Production has wrapped on Witchcraft: The Lanterne of Light, giving the long-running occult franchise its eighteenth instalment and closing out a North Carolina shoot at one of the state’s most recognizable film locations: Henry River Mill Village, the abandoned textile settlement, built in the early 1900s, that served as District 12 in Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games.
Director Carissa Pierson called the location “incredibly exciting for our production” in press notes announcing the wrap, adding that the village’s weathered buildings and overgrown grounds gave the film a backdrop suited to a story steeped in darkness and the occult. The site remains a pilgrimage spot for Hunger Games fans despite decades of disrepair.
The Lanterne of Light is told through recovered camcorder footage and centres on an investigation into a sinister 1409 manuscript of the same name, and the secretive sect built around it, the Children of the Hollow, whose mythology is tangled up with the seven deadly sins.
The ensemble includes genre mainstays Eric Roberts, Lisa Wilcox (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master), and Vernon Wells, alongside Andrew Pierson, Sandy Johnson, Kansas Bowling, Marc Price, Ginger Wolfe, and former tabloid fixture Kato Kaelin.
The Lanterne of Light continues a franchise that began in 1988 and has since sprawled in several directions at once. Rue Morgue reported last month on an entirely separate trilogy, Witchcraft XIX: Our Father, Witchcraft XX: 40 Years Later, and Witchcraft XXI: Brotherhood of Saints, mounted by filmmaker Jason Paul Collum, with Wilcox confirming at the time that she had also shot scenes for this eighteenth entry. No release date or distributor has been announced for The Lanterne of Light, though the production has signalled plans for festival play and a physical media release down the line.
