MotelX 2025 Review: CRENDICES Thrives On Local Superstitions

Crendices, meaning 'superstitions', premièring at the Portuguese horror film festival Motel X, is a very local film. It hails from Madeira, an island that is part of Portugal, and that has local practices that are extremely specific to that region. As a Dutch film critic, for whom English is a second language, seeing this local film, with a fully Portuguese audience was a somewhat alienating experience, but mostly in a good way.

The central premise of Crendices is also quite specific: it is a horror comedy where almost every scene is built around a superstition. From encountering a dead black cat as an omen of witches, to inviting the Devil when one walks backwards, the entirety of the films jokes and scares are built around these local superstitions. Sometimes that gets hysterically funny, most of the time I had to admit I was lost. The audience seemed to eat it up, in any case, even if the translations in the captions barely made sense to me, or some of the jokes didn't land because I was not aware of a local practice.

To experience a film with so many removes is an experience in and of itself: I do not get Madeiran practices, that some of the Portuguese audiences from the main coast might not be able to grasp themselves. I do not speak the language of the country I saw it in, and I had to read subtitles in a film that is very heavy on comedic dialogue. All of it is prefacing to state that I am not the intended audience in any sort of way, so I can't in good conscience make a full judgement call on what I thought of the film. I can, however, state my takeaways, if the reader keeps in mind the fact that it was not made for me, and I am not the intended audience.

Crendices leans very hard on broad comedy, playing almost like a seventies britcom (think Are You Being Served, or Keeping Up Appearances), but with witches. The filmmakers are a local Madeiran comedy team, who made this no-budget horror comedy from the grounds-up. It is admirable to see them take comedy and filmmaking seriously, even on a modest budget.

The times the jokes did land, through the few blockades they had to break through to get to me, the film is quite funny. Most of this has to do with the cast, who might not be the best actors, but who have chutzpah to spare. There is also some ambition to the shots, which are clearly staged by beginning feature filmmakers. That does not mean there is no style to the proceedings: I was quite pleasantly surprised by some transitions in the editing that flow seamlessly, like when someone throwing a coat match cuts directly to a similarly looking water can. They know what they are doing, and show a lot of future promise.

The main problem is the screenplay. The characters are all slaves to superstition, letting their lives grind to a halt because of their fear of witches and Satan. The filmmakers are as enslaved by it, structuring their film around those superstitions, even though it means that the film stops fully in its tracks whenever a new superstition is introduced. Taken together with the sketch-like nature of most of the scenes, there seems to be no arc to the story, which saps away all the tension. A lot of threads are kept dangling, and when people eventually start showing up dead, it is sometimes hard to keep track of who is who. There is barely any heft to the story, because of this.

If you go on with your expectations set, that this is a modest local film, very specific to a region, and very much tied to local superstitions, and with a very local sense of humor, you might have a fun time. There is this notion that specificity is somehow universal, and that tracks here. You could transpose this central premise, building horror around local fears, to whatever country or region, and you would get roughly the same film. Because of its modest origins, and local specifics, Crendices is an interesting experience. For me, as an audience member with a very different background, it was alienating and fascinating in equal measure. It is a curiosity, and a successful one at that.