OF COURSE I STILL REWATCH “TWITCHES” AT MY BIG AGE. DON’T YOU?

7 hours ago

6 min read

After six seasons of Sister, Sister, Tia and Tamera Mowry had already perfected the art of finding each other. Naturally, Disney Channel decided they should do it again, only this time with magic. Twitches, the 2005 DCOM, stars the two as long-lost twins who must use their newfound powers to save Coventry, their magical homeland.

The sisters must team up on their Halloween birthday to defeat the Darkness, a sinister force powerful enough to blow your hair around, lurk passively outside your window, and cause light bulbs to shoot out sparks. Thankfully, we've got our Twitches (That's twin witches. Get it?) here to save the day.

Across Twitches and its 2007 sequel, Twitches Too, we get unbeatable sisterly chemistry, magically mysterious family drama, and all the era- and story-appropriate peasant blouses a girl could want. But if you still need convincing that these movies are essential Halloween viewing, allow me to make my extremely biased case.

It's not interference. It's destiny.

The original Twitches begins in Coventry, a magical kingdom where twin princesses Artemis and Apolla are born on Halloween night. The Darkness is threatening the realm, so their father Aron gives up his powers to protect them while Karsh and Ileana, a pair of magnificently bickering magical guardians, whisk them off to Earth. And in my (always correct) opinion, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have nothing on Ileana and Karsh.

The babies are adopted separately, renamed Camryn and Alex, and given sun and moon-shaped necklaces as a clue to her origins.

Camryn (Tamera Mowry) grows up wealthy, adored, and blissfully unconcerned with anything that might interrupt her shopping schedule. She also spends her birthday playing tennis because nothing says "I'm rich" like playing tennis on Halloween morning. I guess that's the American dream. She's preparing to welcome just 100 of her closest friends to her Halloween birthday ball, which will require shopping. She also keeps drawing eerily accurate pictures of people and places she's never seen, concrete evidence of some supernatural foresight that her parents somehow overlook. Maybe they're already three cocktails in.

We flash over to our other Twitch, Alex (Tia Mowry), who's in a very different living situation. She's broke, sleeping on a sofa, and enjoying a strawberry-yogurt-cereal-candy-corn concoction with a candle stuck in it, courtesy of her best friend's little sister. Alex, still grieving the death her adoptive mother, spends her nights writing about a magical kingdom she thinks she invented. And she spends her days looking for a job.

While Camryn is shopping and Alex is job hunting, the girls end up in the same clothing store, well with the help of a little magical interference curtesy of Ileana and Karsh. Alex manages to land a job roughly fifteen minutes after arriving. No application, no background check. And she's already being put to work moving face-high stacks of clothes from the dressing room when she runs into her identical other half. Camryn is delighted. Alex makes a run for it. But when the two touch hands, magic happens.

The guardians go on to explain the whole witch-princess situation, including the ancient prophecy that says only the twins can save Coventry. And naturally, saving an entire kingdom requires a crash course in witchcraft, which goes about as smoothly as you'd expect. The sisters go around town testing charms, cross-dressing fisherman, in an attempt to get a handle on their newfound powers.

Before anyone can get particularly good at this whole magic thing, the Darkness shows up at Alex's apartment, turning a family reunion into a paranormal home invasion. Camryn, quite reasonably, decides she'd rather attend her 21st birthday party than fight an unidentified cloud of evil. So Alex heads to Coventry alone to figure things out.

There, she meets their birth mother, Queen Miranda (Kristen Wilson), and discovers that their uncle Thantos is also their stepfather.

Family reunions must be exhausting in Coventry.

Back on Earth, Camryn is trying to enjoy the extravagant birthday party when the Darkness crashes the festivities. Surely the universe can give her a few hours of dancing and socializing before demanding she fulfill an ancient prophecy? Apparently not.

Fortunately, those drawings she's been making her entire life finally come in handy. Camryn realizes there's a face hidden in the Darkness, and that face belongs to Thantos. Yes, the man currently married to their mother is also the malevolent force threatening their entire homeland. There's really no delicate way to break that news.

She reunites with Alex and Miranda just in time for Thantos to reveal his true intentions. Not only has he been controlling the Darkness, but he also murdered Aron, his own brother, in his pursuit of power..and I guess in pursuit of his brother's wife. And as if admitting to fratricide weren't dramatic enough, he then unleashes the Darkness on Miranda, swallowing her whole.

Thankfully, Alex and Camryn defeat Thantos with the most Disney Channel weapon imaginable: the power of love. Coventry is restored. Miranda returns. And with the kingdom saved and their family reunited, the girls return to Earth just in time for birthday cake. And the movie ends with an iconic title drop. Go Twitches!

The world has infinite dimensions. Well, nine, maybe nine and a half.

Twitches Too opens with an update on Camryn's magical education: she tries to load the dishwasher with a spell and makes a disaster of the kitchen. Alex, now living with Camryn's family while preparing to attend college, would rather get to class.

Camryn heads to Coventry, where she's eager to begin what she calls "princessing." Her plans include attending balls, riding in carriages, and waving to people. She's especially confident in her waving abilities. Queen Miranda, meanwhile, would prefer that she help secure the kingdom.

Camryn also meets Demitri, a handsome young man she immediately assumes is a prince. He's actually a kitchen servant. Camryn may be a princess, but her prince-dar could use some work.

Meanwhile, back on campus, a sinister shadow follows Alex around campus. But because the needle drop is an Aly & AJ bop, it almost seems like it's the shadow's first day of college, too.

Things take a turn when the twins begin to suspect that their supposedly dead father, Aron, might actually be alive and trapped in the Shadowlands, a mysterious dimension where shadows have lives of their own. One of these shadows even delivers Camryn a ring bearing Aron's crest.

Their investigation eventually leads them to a suspicious, bricked-up passageway in Coventry. Alex insists on exploring it, prompting Camryn to point out that she's behaving exactly like the girl in a horror movie who ignores every warning sign and walks straight into the creepy house.

Miranda, however, is convinced the strange activity means Thantos is returning. She wants the twins to perform a powerful spell during an upcoming solar eclipse to destroy the evil lurking in the Shadowlands. A pretty ambitious assignment for two witches who, according to Ileana, are still struggling with remedial wall-walking.

The real problem is that if Aron is alive in the Shadowlands, the spell would kill him, too. So Alex refuses to risk it. Camryn is more willing to trust their mother. Their disagreement leads to two competing plans: Camryn moves forward with the vanquishing spell while Alex attempts to rescue their father. Unfortunately, Alex ends up bringing back—you guessed it—Thantos.

Thantos immediately sets out to destroy Aron, forcing the twins into another confrontation in Coventry where Alex, Camryn, and Miranda combine their magic and defeat the baddie with the power of unity, family, and, of course, love.

And because the people of Coventry apparently know how to recover from a supernatural crisis, everyone celebrates with Karsh and Ileana's wedding. Nothing like an interdimensional destination wedding to bring everyone together.

You trusted your powers and you trusted yourself.

Rewatching these movies means affectionately accepting a lot of nonsense. The Darkness resembles an aggressive screensaver, the magical rules are conveniently flexible, and Coventry is a place where a secret passage is always nearby but never that useful.

But Tia and Tamera Mowry are national f*cking treasures. They bring the real tears to these movies. Like, for a kids' Halloween franchise, these girls spend a surprising amount of time cry-acting. But they're such good actresses. And really, getting to watch two childhood favorites run around in tiaras, argue like sisters, and save a magical kingdom is already enough of a selling point.

Twitches may look like a silly little DCOM, but its sincere, theatrical Halloween energy is what made 2000s DCOMs so lovable. Plus, it actually teaches an important lesson: If you find your twin (who's out there, trust me), and you assume your witch identity, you're essentially capable of both solving all of your problems and saving the world.