Gretel and Hansel (2020) Review!!

Synopsis – A long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside, a young girl leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.

My Take – Despite being centuries old, tales from the Brothers Grimm‘s collection continue to make impact in all kinds of media, as they deliver on the promise to offer an escape to mystical worlds while also providing cautionary lessons about the dangers of the real world.

One such tale which continues to among the front runners in popularity would be Hansel and Gretel, who’s last big screen adaption came in the form of 2013’s more action heavy superhero inspired dark fantasy, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, written and directed by Tommy Wirkola. And among the slew of horror films being released this year, comes another adaption from Oz Perkins, the writer and director of the The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) and I am The Pretty Thing That Lives in This House (2016).

However here, unlike other adaptions, director Perkins, not just switches around the title, making Gretel the prominent lead, but also underneath a traditional narrative frames the film as a coming-of-age story, blending horror, fantasy and drama through suspenseful mood of a constant menace hiding somewhere behind the scenes.

While telling the story through the eyes of Gretel, director Perkins brings an unorthodox approach to a well-known story, but unfortunately, the film is just not fully fleshed out in its delivery, which is a shame, because it easily could have been a great adaptation of a classic.

It just gets dragged down by a narrative that isn’t necessarily weak but gets a little too muddled and ambiguous at times losing focus on the story of this young woman looking to find herself in a cold and terrifying world. To makes matters worse, unlike the A24 horror films it seems very inspired from, it just never delivers the frights its eerie atmosphere promised in the promos.

It’s a niche film that is likely to find a minute audience for itself, however, with a better executed approach, the size and the status of the final product would have been much larger.

The story follows Gretel (Sophia Lillis), a strong-willed but vulnerable 16-year-old girl living in medieval Germany, who after being forced out of the house by her destitute mother due to their poor financial conditions, sets off with her 8-year-old brother Hansel (Sam Leakey) to find a new home, possibly in a monastery.

Their journey brings them to a house in the woods, where they meet an elderly lady named Holda (Alice Krige), who greets them with open arms and feeds the starving children to a luxurious meal. As the siblings begin to eagerly situate themselves under Holda’s roof, with her bond especially with Hansel thickening, Greta thanks to a foresight she has possessed since an early age, begins to doubt her intentions, believing something malevolent beholds them.

A big difference between this film and the original story of 1812 is that here Gretel is burdened by maternal responsibility for her young brother. Kicked out by a mother unfit to care for them, she is forced to grow up fast as she’s avoiding wolves, literal and metaphorical. In one instance, Gretel avoids comfortable employment under an affluent, predatory lord when he asks her, under heavy breathing, if she’s still virginal.

Unlike other adaptions, director Oz Perkins‘s film is a horror story about just how scary it is to grow up, and the alluring power of self-confidence when you’ve finally gotten a grip. The film’s most admirable quality is in its attempt to make something terrifying out of something that’s so not. It doesn’t come close, but there’s still some heat in the oven. There’s a show-stopping moment involving the witch, a sausage, and a long strand of human hair that is perfectly unnerving and illustrative of what the film wants to achieve. It’s also a microcosm of how a new genre of horror can totally slay.

From an aesthetic standpoint, the film does right by being a period-dedicated style reminiscent of director Robert Eggers’ indie hit, The Witch, and it uses both looming forests and handheld photography to effectively to create what is really the exact grim ambiance you’d want from this kind of take on this material.

The visual part is no doubt the strongest element of the film. The forest and witch’s house are unforgettable pieces of design and camerawork, added by the creepy musical background. There’s not much gore, but lots of slow-burning tension, which is anticipated by the audience but not the main characters, since they’re know nothing about the mysterious house and his inhabitant.

There’s also a dreams which haunts Gretel’s imagination, and they’re adding greatly to the film’s bizarre atmosphere. Unfortunately, the visual slickness is pretty much all this film commits to. The most obvious problem is the pacing, the whole second act and part of a third one is moving quite slowly, sometimes to the point of annoyance. Also while the stranger danger moral of the story is most definitely there, the audience has to sit through a long, drawn out sequence of dream scenes, expository dialogue, and a perpetually dark background to until the end, and that’s where the film takes the hardest hit.

There’s a subplot introduced where the witch teaches Gretel how to use magic and become a witch herself, but it mostly remains a vaguely interesting idea that sort of helps in the final confrontation, if you can even call it a confrontation. The script provides a lot of possibilities for a wild ride of imagination, since the setting is dark fantasy, filled with monsters, witches and nightmares, but it seems that director Perkins barely using half of this potential. However, the film’s overall strength lies in its cast.

Sophia Lillis carries the film with exceptional ease as Gretel as she plays her as a young woman learning how the world truly works while trying to look out for her headstrong little brother Hansel. She is the alpha between herself and her little brother, but Lillis is able to deliver soft moments where her character is torn between what’s best for her and what’s best for Hansel.

Sam Leakey is easily the novice actor of this film, but he delivers a decent performance as 8-year-old Hansel, who falls under the spell of Holda in place of absent parents. Veteran actress Alice Krige, also gives a delicious performance, savoring dialogue that is by turns imperious, intimidating, cajoling and seductive. She is ably supported by Jessica De Gouw. In a small role, Charles Babalola leaves an impact. On the whole, ‘Gretel & Hansel’ is a decent horror retelling which preferred visual display over substance expansion.