Taking traditional fairy tales and putting a modern twist on them seems to be all the rage in Hollywood these days, and “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” doesn’t disappoint.
The story begins with the siblings being abandoned by their father in the forest and subsequently abducted by the grotesque candy witch. In the traditional German fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel kill the witch, escape and the story ends. But this revamped version, written and directed by Tommy Wirkola, takes Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) 20 years into the future, where they have become famous witch hunters.
The main plot of the story revolves around Hansel and Gretel’s hunt for the grand evil witch, Muriel (Famke Janssen), who is abucting children in order to perform a life-changing ritual during the blood moon that will prevent evil witches from being burned at the stake.
At first glance, this movie may seem like a kitschy and uninteresting story made for the masses, but the witty humor and the violence make this film surprisingly enjoyable.
One of the most entertaining plot points in this film is the fact that while being held captive by the candy witch and forced to eat massive amounts of candy, Hansel becomes diabetic, and throughout the film he must take insulin shots.
Although entertaining, the film doesn’t have the strongest plot. At points it is very predictable, and at other points it doesn’t make much sense. But the cartoonish violence makes up for its weak points.
This film will make gore-lovers swoon. At various points throughout the film, heads get squished like grapes, a man gets filled with maggots, beetles and other creepy crawly critters, and witches are violently murdered in some disturbing ways.
Unlike recent action movies, where most of the gore and make-up is computer generated, this movie goes for an old school look. The make-up is completely hand done, making each witch have that fake but believable look, which works for the plot point that bad witches decay the more they practice black magic.
Although some CGI went into the more violent scenes, most of the gore was good old-fashioned red dye and corn syrup. When people get shot, it looks as if blood bags are being popped instead of red cartoons shooting out of them.
If you’re looking for an entertaining, comical and easy-to-watch movie to get your mind off school, this is it.