Film Diary 2013: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Abandoned in the woods by their parents when they were children, the duo found themselves in the home of a witch and quickly discovered a knack for dispatching sinister sorceresses that earned them a great deal of notoriety.  Now, many years later, Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) find themselves in the town of Augsburg to help solve a spate of stolen children.

If there's a little glimmer of familiarity to this then perhaps you saw Terry Gilliam's 2005 film The Brother's Grimm.  Admittedly not many people did, it's one of Gilliam's poorer efforts, but has a lot in common with Wirkola's film.

Firstly Wirkola tries to bring more twists and turns to the traditional fairytale backstory of his lead siblings, though unlike Gilliam's film there is no conflict between his two main characters who are shallow echoes of another.  Also, rather jarringly, Renner maintains his American accent, whilst Arterton adopts one, yet the rest of the cast speak in a variety of European dialects, though Gilliam had his two leads (Matt Damon and Heath Ledger) speak in mockney accents it still at least fit in with the generally eclectic Europeanism of his picture.

Secondly the plot involving the blood moon, a series of stolen children, evil in the woods, various retro hi-tech contraptions and the presence of Peter Stormare as a meddlesome official are also all suspiciously close to Gilliam's film.  What's lacking is a sense of playfulness, invention, imagination and ultimately heart.  Even though Gilliam's film sagged and dragged in parts it managed to pull itself back together at the final hurdle for a surprisingly emotional climax, here the film is a lazy, ugly collection of joyless scraps, punctuated by blunt violence that begs for the more giddy hand of, say, a young Sam Raimi than Wirkola's flat direction.

There's undoubtedly a nod to Raimi in the look of the witches, but aside from a few grisly horror hags here and there, the make-up jobs are nothing short of ugly, and some would seem cheap even if they cropped up in an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess.  Meanwhile a climactic coven seem to sit somewhere between Clive Barker's Nightbreed (though not as hideously beautiful) and a Marilyn Manson video, whilst the erratic editing, limp score and gimmicky 3D (drinking game: take a shot everytime a piece of debris flies out into centre screen) strip all the action beats of any thrills.

Meanwhile the plot is so lumpen and leaden that you can figure out every single twist and turn within a heartbeat, and the film becomes a painful slog waiting for each element to finally either be 'revealled' or at least called back into play.  Oh, here's the sad-faced troll being made to labour for the bad witches, here's Hansel's need to inject himself with insulin every few hours, here's the 'mystery' of the duo's parents... It's so clod handed and obvious across the board that the film does not have a single surprise up its sleeve.

Maybe it's predictability would be forgivable if the film had a sense of fun?  But the movie is never quirky and wacky enough to be considered a schlock horror in the sense of Evil Dead II or Army Of Darkness, nor is a heightened, arch Hammer-style flick a la Sleepy Hollow, whilst it lacks the fairy tale magic of Gilliam's Grimm, instead it's a dull, dreary, sadistic plod lacking  any redeeming features whatsoever.  Utterly abysmal.

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