Critically Reflectin

 W*TCH! tells the story of Claire, a high school girl who hasn't always been the most popular. On her quest to make new friends and reconnect with an old one, she runs into some dark places, literally. At its core, the story is about finding what's true to you, whether it be witches or not.

After a lengthy idea phase where we flip-flopped about a thousand times on an idea, we settled on what was kind of a throwaway pitch. We knew we wanted to show the trouble that comes with making friends in high school. It's something all of us experienced, and while there was nary a witch to raise the stakes of our problems, we all felt like anyone we tried to talk to could be harnessing some innate evil power within them.

For some inspiration on this sort of evil, you can only find in the halls of a high school, we researched Mean Girls, a drama/comedy that follows a new girl trying to make friends with the popular crowd, only to find they're much more mean than she thought. Cady Heron, the "new girl," is a major inspiration for Claire.

Jennifer's Body pushed us further. What excited us about that film was its refusal to make the monster anything other than a teenage girl at the peak of her social influence. That idea, that the scariest thing in a high school is the most popular person in it, became the backbone of Andreina's character. The Craft and Heathers also influenced us to be campy and theatrical without losing dramatic weight, which was essential for a story that features tarot cards and a girl passing out in a living room.

The standard teen drama is often shot vérité to highlight the turbulent time it portrays. We chose something more deliberate and composed, while reserving chaos for the more emotional points. The black void sequences, which have no real precedent in mainstream teen drama, were kind of conceived from our want to challenge expectations.

W*TCH! is fundamentally about the social world of high school girls and the invisible power structures that run it. Through Andreina, we explore how social hierarchies are maintained not through brute force, but through charm, manipulation, and the slow erosion of identity in those beneath them. Andreina isn't just a bully. She's a witch, quite literally. Her use of tarot cards to assert control over Claire and Sarina is a supernatural manifestation of something very real: the way girls at the top of a social ladder can make others feel like their fates have already been decided for them.

Both Sarina and Claire’s arcs are the most grounded representations of a real social issue in the film. Sarina is someone who strayed from her true self, from her real friendship with Claire, because of outside pressure. Claire's desperation to be liked, her willingness to sit with strangers, to follow Andreina to a house she wasn't sure about, to pull a tarot card she didn't want to pull, these are all small, recognizable acts of social survival. We wanted audiences to see themselves in the characters, develop a relationship, and learn lessons with the characters that they could take home.

The most evident way we allowed the audience to take these lessons home was Claire's fourth wall breaks.

Originally inspired by Fleabag, where speaking directly to the audience is a coping mechanism for loneliness, our early drafts had Claire treating the viewer as her only friend. But as the script evolved, the fourth wall breaks shifted into something more like a running inner monologue: her anxieties, her hopes, her commentary on a situation she can't fully control. For our target audience of Gen Z teenagers, that voice is immediately familiar. Whenever Claire speaks directly to the camera, she is transported to an empty black space, with earthquake sound effects and wind beneath her voice. The void represents the turbulent nature of her mind, layered with sound to let the audience feel what she feels. A constant unsteadiness, overwhelmed, and alone.

To get the message out to potential viewers, we created an Instagram account. Our social media presence on Instagram was styled entirely around tarot cards, with each crew and cast member introduced through a custom tarot card graphic against a deep purple or red starry background

. Each post had a gothic theme and its own witchy song to match. The motif is tied directly to the film's central supernatural set piece, where Andreina uses tarot to assert her dominance. By carrying that imagery into our marketing, we created a cohesive universe where the branding and the story meshed with each other. Some of our posts specifically targeted the target audience of younger girls, with a us posting that if you liked Mean Girls, you should watch W*TCH. This immediately got the audience familiarized with our vibe. 

Practically, our production was far from smooth. We spent three weeks stuck in the idea phase. We filmed our first scene before the script was finished, writing in voiceover and an opening sequence after the fact to make it feel cohesive, a challenge we think we pulled off. We wrote an entirely new scene after already calling a wrap, one that gave Andreina a clear motive, established how Sarina got involved, and led into the seance. It turned out to be one of the most important scenes in the film. If I were to go back a month, I would’ve loved to lean a bit more into the comedic aspects of the film, as well as focusing more on the witchiness of it all, but such is life. 

At its heart, W*TCH! argues that the people who truly know you are worth more than any popular crowd. The reconnection between Claire and Sarina in the black void, two old friends reaching through the dark to find each other, is our core theme. True friendship survives. Real people find their way back. All of this chaos, somehow, produced something we're proud of. W*TCH! is a story about finding your way back to the people who really know you. I think the film found its way back to itself, too.