Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Review

Director: Tommy Wirkola.

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare.

Running Time: 88 minutes.

Certificate: 15.

Synopsis: Hansel and Gretel – you know the drill. Only now they’re bounty hunters who travel the world, hunting down witches. As the legendary Blood Moon approaches, a new threat arises that holds the secrets of their tortured past.

Every so often, Hollywood stumbles across a premise it can continue to mine for years to come. The current wave of superhero-mania burst into consciousness around 2008 with the releases of IRON MAN and THE DARK KNIGHT, and 2013 is set to see another explosion of a particular premise, though it’s one that’s been creeping up for a while.

It started, one might argue, with Tim Burton’s ALICE IN WONDERLAND in 2010 – after all, Lewis Carroll’s 1865 novel is commonly bundled together with the likes of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ‘Hansel and Gretel’. And, possibly thanks to the absurd amounts of money Burton made at the box office (ALICE IN WONDERLAND currently sits as the thirteenth-highest grossing film of all time), the execs in Hollywood have decided it would be a bonnie idea to reboot every classic children’s tale under the sun with some kind of gritty twist.

The first instance of this came in the form of 2011’s ill-fated RED RIDING HOOD. ‘Never mind!’ proclaimed Hollywood, ‘Let’s just keep trying!’ And so last year gave us two re-interpretations of ‘Snow White’ (predictably, both were terrible), with this year seeing the release of JACK THE GIANT SLAYER and OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL. However, before then we have the pleasure of Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton in HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS.

A vapid, unimaginative and horribly predictable genre mash-up that will leave you with a very unfortunate taste in your mouth, HANSEL & GRETEL will have you reeling, slightly bamboozled and wishing you’d taken Jeremy Renner’s advice not to eat the candy.

Laboured metaphors aside, HANSEL & GRETEL is clearly trying to capitalise not only on the recent success of fairytale reboots, but also last year’s ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, which was considered to be a decent romp. You’ll find no such pleasure in HANSEL & GRETEL. The plot is as thin as the inevitable line between you staying after the first ten minutes or walking out to find something – anything – better to do with the next hour of your life. Like taste-testing various poisons, for example.

It’s a pity that such an able and versatile cast is wasted so terribly, but then it’s hard to pity a film that incenses and enrages to the extent that HANSEL & GRETEL does. The script, plot and basic premise are all an insult to the collective intelligence of the audience and it’s incredibly hard to know who this film is supposed to be aimed at when you can’t think of a single demographic that might derive some pleasure from it.

Some may dispute this tarnishing of the film with the excuse that it’s just supposed to be a bit of fun and shouldn’t be taken seriously, but there’s nothing fun about it. HANSEL & GRETEL is so achingly dull that even those inclined to take films like this at face value will find little reason to watch.

There are some films that make you fall in love with cinema all over again. HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS serves to do quite the opposite. You may, in fact, never want to watch another film again. You have been warned. 

 HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS opens in UK cinemas on Wednesday 27th February and is already out in the US.