Corky Withers (Anthony Hopkins) is a very successful ventriloquist. When he is about to get a very rich contract, he decides to escape and find peace "in the past," with the woman he has always loved.
With him is the Fork puppet.
Between Gallows and Corky there is an ambiguous, peculiar relationship.
Corky is shy, fearful, unable to face life. Forky is the exact opposite: foul-mouthed, cunning, devoid of any fear.
Corky's hidden instincts find fulfillment through the puppet, who is limitless and willing to do anything.
Within the strand horror dolls movie there is a subcategory that arose with the episode directed by Alberto Cavalcanti in 1945 entitled The ventriloquist's dummy.
Cavalcanti's source had been the melodrama The great Gabbo 1929.
It then goes all the way back to the roots of cinema, because the ventriloquist character lends itself well to psychological analysis, with a possible rather heated dual personality and its often nefarious effects toward self and others.
Magic, in fact, rather than a true horror film, it is a psychological thriller, which after a somewhat descriptive first part becomes full of tension, of a charm that would have been much more evocative with the choice of black and white as colors.
Few are the comprimarios, but all are well delineated.
In the background is a lake and a forest as lonely as Corky's mind, now sunken in its confines and entirely ready to unleash all its madness.
The ending is poetically macabre, particularly with the last exchange of lines between the protagonists.
Pin - Who is at the bottom of that ladder.... And, to a lesser extent, Dead Silence, have debts to Magic.
The music is an excellent support for the story.
A young Anthony Hopkins was already with little hair: in fact, he wears a toupee.
Review by Zick
