Psycho's Movie Reviews #207: Gretel & Hansel (2020)

Gretel & Hansel (also known as Gretel & Hansel: A Grim Fairy Tale) is a 2020 dark fantasy horror film based on the German folklore tale "Hansel and Gretel" by the Brothers Grimm. The film is directed by Oz Perkins, and produced by Fred Berger, Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, and Dan Kagan, with a screenplay by Rob Hayes. Sophia Lillis and Sam Leakey portray the titular characters, alongside Alice Krige and Jessica De Gouw. The story follows Gretel and Hansel as they enter the dark woods in order to find work and food, and then stumble upon the home of a witch.

It was announced in October 2018 that Orion Pictures had started developing Gretel & Hansel, a film adaptation based on the German folklore Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm, with Perkins directing the film from a screenplay he co-wrote with Hayes. At the same time, Lillis was set to star in the film, with other actors being added shortly after, and filming taking place between November and December 2018 in Dublin, Ireland.

Gretel & Hansel was released in North America on 31 January 2020 by Orion Pictures through United Artists Releasing. The film grossed $22 million worldwide and received generally mixed reviews from critics, with praise for its visuals and cinematography, as well as the horror elements and acting, but criticism for the film's pacing.

Plot

A baby girl in a village falls ill and is not expected to survive. The father takes the child to see an enchantress, who removes the illness but leaves power within the girl. The villagers go to the girl, as she grows up, to hear her premonitions, but she uses her power to kill people, including her father. She is taken into the woods to be abandoned. There, she lures other children to their deaths. She becomes known as the Beautiful Child.

The scene shifts to teenaged Gretel and her younger brother, Hansel, after their father's death. They meet a man about a housekeeping job, but he reveals his true intentions by asking Gretel if she is still a virgin. The children leave without work. Their mother rebukes Gretel for not helping provide for them and threatens to kill Gretel if they do not leave the house. The siblings flee and find a hut to stay for the night, but a ghoulish man appears and attacks Hansel. A hunter saves the siblings and takes them to his home.

The next morning, the siblings go out to forage and seek work. Hansel is drawn to a house by the smell of cake coming from it. Holda invites them inside for a meal and allows them to sleep there in exchange for work. Holda sends Hansel to the woods to practice his skills with an axe while keeping Gretel indoors. Hansel is happy but Gretel grows suspicious of Holda. She sees a vision of the Enchantress and hears children's voices. Holda shows Gretel how to tap into her powers as a witch. Hansel also sees a vision of the Enchantress and an inverted pentagram carved into a tree.

Gretel enters Holda's cellar, where Hansel sits entranced. The floor floods with blood and a younger witch emerges, emptying buckets of guts and placing a dismembered child's arm onto the table before turning this into the food that Holda feeds the siblings. The next day, Gretel watches Holda eat and sees her pull a lock of human hair out of her mouth. Through visions, Holda reveals she is the mother of the Beautiful Child. The child promised to share her powers if Holda trusts in the darkness. It is also revealed that Holda devoured her other children, and took on the guise of a kind, old woman to lure other children.

Holda straps Gretel down in the cellar. With her youthful appearance, Holda lures Hansel into a cage so she can cook him. Gretel uses her powers to kill Holda over a fire and to break Hansel's trance and her own bonds. Gretel decides to remain at the house in order to practice witchcraft. Hansel returns to their family home, discovering that their mother is no longer there and reclaiming his own axe. Gretel sees spirits of the dead children emerge from the trees, finally free. Her fingers start to turn black as Holda's did, but she states she will trust herself and control her newly found abilities.

Production

In October 2018, the Hollywood Reporter wrote that Orion Pictures had started developing a film adaptation of the German folklore tale Hansel and Gretel, with Oz Perkins directing a screenplay he had co-written with Rob Hayes, and Sophia Lillis starring as the lead character. Sinister producer Brian Kavanaugh-Jones and The Autopsy of Jane Doe producer Fred Berger, partners at Automatik Entertainment, were announced as producers, with Sandra Yee Ling and Macdara Kelleher as executive producers. Hayes eventually received sole screenplay credit.

In November 2018, Charles Babalola was cast as the Hunter, a new character who helps Gretel and Hansel navigate the woods. In April 2019, Alice Krige, Jessica De Gouw, and Sam Leakey joined the cast, with Leakey making his acting debut.

Perkins explained in an interview that the title was changed because this version focuses on Gretel: "It's awfully faithful to the original story. It's got really only three principal characters: Hansel, Gretel, and the Witch. We tried to find a way to make it more of a coming of age story. I wanted Gretel to be somewhat older than Hansel, so it didn't feel like two 12-year-olds – rather a 16-year-old and an 8-year-old. There was more of a feeling like Gretel having to take Hansel around everywhere she goes, and how that can impede one's own evolution, how our attachments and the things that we love can sometimes get in the way of our growth."

Principal photography on the film began on 9 November 2018 in Dublin, Ireland, and wrapped up in December 2018. Additional filming and reshoots started in January 2019 in Langley, British Columbia, Canada.

Music

The score was composed by Robin Coudert, also known by his stage name, Rob. With the soundtrack in mind, Rob avoided using typical symphonic orchestral themes to create a unique film score saying, “I find it essential to create melodies that we can sing or whistle as, in horror cinema, it is usually the opposite, where the music rather has a tendency toward structure and abstraction. For this project, which is a film about kids, it seemed important to have that.” The soundtrack was released by Waxwork Records in 2020 as a single LP.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film was released on 31 January 2020 by United Artists.

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released the film digitally on 7 April 2020, and on DVD and Blu-ray on 5 May 2020.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 108 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Gretel & Hansel's rich visuals satisfy, even if this adaptation of a classic fairy-tale gets a little lost in the woods on the storytelling front." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favourable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C−" on an A+ to F scale.

Contrarily, Andrew Barker of Variety wrote, "The film certainly looks nice, with a wealth of eye-catching compositions," but added, "The problem is that so many of its virtues feel compromised." Kimber Myers wrote for The Los Angeles Times, "While Perkins offers a stunning feast for the eyes, the substance is likely to leave viewers still hungry."

Chandler Levack from The Globe and Mail wrote, "Everything about Gretel & Hansel is weirder, smarter and way more cinematic than I'd expected, thanks to some fascinating movie choices made by director Oz Perkins." Kate Rife from The A.V. Club wrote, "If one of the boundaries being tested in this film is viewers' patience, the reward for—to use a refrain repeated throughout the film—'trusting the darkness' is well worth the commitment." Frank Sheck of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "Gretel & Hansel may alienate some horror movie fans with its extremely leisurely pacing and emphasis on atmosphere and mood rather than visceral shocks. But while the film certainly demands patience, it provides ample rewards with its lush stylization."

Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press wrote, "Gretel & Hansel is as visually arresting as it is tedious, a 90-minute movie that really should have been a 3-minute music video for Marilyn Manson or Ozzy Osbourne. It's in the horror genre only loosely. It's more eerie, if that's a genre. Actually, it's like dread for 90 minutes. It's dreadful." Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times labelled the film "Essentially the story of a young woman coming into her power, Gretel & Hansel is quietly sinister, yet too underdeveloped to truly scare."

In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside The Rhythm Section, and was projected to gross $4–7 million from 3,000 theatres in its opening weekend. The film made $2.3 million on its first day (including $475,000 from Thursday night previews). It debuted to $6.1 million, finishing fourth.

Budget$5 million

Box office$22.1 million

My Review

I enjoy atmospheric, visual-driven horror films. Gretel & Hansel delivers both aspects in spades.

After the death of their father and the mental break-down of their mother, Gretel (Sophia Lillis) and her younger brother Hansel find themselves lost and alone. As they wander, a virtuous huntsman directs them to a woodsman's family that will care for them, if they can safely traverse the foreboding forest - which is the abode of a mysterious witch (Alice Krige).

The director of "The Blackcoat's Daughter" and "I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House," Oz Perkins is certainly a fan of scary movies. He's not one to embrace shock value by using cheap jolts, I applaud him for that. Wisely embracing a sinister creep of malevolent forces as they attempt to corrupt the seemingly pure. "Gretel & Hansel is a proper fit for Osgood Perkins, presenting us with a disturbing tale of caution. I very much enjoyed the art-house sensibilities . The visuals are suitably baroque and sinister. Very clever cinematography Oz Perkins adds to his horror films. 'Gretel & Hansel' has Perkins stamp throughout the film. Sophia Lillis made a phenomenal impact with her work in this film she is so talented . Albeit I love a costume period piece , Sophia Lillis missteps not speaking with a foreign accent to match the other lead characters ; the lack of one took me out of the intended period setting. I do not think this would be a huge deal for most it is my pet peeve watching a Period horror flick set in the 1300 century in the Baltic states. The thematically stylistic sense of dread outweighed my slight quibble. Gretel & Hansel is a very stunning film with plenty of visual flourishes and memorable imagery.

The only thing (apart from the title), I knew going into this, was that this was supposed to be trash. Now I like me some trash movies from time to time, so I was prepared for that. Turns out that's not the case at all. Actually this is more of an art exercise than anything else. Anything else also including the Hansel & Gretel stories we know - which the title switch of the names might be the first indicator of.

That's not all that is different - certain aspects seem to be as you may have seen them in other movies, but the majority of the movie dares to be different. In a lot of ways - character wise, story wise, setting wise, incidents wise. Now that should answer the question some might have had, about the necessity of the movie: are there not enough of these already? Well apparently you can spin this another way - and it works.

Now having said that, it is surely not without flaws, yet the fact it goes places you probably don't expect it to go, handles horror in a way I personally prefer to the in your face jump scares (it is about mood and setting it) and how it is shot (visually) is quite exceptional! You have to be in the mood for this type of film and some may have issues with the pacing - but you can't please everyone anyway!

The film was very served by South African actress Alice Krige, she was excellent. Perkins bathing in his mood of tight aspect ratio, and his love of Alice Krige, who's handed every opportunity to act her heart out as the wrinkled, black-fingered antagonist witch. "Gretel & Hansel" has its gruesome moments and is worth a watch for the arthouse sensibilities & classic Gothic fiction. I think most fans of the genre will, at the very least, appreciate this film for what it is. 7/10