Hansel & Gretel – Witch Hunters: The Third Sign of the Apocalypse

Directed by Tommy Wirkola (Dead Snow) and co-written by him and Dante Harper, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters manages to take an early, perhaps insurmountable lead in the race to be 2013’s worst film.  Ripe with confused actors, simplistic delivery and a lazy, vomit-inducing script, Hansel & Gretel is unbearable in virtually every way.

Premise: A reimagined fairytale that brings 21^st Century talk, thinking, and weapons to 19^th Century Germany. Result: Warning – Do not look directly at this film. May cause bleeding, nausea, and disorientation.  Prolonged exposure may cause permanent blindness.

Hansel & Gretel is supposedly a reinvention of a classic, if frankly tired, German fairytale first published in 1812 by the Brothers Grimm.  It is a purposeful anachronism, reimagining a world hundreds of years ago that would have cool gadgets, rapid-fire military-grade arms, ubiquitous newspapers, and dialogue found most readily in a 21^st Century middle-school classroom. But unlike other anachronistic reinventions like Van Helsing or even the more recent, and perhaps á pros pos, Brothers Grimm, whose failures echoed the halls of cinema for years afterward, Hansel & Gretel elevates those duds to masterpiece acclaim.

Virtually everything in this film is wrong, ALL WRONG. It begins with a purposefully confusing opening scene where Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton), here depicted as children, are abandoned in the woods by their father until they ultimately stumble upon a gingerbread house.

Of course, in it is a witch who tries to fatten and eat them until they miraculously escape and throw the creature into the fire.  Although the delivery is messy and unremarkable, it is at least quasi-consistent with the original take – that is except the part where Hansel gets diabetes from eating too many cookies (I’m not making this up people!)

This is followed by opening credits depicting the subsequent exploits of the duo that actually might be the coolest part of the whole film, if truth be told, even though that is not a particularly high bar.  We are then plunged into “many years later” where a town is under siege by witches who are abducting children (a plotline we have seen only a million times before).

It should be noted that the duo doesn’t notice until more than halfway through the film that they are, in fact, back in their childhood town; seems like an odd thing to overlook.

Nevertheless, the hunters emerge just in time to save a beautiful, if peculiar maiden Mina (Pihla Viitala), who is accused of witchcraft by the villainous Sherriff Berringer (Peter Stormare).

Blah, Blah, Blah they need to find the witches and rescue the children, yadda yadda yadda they meet a young Ben (Thomas Mann) who represents fan boys everywhere and adds no value at all, then people are killed because the Sherriff is dumb and jealous. And so on and so forth.

Ultimately the rest of the film pits the hunters against the evil “Grand” witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) and her hideous coven of witches that at some point look like sloppy outtakes from a Clive Barker film. Of course, while fighting the witches they learn there are good witches too, they understand who their parents were, and other minor twists that could be seen from a galaxy far, far away.

To be frank, this script is criminal.  It is painfully lazy as Wirkola and Harper appear intent on just doing whatever they want with no rhyme or reason.  The dialogue is worse than simply out of synch with how people might speak hundreds of years ago, it feels out of synch.  There is a very real sense that the writers just didn’t care what people said, or how they said it, because in their view, writing doesn’t matter and people will watch and shut up if there are enough explosions and bloody, mangled corpses.

And while those elements and the fight sequences are fair for some of the movie, by the end, like too much of any good thing, it just leaves observers reeling.  And so all we are left with is writing that somehow feels insulting.

And even with the veil of purposeful anachronism, it is just too much. Even if observers allow the ridiculous weapons, the colloquialisms, the insulin (not around for literally 100 more years), Wirkola is just playing games. At one point they have a record player that keeps playing the voice of a child to lure a witch.  Really?  And on and on.

And even when they try to introduce lore, they get it wrong. There are trolls bound to witches (for some reason), yet anyone doing even a cursory glance into troll lore would know trolls turn to stone in sunlight; yet troll Edward (Robin Atkin Downes) is virtually tanning he is around so much.  While a minor example, it goes to the heart of the issue: the story didn’t require a troll at all, so why risk it detracting further from the plot by getting it wrong like everything else; lazy, sloppy screenwriting can be the only answer.

Don’t look to the cast to set this movie straight; they seem completely lost from moment one.  Renner already proved that comedy is not his strong suit (check out his SNL hosting, ouch!) and yet somehow no one got the memo.  But this disaster isn’t even really his fault: not only was Renner forced to deliver punch line after pointless punch line, but somehow he seems to be painfully aware of just how unbearable it comes off.  It is painful to watch such an accomplished actor abused in this manner.

Arterton, for her part, partially pulls off her role if only because her sexy, mysterious persona may be confused for a serious performance; essentially, her allure might be mistaken for actual acting. Of course, fortunately for Stormare, like his recent performance in The Last Stand, no one could actually accuse him of acting.

Janssen appears to be trying in this film, a noble attempt, but her role is so hackneyed and boring that had she not been the central villain, audiences might have forgotten she was there.  Oh, and Thomas Mann is in this film.  I think.  It’s impossible to remember considering his talent is completely wasted in this movie (go see Project X instead.)

Hansel & Gretel is terrible.  There is no mistaking this transcendent fact. While the idea might initially pique interest and there are a few moments where the action on screen approximates interesting, the film is messy, lazy, and inept.

“Hey Wirkola, the Brothers Grimm and every person who accidentally saw this movie want their money back.  And damages.”

Rating: 2 – Boxed wine and Razorblades – let’s see which kills you faster!