Director Lucky McKee went from one young outsider to another with this long-delayed follow-up to his 2001 cult horror May. In a slow-burning witchcraft tale, Patricia Clarkson adds class playing an icy 1960s headmistress whose sinister connection to the spooky woods surrounding her boarding school throws troubled new student Agnes Bruckner into a supernatural tizzy. Much strangeness ensues - most of it enjoyably daft - as McKee borrows brazenly from the likes of The Evil Dead and Suspiria to create a movie that's more about atmosphere than actual scares. So while the plot is underdeveloped nonsense, there are enough surreal flashes and visual tricks to keep viewers entertained, not to mention a small but colourful performance by genre icon Bruce Campbell as Bruckner's dad.

In 1965 New England, a troubled girl encounters mysterious happenings in the woods surrounding an isolated girls school that she was sent to by her estranged parents.