It’s not exactly “Blair Witch” vs. “The Last Broadcast” or even “Babylon 5” vs. “Deep Space Nine,” but the great debate at Slamdance was who ripped off whom; “Voodoo” or “Enchanted?” Okay, I made that up. There was no great debate and I doubt many people even noticed the amazing plot similarities — a magical voodoo doll intervenes to create dating havoc — between these two shorts. I mean, they were filmed on different continents, for crying out loud. Yet, there they both were, begging comparison.
While “Voodoo” was easily the funnier and more raw of the two, this “enchanting” love story from Christian Ditter was much more romantic and far slicker from a production standpoint. The lighting in particular here is spectacular, giving “Enchanted” the beautiful look of a classic Hollywood black and white romance. It’s still a clever idea, even if I had just seen practically the same thing just a few days before. These filmmakers should take heart, since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… that is, assuming they can figure out who was imitating whom.
