"There's a place deep in the forest, nearby the mountains. A place dark witches use for their Sabbath."
--Mina, Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters occasionally has some great ideas like taking the classic story in a very different direction, but in other cases, such as with the style of the dialogue, it does not capitalize on anywhere near as well as it could have. The humor or attempts at it fall far short of the dark but clever humor of something like Borderlands, the dialogue is very unusual for the era the story is set in, and the characters are seldom developed. It is nowhere near as stylistically unique as the later Gretel and Hansel and nowhere near as thematically deep as The VVitch, but having more of a slant towards action and extreme violence is not what makes them Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters a lesser movie than these other witch films. Indeed, the execution is what is severely lacking. Ideas like a witches' Sabbath and a hyper-violent, steampunk version of Hansel and Gretel could have been so much better utilized than they are in the context of the script here. At least the unrated version adds to the violence that gives the movie the majority of its very limited style.
Production Values
The effects of Witch Hunters are wildly inconsistent. Sometimes they look far more artificial than tends to be the case even today when CGI distinctively looks different from the sets and cast. Sometimes they look fairly competent for an early 2010's release. By far, the physical variety in the witches that appear for the Blood Moon near the end is the best aspect of the aesthetic and effects side of the project. Even worse than the inconsistent effects, though, is the consistently poor dialogue. Phrases that sound more at home in casual modern conversations than in a setting closer to medieval Europe are used all throughout, all without any of the quality that a better-crafted parody of fairy tales would have. No, the lines and delivery of Gemma Arterton's Gretel and Jeremy Renner's Hansel are not exceptions. It is Famke Jannsen as the Grand Witch Muriel who certainly does the best with her role, although even her doing her best with the character does not come close to saving the film because of her limited screentime compared to the titular characters.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
The two siblings eventually leave the exact position their father left them in and stumbled upon a house in the woods made of candy. When a witch inside tries to force Hansel to eat so she can feast upon him, Gretel uses a nail to free herself from her shackles, save her brother, and lock the witch in the oven meant to cook Hansel. As adults, the duo kills witches as bounty hunters, and the mayor of a Augsburg (in Germany) hires them to find an unusually high amount of missing children. A coven of witches led by Muriel discovers a way to make their kind immune to the pain and damage of flames, a common manner of death for them, but a captured witch reveals enough information for Hansel and Gretel to anticipate a special Sabbath of sorts for witches.
Intellectual Content
Despite the movie not doing almost anything to explore the significant moral issues that would be present in the world portrayed, it does actually give hints of how false accusations of sorcery are still taken seriously by some in this land plagued by witches--though Hansel directly admits he is stupid enough (though he does not describe it in this way) to not have more than little to no evidence beyond hearsay to kill women for supposed witchcraft. Of far greater importance is the torture for information that Hansel and Gretel are willing to casually inflict on captive witches, which is completely foreign to the Biblical punishments for sorcery that have long been falsely associated with such cruel treatment even though they only involve execution far quicker than that of almost any pagan country and far less painful than even just living in an American prison. For the sake of clarifying what is ultimately obvious in the text, verses like Exodus 22:18 that demand the death of witches do not allow for torture to gain confessions or for execution methods to be drawn out for the sake of torture. Elsewhere in Mosaic Law, these are already directly or indirectly condemned as it is.
Conclusion
Yet another example of concepts with potential getting explored through mostly poor to mediocre execution, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters is absolutely not one of the best movies about witchcraft that the last 10-20 years have produced. Lacking natural dialogue or the kind of satire it perhaps was supposed to provide, it amounts to nothing more than a string of very violent scenes, which to be clear is not artistically or morally problematic at all in itself, and very out of place dialogue without almost any character development to accompany all of this. This kind of take on fairy tales can be done in a vastly superior way, and anyone looking for a better version of the Hansel and Gretel story has a better option in 2020's Gretel and Hansel. Witch Hunters does manage to handle one thing well, though, and that is the visual variety of its many witches, something that is perhaps unrivaled.
Content:
1. Violence: Plenty of violence, including limbs getting ripped off of torsos in direct view of the camera, an eye popping, and a living person exploding and throwing bloody pieces of his body around a room, is included.
2. Profanity: "Fuck," "shit," "bitch," and "damn" are used.
3. Nudity: A woman sheds her clothing and is seen naked from behind as she enters a pool of water ahead of Hansel.
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