Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters Review
1 out of 5 stars
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters is just a laundry list of failures.
The action-horror fairy tale starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, turns the classic story on its head, following the brother and sister duo on their revenge kick for witch blood.
Unfortunately, instead of taking advantage of an interesting twist, Witch Hunters lapses into empty, been there, done that action-schlock. The film’s resulting effect is equivalent to pathetic puffs of smoke.
Those who are familiar with the original story know of its dark material – lost in the woods, a young brother and sister stumble upon a house made of sweets. Thinking they’ll find food and comfort inside, they enter, only to be captured by a witch who fattens children to eat them. Hansel and Gretel outwit her, however, and burn the witch in her own fire.
As the movie picks up years later, with the traumas of their past supposedly still weighing heavily on the brother and sister, we see Hansel and Gretel making their living as witch hunters.
Enter Renner and Arterton as the titular Hansel and Gretel, respectively. Arterton’s track record for action fantasies (Clash of the Titans, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time) is laden with disappointments, and Witch Hunters can now be added to the list of flops.
The lines Arterton and Renner deliver are cheap, varying from lame one-liners with out-of-place cursing to pitiful, state-the-obvious dialogue. Witch Hunters falls into the classic action movie trap of trying to appear badass instead of putting the effort into developing a compelling world.
To begin with, the film tried to guise the fact that it was objectifying the female body.
For instance, there is a particularly lingering scene where Mina (Pihla Viitala) – originally accused of being a witch – gets completely naked and lounges into a magical healing pool. During this scene, she is perpetually under Hansel’s gaze. There is really no point to the scene other than to establish a romantic relationship between the two.
Which brings us to Witch Hunters’ second offense: not a single character relationship felt real.
There’s just not a reason to care about Mina and Hansel’s romance, full of about as much passionate heat as a bowl of watery, week-old soup. The same can be said for the relationship between Gretel and Edward the Troll.
Even Hansel and Gretel as a blood-bonded pair, the quintessential heart of this story, are a weak caricature of a brother-sister relationship.
In short, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’ biggest problem is the stakes are not high enough. If the audience doesn’t care about the characters, the relationships or where any of it seems to be going, then why bother seeing the movie?
The simple – and only – answer is the witches. They were the saving grace of an otherwise complete and total disaster. Fantastically hideous and terrifying hair, make-up and costume designs, along with the added special effect enhancements, made these villains the only memorable piece of the movie.
Rewriting fairy tale history – as seen with the recent movies Snow White and the Huntsman, Mirror Mirror, and the television show Once Upon a Time – can be intriguing. But all of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters’ shortcomings put it in the ranks of 2013’s worst movies so far.
