The Widow is a Russian Horror Movie by Ivan Minin.
In the forests near the town of St. Petersburg is a forest in which people have gone missing over the past 30 years. The locals attribute the disappearances to a local Urban Legend known as "The Lame Widow", a ghost of a woman who killed her husband, and was lynched to death in response, including breaking her legs, hence the "lame" part. They believe her ghost still haunts those woods, taking any who wander in, and any that are found returning completely naked.
In 2017, a team of rescuers composed of Vika (Viktotiya Potemina), Ilya (Ilya Agapov), Lyosha (Aleksey Aniskin), and Andrey (Konstantin Nesterko), accompanied by a reporter named Kristina (Anastasiya Gribova) are called in to look for a missing teenager named Nikita, who vanished in the woods near St. Petersburg alongside his little brother, who turned up naked and in shock. While out looking for him, they find a woman named Zoya (Margarita Bychkova) naked in a tree and decide to get her back to civilization before continuing the search.
However, getting back to civilization soon proves to be difficult, and Zoya keeps ranting about The Lame Widow wanting them to stay.
The film was released on September 17th, 2020.
The Widow contains examples of:
- Apocalyptic Log: The team eventually finds a cellphone in an underground tunnel containing videos of Nikita being pursued and taken by the Lame Widow.
- Bait-and-Switch: After the interviews, we see the rescue team trying to treat a wounded spelunker in a cave. Newcomer Vika is having trouble and lacks the necessary equipment, and is told the spelunker is dead. Then they all stop the excersize and just move on to moving the guy pretending he's a corpse.
- Based on a True Story: In this case, the disappearance of a team of rescuers who were looking for a missing teenager in the woods near St. Petersburg.
- Blood from the Mouth: Zoya has blood in her mouth after having a large wad of hay pulled out of her mouth.
- Boom, Headshot!: How Zoya kills herself. With a flare gun, no less!
- Chekhov's Gun: Near the start, we learn that the rescue team has a Flare Gun as part of their equipment. Near the end, Zoya uses the flare gun to kill herself.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Or the Lame Widow will get you.
- Driven to Suicide: Zoya, who makes Vika shoot her in the head with the flare gun.
- Dwindling Party: The film starts with five characters, and adds a sixth when they find Zoya. By the end, only Kristina remains.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The film happens over a day and a night.
- Fingore: When one of the male rescuers reaches into Zoya's mouth to extract whatever's blocking her throat, Zoya bits down hard on his fingers, actually drawing blood.
- Flare Gun: The rescue team has a flare gun. Zoya uses it late in the movie to make Nika kill her.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Half the movie happens on October 13th to 14th, which is considered the final night for evil spirits to torment the living before going to sleep until spring.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: One of the male rescuers gets flung on top of a tree, which is driven through his torso as he slides down it.
- Madness Mantra: Ilya starts muttering "No escape, no escape" when he realizes they're in the pit the Lame Widow's body was buried in.
- My Car Hates Me: At one point, the van simply refuses to start up for a good while.
- Shout-Out: Vika finds Ilya in a house standing silently, face against a wall and back to her.
- Talking Heads: The movie starts with interviews of people talking about disappearances in the woods.
- Top-Down View: Some shots of the van driving through the woods are filmed from a bird's-eye view, looking directly down over it.
