Hansel and Gretel and the Sensual Witch Review Hansel and Gretel and the Sensual Witch is a dark and twisted adaptation of the classic fairy tale. This production takes the audience on a journey through a haunting forest where two siblings, Hansel and Gretel, must navigate their way back home while facing the enchantment and temptation of a sensual witch. The play opens with a visually stunning set design that immerses the audience in a dark and mysterious atmosphere. The use of lights and shadows creates an eerie and foreboding ambiance, setting the tone for the rest of the performance. The characters are portrayed with depth and complexity, particularly Hansel and Gretel. Their vulnerability and resilience are evident as they encounter various obstacles and temptations throughout their journey.
System Mastery
Their vulnerability and resilience are evident as they encounter various obstacles and temptations throughout their journey. The actors' performances are exceptional, capturing the essence of their characters and drawing the audience into their emotional struggles. The sensual witch, played by a mesmerizing actress, adds an element of seduction and danger to the story.
Jef and Jon review roleplaying games, Star Wars novels and anything else that crosses their paths.
Monday Movie Review – Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
January 14, 2014 · by jonmastery · in Monday Movie Review. ·As some of you may recall, I actually reviewed a Hansel and Gretel based movie for Horrortoberfest a few months ago. It was a goofy, modern day horror take on the original story and I actually liked it way more than I thought I would. I wanted to say that so that you know it’s not that I don’t like movies based on the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel. I just don’t like movies that poorly done in oh so many different ways. Oh, spoiler alert, I guess. This wasn’t great.
So the movie follows our titular duo as they have grown up as orphans that have taken to the witch hunting business. If we are to believe the movie, then fake-Europe circa wheneverthehell was just lousy with witches at one point and you couldn’t go more than 100 yards into the forest without stumbling on some cabin housing an ugly old lady that wants to kill and/or eat your kids. Business was certainly booming for our leads though I can’t help but wonder how anyone got anything done with all the damn witches running around. The only reason H&G manage to even kill that first witch in the candy house is because they are immune to witch magic. Or maybe only harmful witch magic? Anyway, they have some sort of magic immunity but sometimes it’s useful but mostly not.
The main theme of this movie is that everyone is fucking terrible at their job. Especially Hansel and Gretel. But especially everyone else. The sheriff of the town is just sort of antagonistic for no reason other than there needs to be some sort of foil for the main characters and also he is a failure at his job in every single way. The other hunters the sheriff hires to get the witches are just dumb as a sack of bricks and suffer from the same thing that effects everyone in this movie in that they have guns, a witch shows up, and instead of shooting they just talk until the witch starts wrecking their shit. Hansel and Gretel also do this and then get their asses handed to them in pretty much every single scene. Poor Jeremy Renner must have looked at the script and been like “Is there a scene where I don’t just get slammed into stuff and pratfall out of things?” Tommy Wirkola, the director/writer looked him sternly in the face and solemnly shook his head. Such was his vision.
Anyway, Famke Janssen also collects a paycheck during this film as the main witch that has the ability to not look super ugly even though that is the defining characteristic of “dark” witches because you don’t hire Famke Janssen so you can ugly her up the whole movie. She seems to be the only competent person in the film until you realize that she is also bad at her job since she just leaves the only people that might possibly stop her evil plan alive because…it’s fun? It’s not even like some sort of hubris thing she just is like “Welp, you could probably stop me but I’m going to leave now even though I have you completely bent over a barrel. Ta!” So yeah. Everyone is bad at everything and there is a bunch of slapstick shit in what seems to at least mostly want to be a fantasy/action film.
Also notable in the film are the ridiculous and nonsensical weapons that H&G use like a crossbow that splits to shoot arrows to either side since aiming with the extremes of your peripheral vision is a great idea. Oh, Hansel also got magical diabetes from eating too much of the candy house when he was a kid and I honestly can’t even handle the fact that I just had to use the phrase “magical diabetes”. This movie gets a 2 out of 5 for me. It isn’t bad really. It’s just sort of stupid and not in the stupid fun way but the “why would you think that was a good idea” way.
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters kicks off like the age old tale that we all know - brother and sister abandoned by their father in the woods find a house made of candy, get captured by a witch who tries to fatten them up, but they end up shoving her in an oven. While this action-thriller is significantly better than last year's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, it still suffers from a lack of fun.
Now all grown up, Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) are professional witch hunters, hired by a town's mayor to find the coven that has snatched eleven local children. This upsets the town's head of law enforcement (Peter Stormare), who doesn't take kindly to justice being outsourced. But once everyone has been made privy to some silly business involving a lunar eclipse, and we meet the big baddie (Famke Janssen), all that's left to do is put things like plot and character development aside and just cut to the violence.
And oh, what violence! Director Tommy Wirkola - of cult hit Dead Snow - does not shy away from the red stuff; decapitations, stabbings, shootings with guns and arrows, explosions, dicings, smashings… people die in pretty much every way you can imagine here. The fight sequences between the super-powered, super-agile witches and the very human H&G are fantastically choreographed, but unfortunately there are not nearly enough of them, and whenever the movie stops to discuss the plot, everything grinds to a halt.
Acting wise, Renner and Arterton are serviceable, although they take the entire film far too seriously, and there is a creepy incest vibe to their relationship which no amount of alternative love interests can shake. Famke Janssen seems to be the only person aware of how ridiculous the movie is, hamming up her Witch-with-a-capital-B while caked out in make-up that makes her look like a burnt cigarette. Produced by Will Ferrell, this movie should have been a lot more enjoyable, but the po-faced approach to the plot will mark it as nothing more than a mild misstep in the career of everyone involved.
Hansel gretel and the sensual witch review
Renner and Arterton. A duo no one wanted in a movie no one should see.
Yes, this came way earlier this year, but I only saw it the other week, on a whim when myself and my sister wanted to watch a movie and this was the only thing available that neither of us had seen.
I kind of wish that was still the case.
It is very difficult for a movie to hit the “so bad its good” mark. A lot of directors, sometimes from the start, sometimes only when they realise the terrible material they have to work with, try and fail to hit that mark, in a desperate bid to turn their crappy screenplay, terrible cast and worthless plot ideas into something that they can actually market. The Asylum has made an art form out of this, but they are a shining exception.
No, a lot of the time, when a movie “knows” it’s bad, and simply tries to play into that fact, you do not get comedy gold, but simply a bad movie trying desperately to be anything other than an absolute waste of time.
This production is very much like that. At some point, the back room team abandoned all pretence of a serious attempt at a supernatural action film, and just tried to make something “so bad it’s good”. I’m convinced this was a decision taken after production started too. And it absolutely did not work.
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters see’s the titular brother and sister pair (Jeremy Renner and Gemma Aterton), having survived the grisly tale that made them famous as children, take up an adult career of hunting down all of those evil magic users who threaten the land. But when an especially powerful witch (Famke Jannsen) tries to enact an evil plot to gain incredible power, the siblings are forced into a dangerous battle that invokes some secret aspects of their past.
It is a truly god-awful film with a god-awful plot. Leaving aside all of the other problems, this is a cookie-cutter fantasy/fairy-tale adventure with an overly-edgy tone, that simply makes it easier to ridicule. It’s predictable to the hilt, from the introduction of “good” witches to the “revelation” about the two main character pasts. Every scene, every sequence, from the opening prologue to the post-credit finale, is a great example of how not to craft an effective story.
It tries not to take itself too seriously, and therein falls down, as ridiculous lines and overly-bloody fight scenes combine to detract from the experience to a huge degree. I can’t buy into any of the characters journeys or dilemmas, when its clear that the “plot” is just a means to bring us from uninspiring set-piece, to lame jokes, and back to another uninspiring set-piece. There is a certain seriousness that a fantasy film like this needs, or else any suspension of disbelief is impossible. The attempt to make this into a “so bad its good” film by playing up the campiness of the whole project is a total failure in my eyes. Hansel and Gretel is trying to be a parody of these kinds of movies at points, and is failing miserably. Where something like The Brothers Grimm was a partial success, Hansel and Gretel is a total disaster. There is no subtly here, no effective satire, just a collection of clichéd plot points and non-existent drama.
Its terrible paced, with the action moments to far apart and with an awful lot of wandering around aimlessly in between. In a film where every other element is so terrible, only the action scenes are going to save it, so it’s really odd to see large stretches where very little is happening onscreen to advance the plot or to get us to a point where the interest will be re-piqued. The main plot trips along without any sense of verve or excitement, the kind of absence in this sort of action movie that is just so damning, with what pitiful sub-plots we are offered up serving only to make the entire thing worse. The portions set around the town are dull and derivative of any positive feelings, the sections wandering around the wood are interminable, and everything just feels wrong. Where the film should take its time in establishing character, like in the town, it rushes. Where it should speed up, like the latter half of the second act, it slows to a crawl as the characters tumble around a wood looking for random encounters like an RPG party.
The characters are stale as can be, one-dimensional, flat, whatever words you want to use to describe the moving props that inhibit the screen. Only the barest amount of filler is used to try and drag the title characters above the mire, but even then it barely works. In the end, they’re just nothing figures, with the most hackneyed and forced motivations, and a “secret past” angle that is as predictable as it is pointless. Everyone else, and I do mean everyone else, might as well have been taken straight from “The Big Book of Throwaway Characters” with poor motivations, no sense of life (critical in a fantasy movie) and no reason for the audience to care about them at all.
A decent opening sequence simply lulls the audience into a false sense of security…
The romantic sub-plot boils down to little more than an awkward and eye-rolling scene at a hot spring, with no feeling that there is a genuine attraction between the two characters involve. In fact, without treading on the toes of the upcoming thoughts on the acting, there wasn’t a ingle relationship or interaction in this film that felt in any way above the grain, with most of them just being a continuation of the films overall awfulness.
The villain, whose name I can’t even remember, is severely under-developed, the sort of “evil for the sake of being evil” antagonist that I just can’t bring myself to care about or view as someone worthy of being a threat to the main characters. She cackles, she kills the lesser bad guys, she dies, the end. Who cares? With your two main characters not exactly setting this fantasy world alight with their adventures, this is the kind of movie that really needs a strong villainous presence. Perhaps someone like Charlize Theron from Snow White and the Huntsmen, who while over-acting to the very hilt, was at least a strong presence on screen. The Wicked Witch of this production can claim no such thing.
Hansel and Gretel also tries to interject some emotion into proceedings in the most ham-fisted and pointless ways, like trying to make the troll sympathetic by getting him to help out Gretel, or the duo taking pity on the obsessed fanboy character. This is all so much sentimental tripe, the lowest kind of way to try and get an audience to connect with a character, and it requires far better performances than the ones that we are given here. That troll character seems to exist for no other reason than the mid-film change of heart, and I simply couldn’t bring myself to care enough.
There are so many plot holes here that it would actually be a waste of energy to try and recount all of them. Most of them are of a pretty minor nature, like how the witches in the finale end up flying straight into the one stretch of wire in the forest for some reason, but the film is just littered with them and it badly affects things. The budget here is too big for this to be of an Asylum level of plot continuity.
Then there are just the really odd plot points, the stupidest of which is the Hansel character being diabetic. I mean, your male lead, the hero, in a fantasy/action movie, and his Achilles heel is that he has fantasy diabetes, the kind where he has to take an injection of some black liquid every few hours like clockwork or he immediately starts falling over. How did he find the hypodermic needle? How is he not getting an infection? The only way to get past a film like this that includes such ridiculous plot points (and a lack of understanding of how diabetes works) is to try and shut off your brain I suppose, but as I have previously outlined, that is not something that I am willing to do.
You don’t have to look too far here to see where the problems start. Norwegian director Tommy Wirkola doesn’t exactly have a steller pedigree when it comes to making truly great movies, the best he’s previously been able to offer being the forgettable zombie horror Dead Snow, the kind of niche production that won more praise for its general premise than what it actually contained. Hansel and Gretel is his biggest project to date, and he’s taken a 50 million dollar budget and turned out a mess. A profitable mess it cannot be denied, but a mess nonetheless.
I mean, there is actually some potential here. The Brothers Grimm is basically the same thing, and that was halfway decent. Fairy tales with a dark twist? Some action? I can get behind that idea and I don’t even mind the inherent ridiculousness of the famous sibling pair turning into a Lethal Weapon-style outfit. But the execution is incredibly poor, especially plot-wise.
I suppose I can’t just leave it there though. I kind of liked the opening sequence with the Gingerbread house, which was presented well enough, as simply and horrifically as possible.
If you want to know how to not do a romance plot, look no further.
The acting. Oh man, the acting. I read somewhere that this is the movie that nearly led to Jeremy Renner quitting Hollywood, and it’s not hard to see why. He’s truly terrible in this , phoning it in to the absolute fullest extent, with the barest hint of emotion in just about every droning scene where he character struggles to even raise his voice an octave higher than the “dull” setting. Every single time Renner opens his mouth in this movie, whether he’s admonishing the bad guy, talking down to the fanboy, or in any scene with his love interest, it’s the same unmistakably flat delivery, the product of a man who must have seen the garbage production he had signed up for early and was content to the do the very least amount of work possible. That’s terrible, because Renner can actually act – see The Hurt Locker and The Bourne Legacy – he’s just choosing not too here.
I suppose for that reason I can forgive Gemma Aterton a bit, because she’s never been that good at acting. The love interest in the surprisingly passable Prince of Persia adaptation is as high up as she has ever gone, if you don’t count her ten minute showing in Quantum of Solace. She’s just as terrible as Renner though, but at least we can safely say that this is the height of her ability as opposed to the minimum. From dealing with the fanboy ogling her breasts (one of the only reasons Arterton was cast I imagine) to the showdown with the evil witch, Aterton’s performance has about as much emotional resonance and ability as the laptop keys I’m currently typing this on.
And, it should go without saying I suppose, but there is a total lack of chemistry between two leads. Arterton and Rennner being a brother and sister pair is about as believable as Zero Dark Thirty’s Maya being a likable character.
Famke Jennsen, who is well-regarded for her work in a lot of roles, not least the X-Men franchise and the hit TV show The Good Wife, is our villain, but she just has nothing to work with other than “be evil”. Her character is so one-dimensional and uninteresting that there is nothing she can do to alter things for the better, especially behind all of the make-up. She sneers, she has an evil laugh. That’s it.
God, who else is there? A collection of B-movie rejects really, or debutants struggling through. Pihla Viiitala is the amazingly poor love interest for Hansel, whose German-ish accent seems to change to a more posh English one halfway through without any explanation. Thomas Mann is the aforementioned fanboy who is an annoying as he is unimportant to the overall plot. And Peter Stormare is the gruff Sherriff, who gets killed off half way through after briefly threatening to be a believable villain.
It really is a terribly acted production from start to finish, easily the worst I’ve seen this year – even worse than Oz The Great and Powerful, because at least there were a few people trying in that film.
Visually, it’s a dank, unimaginative production. The same locales are used over and over again, most notably a woodland area, that looks excessively drab and repetitive. Same thing with the dark, unremarkable town streets and rooms. Just nothing to write home about whatsoever, no special level of detail or complexity to see. The lone exception is famous “Gingerbread house” at the start, which looks like the right mix of fairy tale and twisted, and it was, admittedly, kind of neat to go back to the rotting remains of that home later in the film. But in terms of visuals and the camerawork used, that’s about as positive as I am able to really go.
What special effects there are, are incredibly bad, easily the worst I have seen this year, only just pulling themselves ahead of the Asylum level;. The flying witches, the explosions, anything that involves a computer inserted image looks tacky and fake, not fitting in with the real surrounds at all and just reducing the suspension of disbelief even further. Even the most basic things, like the sudden appearance of bullet time effects at places, are totally botched.
And it continues on with basic prop work. The blood (and there is a lot of it) looks fake, the wrong colour. The weapon props are so anachronistic that they start to just be points of amusement after a while. It seems like every scene and location, bar the aforementioned gingerbread house, was made to the cheapest and least eye-catching level.
The make-up work is about as high as it gets for this production.
The fight scenes are poorly choreographed and repetitive in nature, save for maybe the last one which suddenly introduces lots of new witches for just a bit of variety. Nothing too complex here, just a series of punches, grunts and a few more punches before the bad guys fall down, with an occasional explosion or blood waterfall to spice things up. The action scenes basically amount to the two title characters trading shots with the bad guys, repeatedly getting their asses handed to them, before sort of blundering into success.
What’s good visually? The troll is a decent construction I suppose, if just a little unnatural looking after a point. The one thing about the entire production I could out rightly praise is the make-up department, which does a great job for the villain and her various minion witches. It’s actually not even too crazy to describe what they did there as Oscar winning quality, which is pretty bizarre in a movie this terrible.
The script is, in a word, awful. To use several more words, it’s terrible, pathetic and altogether atrocious. From the very first lines where Renner commences his “acting” by informing us that the best way to kill a witch is to “light her ass on fire” to Gretel closing with “This isn’t going to be open casket”, this is a non-stop recital of terrible lines and inane dialogue.
Marvel at the way whole scenes are dominated by basic exposition! Wonder at how hilariously non-threatening the main villain sounds! Be amazed at the complete lack of connection evident in the dialogue between the two title characters! Be dazzled at how adding in curse words when they aren’t really necessary doesn’t automatically make the script better!
There really is very little to add. I can’ think of a single bit of wordplay in this film that I actually liked, felt served the scene or the plot to the full extent or was in anyway memorable for positive reasons.
There is absolutely nothing special to say about the soundtracks or the score. I suppose it is a just about acceptable mix of orchestra and electric guitar, but it certainly isn’t the kind of thing that you will be humming heading out of the theatre.
I tend to close on themes, but a movie this utterly shallow and pisspoor doesn’t really have any, beyond a bare scratching of the surface. I suppose you could say that there is a bit about the nature of the sibling relationship and all that, but with only the most minor adjustments you could turn the two main characters into a bickering couple rather than brother and sister. I suppose there is your classic fantasy theme of “good vs evil” and the grey area that can exist between the two, discovered when the sibling duo find out that they are, themselves, descended from a witch.
But it really isn’t that important to the overall production, a fleeting glimpse at something approaching subtly and depth. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters is just an empty vessel of a movie.
I’d like to close by making a comparison with another movie, similar in many respects to Hansel and Gretel, but still considered by me to actually be decent enough, and proof that you make this genre work. That movie was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
Now, that movie has a completely mental premise, but it does something very important: it plays it completely straight. No campiness, no winking at the audience, just a historical figure who leads a secret life hunting the undead. It makes good use (mostly) of its CGI budget and uses a mostly unknown or low-hype cast to good effect (I suppose Mary Elizabeth Winstead was the most well known cast member). It has brilliant costumes and make-up, a good script, excellent pacing and really effective action sequences. Just about everything that Hansel and Gretel gets wrong, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter gets right and that’s why I liked it so much, despite the random plot. It can be done right, as that film demonstrates.
In conclusion, I actually wouldn’t class Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters as the worst film I’ve seen this year – that dubious honour still remains with the appalling Zero Dark Thirty, due more to the high expectations I had going in more than anything – but man it comes very, very close. With the lone exception of the opening sequence and some aspects of the production team like make-up work, every single part of it is a collection of awfulness, with the plot, acting, visual effects, script, music and themes simply arranging themselves on a scale between “barely passable” and “run away screaming”. Which is what you should do, from this movie.
A very awful affair.
(All images are copyright of Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).
Her sensuality is portrayed through her captivating dance sequences and sultry vocal performances. The witch's enchanting presence creates an intense and captivating dynamic between her and the siblings. The production's use of music and sound effects intensifies the overall experience. The haunting melodies and eerie sounds heighten the suspense and mystery, further immersing the audience into the dark and twisted world of the play. The costumes and makeup are also remarkable, emphasizing the contrast between the innocence of the children and the sensuality of the witch. The costumes are intricately designed, enhancing the fantastical and otherworldly elements of the story. Overall, Hansel and Gretel and the Sensual Witch is a thrilling and visually stunning production. Its dark and twisted adaptation of the classic fairy tale provides a unique and unforgettable theatrical experience. The exceptional performances, immersive set design, and powerful storytelling combine to create a provocative and thought-provoking production that leaves a lasting impression on the audience..
Reviews for "Review: The Sensual Witch in Hansel and Gretel: Beauty and Danger Combined"
1. Jessica - 2 stars - I was really excited to watch "Hansel and Gretel and the Sensual Witch" as I love fairytale adaptations, but I was thoroughly disappointed. The plot was confusing and all over the place, and the supposed sensuality felt forced and out of place. The acting was subpar, and overall, it felt like a low-budget production that didn't deliver on its promises. I wouldn't recommend wasting your time on this one.
2. Kevin - 1 star - I found "Hansel and Gretel and the Sensual Witch" to be an absolute mess of a film. The attempts at sensuality were cringe-worthy instead of enticing, and the plot was nonsensical and hard to follow. The acting was wooden, and the dialogue felt awkward and unnatural. I expected a unique twist on the classic fairytale, but instead, I got a poorly executed, confusing mess. Save your money and give this one a pass.
3. Sarah - 2 stars - I couldn't help but feel disappointed after watching "Hansel and Gretel and the Sensual Witch." The film seemed to be more focused on shock value and sensual scenes rather than storytelling and character development. The acting was mediocre at best, and the plot lacked depth and coherence. While the concept had potential, the execution fell flat, resulting in a forgettable and underwhelming experience. I wouldn't recommend this film to anyone seeking a quality fairytale adaptation.