The Wretched played on, earning little, but more than other films. It’s not a great movie, but it’s not a bad one either. It all has to do with what might best be called a “witch.” In reality, the monster is based only in part on witch traditions, but the twist is this monster makes you forget the people she takes as her victims.
The story hinging on an impending divorce and a somewhat rudderless young man being sent to live with his father in Michigan while his parents sort things out. Ben, the young man, notices the neighbor’s young Goth wife, but something’s strange about her. While in the woods, she and her son encountered the monster—revealed as a witch by the occult symbol carved into a tree near her den. She steals the family baby (you’ll probably hear echoes of The Witch here, and you wouldn’t be wrong) and the family forgets there was a baby. She then takes over the body of the mother. Ben spies on them, Rear Window-style, when he’s not at work. Soon the older son of the couple is missing, and the father claims they have no children.
Ben, while starting a romance with Mallory, a girl from work, pieces together what’s going on, but nobody believes him. The problem is the missing persons are all forgotten. To me, anyway, that was the scary part. Ironically, while not literally so, the movie itself has been forgotten. We all remember those days of panic in the spring of three years ago. Long days when we didn’t leave our homes because some killer virus was rapidly spreading and the leader of the country simply didn’t care. Those who released movies (or published books) in 2020 know that their work was quickly forgotten. People had other things on their minds then. I still don’t quite get why it’s called The Wretched, unless it’s perhaps those who are forgotten. If so, the movie may become a parable of the many creative works that emerged during a time when our collective mind was clearly elsewhere.
