My recent revisit of THE BROTHERS GRIMM (2005) pushed me to finally get around to seeing HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS (2013). I had wondered whether they were kind of in the same genre and yeah, turns out they’re more similar than I even guessed. Just like Gilliam’s movie this one starts out with a fairy tale inspired childhood flashback, then tells the story of a pair of traveling supernatural expert siblings hired to help a small town where the children have gone missing. Both movies even have Peter Stormare (GET THE GRINGO) as a cartoonish bad guy (this time he’s the sheriff who gets a chunk of his nose bit off by Gretel).
The major distinction is that they’re not con artists or skeptics – as the title suggests, Hansel (Jeremy Renner immediately following a run of THE TOWN, GHOST PROTOCOL, THE AVENGERS and THE BOURNE LEGACY) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton, CLASH OF THE TITANS) grew up to become witch hunters, and this being a twenty-teens studio movie that means they wear cool leather outfits, have fancy steam punk shotguns and crossbows, do lots of slo-mo spins and flips and what not. Yes, that kind of sounds like a parody movie-within-a-movie meant to satirize Hollywood excess (like something from LAST ACTION HERO, or the Max Landis action version of Huckleberry Finn from the pilot of Jean-Claude Van Johnson). Fortunately writer/director Tommy Wirkola (DEAD SNOW, VIOLENT NIGHT) takes the ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER route of keeping a straight face and trying to make it cool instead of giving in to the temptation to prove to the audience that he’s in on the joke. I was worried for a second because there’s a joke at the beginning about drawings of missing children on milk bottles, but that was a one time occurrence.
Sorry for being a broken record on this, but reviewing a witch hunter movie I gotta mention my qualms about treating this as real when of course it is a made up thing that was used as an excuse for history’s bastards to execute many innocent women. I’m satisfied with this movie’s take on that not only because it’s so clearly a fantasy/fairy tale world and its witches are cartoonish monsters, but because the first heroic act by adult Hansel & Gretel is to stop the public execution of Mina (Pihla Viitala, RED SKY), who they say has been falsely accused. (There’s a twist that she actually is a witch, but a good one, leading to learning and growth and what not for our hunters.)
Hansel and Gretel are famous, so they have a fan named Ben (Thomas Mann, BLOOD FATHER, SOVEREIGN) who becomes their assistant. Competing against other trackers, they find that many local witches, led by the evil Muriel (Famke Janssen, LORD OF ILLUSIONS), are planning some evil blood moon ritual magic business or whatever. You know how it is.
The siblings each have a subplot about making a new friend (or more) – Hansel with the nice witch (they skinnydip in healing waters) and Gretel sees through the monstrousness of a troll named Edward (Derek Mears, best known as remake Jason Voorhees, voiced by Robin Atkin Downes) and gets him on the team. Edward is a combination of goofy looking computer animation and also goofy looking animatronic suit. Reminded me a little bit of the Hyde suit in LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN. Clunky but kinda charming because I’m rooting for it to work.
Oh hey, whaddya know, the second unit director/stunt coordinator is David Leitch (later director of ATOMIC BLONDE, THE FALL GUY, etc.) and fight choreographer is Sam Hargrave (later director of EXTRACTION and EXTRACTION II). The magic-FX-infused action is pretty fun and well executed, a mix between other fantasy action movies of the digital era and kind of an ARMY OF DARKNESS vibe. There’s some broom flying and some wire-assisted galloping and leaping. Muriel morphs into monster face, makes hunters’ dogs attack them, makes tree roots grab a guy’s limbs and rip them all off. Like most movies of this type, it drags a little in the middle and turns into a big noisy melee at the end, and if it doesn’t hook you then the more loud and insistent the score by Atli Örvarsson (BABYLON A.D.) gets the further away your mind may drift. But it worked for me because of Wirkola’s knack for different gimmicky opponents and weapons, like two witches that crawl around connected together, and a RETURN OF THE JEDI speeder chase type broom scene where one witch flies high speed into a web of wires. Oh yeah, one difference between this and your MALEFICENTs and what not is that it’s rated-R and enjoys some splatter (though it’s so cartoonish I’m not sure it deserves that rating).
I didn’t recognize them under the makeup but Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (COLD PREY, FLUKT, HERCULES) and Zo Bell (DEATH PROOF, MALIGNANT) play supporting witches. Berdal is kind of the main henchwoman, called “the horned witch” but her horns look like spiky hair from a late ‘90s/early 2000s movie about ravers or hackers.
I was surprised how much I enjoyed seeing the candy house done up in live action. Kinda Tim Burtony I guess. (Except, come to think of it, totally different from the bizarre version Burton made as a Halloween special for the Disney Channel in 1982.) Also I like how the kids hold hands and lean in close to the oven to watch the witch burn. (She locked them up and tried to eat them. It was self defense.)
The ending is sort of like BLADE, where it’s later and they’re in a different setting starting a new hunt. It seems like maybe they really did hope for a franchise? Or maybe not, because they never made a sequel despite being a hit internationally. If Wikipedia is correct, it was “one of the most financially successful films of the fantasy-reboot genre, despite having the smallest estimated budget and lowest Metacritic score of the recent entries.”
This is a lazy Saturday afternoon movie if I’ve ever seen one, where I enjoyed it but have to put “pretty” or “kinda” in front of most of my praise. There aren’t many surprises, it’s a just a silly premise faithfully and straight-forwardly executed. If the idea sounds pretty good to you you might kinda enjoy it too.
After the witch hunters I decided to bite the bullet and watch GRETEL & HANSEL (2020), which I’d also been curious about. It’s a totally different take directed by Osgood Perkins (LONGLEGS), whose movies I’m not caught up on but the ones I’ve seen start out really great and then by the end I either think “well, I totally lost track of what was going on at some point” or “well, that sure stopped being scary when they explained it was caused by the devil’s magic doll or whatever.”
Now, if you’re concerned that Perkins (with a script by Rob Hayes) is gonna choose the approach of “everything you thought you knew about Hansel and Gretel was wrong – we are above doing all that stuff so instead here’s something less cool,” then yep, you kinda got his number. I’d say there are exactly three famous things about the story and none of them quite appear here – no trail of bread crumbs, no candy house (just a house where there is access to many desserts), no stuffing the witch in the oven (though she does burn to death). But to my surprise I kinda got into this one – I’d say it’s the first Perkins movie I’ve seen that (to me) leaves its bed unshat at the end.
Like both THE BROTHERS GRIMM and HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS this opens with a little fairy tale prologue that will be important later. This one is about a little girl who gained a power of premonition but started killing people. This will be important later.
As the title hints, this is sort of a feminist or at least Gretel-centric take on the tale. Gretel (Sophia Lillis, IT) takes care of younger brother Hansel (Samuel Leakey, TWIST) but can’t provide to their widowed mother (Fiona O’Shaughnessy, WARLOCK III, UNTIL DEATH, DON’T BREATHE 2)’s satisfaction since she turns down a housecleaner job that seemed like possibly more of a trafficking situation. (The guy asked about her virginity.) So she takes Hansel and runs away into the woods. They eventually find shelter with an old recluse named Holda (Alice Krige, SLEEPWALKERS), who always provides feasts of all kinds of cakes and things. Hansel loves his treats so he’s very happy with this set up, while Gretel is extremely suspicious, believing they can’t be taking so much from this lady without owing her. Later, when Holda notices psychic potential in Gretel and starts teaching her little bits of witchcraft (almost like the force) it switches to where Gretel is the one overlooking the dangers for selfish reasons.
The most important thing to say is that it’s a great looking movie. Director of photography Galo Olivares had mostly done shorts – his biggest credit was “camera operator/cinematography collaborator” on ROMA – but he’s since done ALIEN: ROMULUS. I respect a movie willing to put a fog machine in the woods, backlight it in red and make it look amazing, but some of the work here is more subtle than that. I think it’s a particularly good example of modern low light photography – making it really look dark but with light in all the right places to make you understand what you’re looking at.
The design of the movie is a little derivative I think, but from influences that remain just fresh enough that it’s still kinda cool. The witch’s house has a triangular shape that reminds me of things in MANDY and MIDSOMMAR, but that’s okay. It looks weird and creepy. Inside there are stained glass windows that maybe look a little like candy, but mostly look like SUSPIRIA, which seems like a surprising reference in a fairy tale movie but probly shouldn’t since Argento always said it was influenced by fairy tales. The production designer is Jeremy Reed (Busta Rhymes: Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up).
It’s definitely a mood and atmosphere movie, and I found it an effective one. It’s PG-13 but with imagery (mostly in Gretel’s nightmares) bizarre enough to be kinda scary. There’s a point where the witch begins appearing in a younger form (Jessica De Gouw, The Huntress on Arrow), and on another day maybe it would’ve seemed laughable to me that she just looks like a modern goth lady. But on this day the feeling of being outside of linear time was pretty creepy.
I like the thread about Hansel constantly saying he’s gonna learn to chop wood and become a woodsman. Just how little he thought it through becomes clear when he gets a tiny little hand ax, delusionally takes a swing at a huge redwood, and then has trouble pulling it out. Later there’s a moment of triumph when he, to his surprise, does manage to messily chop through a skinny little tree. Not much in the way of fire wood but at least he has proven his masculinity through the power of wood.
It’s this idea he’s been taught that as a man that’s the sort of thing he can do to provide for himself and his family. By contrast, their mom tried to make Gretel take that job with the old man asking her if she was “intact.” That’s the feminist angle, that Gretel is strong enough to reject that prospect and run away instead. This sends her to the dangers of the witch house, but that sure doesn’t make her want to return hom. Like in THE WITCH (a better movie, admittedly) there is a sense that witchcraft in this movie is in some sense rebelling against the patriarchy, or at least that the witch would like Gretel to believe that. Psychic abilities (women’s intuition?) are portrayed as something only women can do, and that they can get in trouble for.
I forgot that even though this opened somewhat disappointingly it was against THE RHYTHM SECTION and made more than twice as much. That was the Blake Lively revenge movie that was a notorious flop but I was one of the handful of people who paid money to see it and enjoyed it. I guess I’m in the elite club of January 25, 2020 dud enjoyers. (This was technically a hit though I think because it was cheap.)
So, how is the Hansel & Gretel story relevant in the 21st century? Maybe it’s just more familiar than relevant, making it easy to use as a jumping off point. I guess the significant thing is that both of these versions reject the patriarchal ideas suggested by the original story, where their mother is some bitch who pesters their father into dumping them off in the woods, then she dies at the end and they live happily ever after with Dad. Here the father is dead, Gretel at least never goes home, and the feminine arts of witchcraft are not always evil. (Very dangerous, though. This version is still afraid of the ladies at the end. But admiringly so.)
I thought both of these were watchable, but to my surprise I would choose the Oz Perkins joint as my favorite of these two adaptations. Congratulations, more pretentious version!
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