The Texas Witch (2025) review – Better than the IMDb score suggests?

Welcome to Knockout Horror. Today, we are back to scraping the bottom of the Tubi barrel to see what comes up. After all, why review big name horror movies when you can give your opinion on *checks notes* The Texas Witch (2025).

This movie was way too long!

The story follows a woman who drags her boyfriend and sister along to a supposedly haunted woods to search for her brother after he mysteriously disappeared. After some time in the woods, it begins to seem like the legend of the Texas witch may be more than just fiction.

“Listen, you are going to have a difficult enough time trying to convince random horror fans to watch your movie… For the love of God, please don’t make the film over 100 minutes long.”

The absolute first thing I have to address here is the length of this film. It’s nearly 100 minutes. Listen, you are going to have a difficult enough time trying to convince random horror fans to watch your movie in the first place. Especially when it features a title like “The Texas Witch“. For the love of God, please don’t make the film over 100 minutes long.

Hell, people struggle to stay focused on big budget movies that run over 90 minutes. Stick to the 70 minute mark and save yourself some time, effort, and money. This movie is far too long.

Let’s pivot back around to that title, as well. The Texas Witch; Texas is enormous, is this lady state wide? Does she travel? I mean, I get it, it gave you a nice excuse to have everyone wearing cowboy hats and talking with a southern drawl but, seriously.

Come up with some random town and title it “The Middle of Nowhere Witch” or something like that. It adds an element of small, regional, local folk-lore creepiness to the whole affair. Okay, now let’s talk about the movie itself.

To be honest, it’s not bad

I have watched hundreds of these low budget horror movies so I was expecting The Texas Witch to stink on just about every level. Especially after seeing the crew review the movie on IMDB, give it 10/10, and then thanking the people who worked on it. I don’t think I have seen anyone do that, before. I mean, it’s nice to acknowledge support but it is just a little atypical.

Anyways, I actually ended up quite surprised. There are parts of this movie that feel significantly better than other similarly low budget productions. The camera work, for example. This movie is co-directed by Andrew Evans and Anthony Gutierrez. Gutierrez is credited with cinematography so he deserves some praise for how well shot The Texas Witch is.

There’s none of the usual, chaotic flicking between different camera angles that you usually get in these types of films. The Texas Witch features long, smooth, trailing shots that display some serious levels of directorial restraint and, frankly, skill.

“The Texas Witch features long, smooth, trailing shots that display some serious levels of directorial restraint and, frankly, skill.”

It was so nice to see the camera following characters around the house and then settling in one spot to film a conversation rather than haphazardly switching from one shot to the next. You almost never see this in low budget horror. Hell, a lot of big budget horror isn’t shot like this.

It’s a really good effort

The Texas Witch really doesn’t fall foul of too many of the usual budget horror pitfalls. The dialogue isn’t uproariously poor, there’s a decent amount of restraint shown with the visual effects, which is good because what is here isn’t great, the acting is fine, and the story is at least cohesive.

I thought Chynna Walker, as Mallory, showed a lot of potential. Everyone else was a step above most of the actors that tend to feature in these types of movies. On the downside, sound production was horrible. I am not sure if the voices were boosted excessively due to the amount of background noise but this movie sounds really bad. Almost like the dialogue has been dubbed back over in post.

The story isn’t anything original or all that interesting. It’s your standard “folk lore villain does bad things to random people”, fare. It does start to become a bit thread bare later on as well, thanks to the long run time. There isn’t enough going on during the middle section to keep it genuinely compelling. There is a lot of awkward exposition dumping, throughout, as well.

As far as the action goes, The Texas Witch is pretty bottom heavy with most of the horror stuff being confined to the last twenty minutes. This is where that long runtime becomes a real problem. Honestly, by the 1 hour mark I was starting to check out. Things really begin to feel repetitive at that point. I couldn’t help but feel like the actual increase in intensity was a little too late.

It’s not going to appeal to everyone

I am caught between a rock and a hard place with this movie. After watching so many low budget horror flicks, there are a lot of things here that impressed me. The Texas Witch feels, technically, a lot better than many of its compatriots.

I expected to be laughing at how bad it was but I ended up surprised at the decent camerawork and competent acting. Despite this, it’s still difficult for me to recommend because I just didn’t find the story to be all that interesting.

“The idea that anything should have to die for the sake of ‘scaring people’ in a shitty indie horror is really sad so fuck you guys for that.”

It’s just so formulaic and generic. It’s also pretty predictable, extremely long, and I doubt the scares will land for anyone other than non-horror fans. I find it hard to imagine viewers not just checking out after a certain amount of time spent wandering aimlessly through the woods. Us horror fans are not exactly noted for our attention spans.

Unfortunately, I watched this on Tubi and the sheer amount of ads made the whole experience a massive chore. I hope the crew got a few pence back for the 20 minutes of commercials I sat through. Tubi really is becoming a terrible way to watch movies.

Oh, and I should probably mention how uncool it is that they seem to have killed a harmless garter snake for the sake of a crap “creepy” visual during the middle of the film. The idea that anything should have to die for the sake of “scaring people” in a shitty indie horror is really sad so fuck you guys for that.

Our Scoring Philosophy: A Fair Fight

Horror is a genre that thrives thanks to indie film makers and low budget creators. At Knockout Horror, we firmly believe that every movie that we review deserves a fair fight. That's why we grade on a curve. Our star ratings are all about context, judging a film on what it achieves with the resources it has.

A 4-star rating for a scrappy indie horror made for $10,000 is a testament to its ingenuity and raw power. A 4-star rating for a $100 million blockbuster means it delivered on its epic promises. We don't compare them side-by-side; we celebrate success in every weight class, from the back-alley brawler to the heavyweight champion. Please keep this in mind when considering star ratings.