Based on the Carnegie Medal winning novel by Margeret Mahy. Sixteen year-old Laura Chant lives with her mother and four-year-old brother Jacko in a poor new suburb on the edge of a partially demolished Christchurch, New Zealand. Laura is drawn into a supernatural battle with an ancient spirit who attacks Jacko and slowly drains the life out of him as the spirit becomes ever younger. Laura discovers her true identity and the supernatural ability within her, and must harness it to save her brother’s life.

With a screenplay adapted from the beloved novel by Margaret Mahy, The Changeover (2019), from Stuart McKenzie and first-time director Miranda Harcourt, stars the young but fierce Erana James, Timothy Spall (my forever Peter Pettigrew), the indelible Lucy Lawless in far too little of a part, and Melanie Lynskey to round out the ensemble to this Kiwi (New Zealand) teen horror undertaking.

Laura is sixteen-year-old girl growing up in a city still crumbling in the aftermath of a major earthquake. In her small town, she keeps a watchful eye over her four-year-old little brother, Jacko, while their mom, Kate, works late nights to make ends meet. Her father, who suffered from mental problems so severely that he took his own life, may have actually had mental powers, as according to Kate, Laura shares the same paranoias as her father – visions of impending bad happenings. One day she sees a vision of Jacko being in trouble, and soon after they have the unfortunate event of meeting a man by the name of Carmody Braque, a peculiar old man who runs a creepy toy store out of a steel freight container. When Braque puts a stamp on Jacko, the family soon finds that it has caused him to not only fall deathly ill, but to become possessed by Braque as he drains Jacko for his youth.

Resolved to save her brother without the help of her mother who denies her powers, Laura reaches out to her broody classmate, Sorensen, who seemed to have a sixth sense also. She meets his family – matriarch Winter (Kate Harcourt) and his mother Miryam (Lawless) – from whom she learns they are a coven of witches and she herself is actually a “Sensitive” – someone who can become a witch by going through a “changeover” because they feel and see things beyond a normal human’s level. If she can find herself by searching inside, she will be able to save Jacko from the possession of the evil toy collector. After she passes through the proverbial fire and accepts her new identity as a witch, she dives deep into her dreams on a mission to defeat Braque – and dreams can come true… if you live through the night.

Erana James, who plays Laura, brings all the bass and authority of a grown woman to the sixteen-year-old character, however, the romantic story-line between her and Nicholas Galitzine, who plays the handsome teen warlock, felt borderline Twilight and detracted from the potential of her character development. Though he did act as a guiding light, I feel the narrative would have been much stronger had she not kept giving him so much credit. She literally (spoiler alert) saves the day, and when he congratulates her, she says “couldn’t have done it without you” instead of giving herself a well-deserved pat on the back. Thomas Spall is great, as always, in yet another villainous role as the evil and ancient warlock Carmody Braque, pulling a straight up Sanderson Sisters by luring kids to be drained of their youth. One line from the movie that stands out is delivered from him in a charged tête-à-tête moment with Laura, he wisely chastens “These are words of power” to the notion of letting a stranger into your home, which are certainly words to live by, as protagonist Laura learns this the hard way. We should all be so careful.

Overall it was a good movie, backed by a cool alternative rock soundtrack and plodding along fueled by angst-y but bearable moments. It is one of those movies that I forget that it is a thriller or science fiction – except for one or two tricks, there was hardly any magick to this supernatural teen adventure. Though it did remind me of Twilight, with its moody, grim atmosphere as setting to a story of a teen girl’s ridiculously fast attachment to the good-looking monster love interest, it was far and ahead of Twilight as far as dialogue and the overall narrative was of pretty good quality. Co-directors Miranda Harcourt and Stuart McKenzie’s The Changeover is a solid movie, but nothing to write home about.

In Theaters & On Demand February 22, 2019