Witching & Bitching 2013

Two men, José Fernández Cuesta and Antonio, Mario Casas, pull off a tense pawn-shop heist in Madrid. Antonio is unhappy that his son Sergio Fernández is along, a risk that gnaws at him from the start. The robbery turns dangerous, with gunfire leaving several people dead, and the trio hijacks a taxi to flee north toward France, hoping to vanish in the countryside.

The escape gleams with urgency as Sergio’s mother and Jose’s ex, Silvia, join the chase, along with two police investigators—Jaime Pacheco and Alfonso Calvo. Their path takes them to Zugarramurdi, a town steeped in old legends, where they cross a coven of cannibal witches led by Graciana Barrenetxea. The witches’ matriarch, Maritxu, eyes Sergio with a mix of hunger and ritual calculation, even scheming to cook him in an oven, heightening the tension to a fever pitch.

A night of cunning and peril follows as the fugitives move through the witches’ labyrinth. The group is eventually recaptured by the coven, and Silvia along with the two officers is pulled into the witches’ lair, with Silvia transformed into a witch by a cruel tainted-toad ritual. The three men are separated, and hope looks slim—until Eva, Graciana’s daughter, intervenes, drawn to Sergio Fernández and the fragile chance of salvation.

Eva’s insistence brings Luismi, Luismi, into the fray. With his help, Eva is freed from a cruel fate—though she had been buried alive by her mother for betraying the coven—and the group makes a dangerous dash toward the ritual chamber, where the fate of everyone hinges on a breath of courage and a willingness to confront the grotesque power of Graciana’s goddess.

Inside the chamber, the tension erupts as Antonio, Manuel, Pacheco, and Calvo are bound to a pyre, while Graciana’s goddess—a gargantuan fertility statue—begins to rise from the shadows. The monstrous deity consumes Sergio, a moment that would shatter any ordinary resolve, yet Sergio survives by somehow passing through the giant. José, emboldened by Eva’s courage, confronts the witches, and Eva’s actions help spark the goddess’s downfall. In the ensuing chaos, José escapes with Sergio, Eva, and the others, leaving behind the wreckage of the coven’s power.

A month passes, and the denouement centers on a fragile new family. José Fernández Cuesta and Eva are shown as a couple, building a life around Sergio, who is already beginning to manifest his own powers. Yet the loom of danger never fully recedes: Silvia, [Graciana Barrenetxea], and Maritxu survive the ordeal, content to wait for the moment when the couple’s happiness could be challenged once more, hinting at a future where the past may rise again to claim its due.