Hansel and Gretel are brother and sister and live in a small house in the woods with their parents. One night, the father wakes them up, makes them get dressed, and quickly takes them out of the house, leaving them in the middle of the trees without giving them any explanation. The frightened children walk until they find themselves in front of a little house made entirely of sweets. They enter but find a terrifying witch who imprisons them and stuffs them with sweets, with the intention of making them fat enough to eat them. But the children manage to free themselves and kill the witch by burning her in the oven.
15 years later. Once grown up, Hansel and Gretel become witch hunters by profession, they travel from country to country and offer, for payment, their service. Arriving just in time to save Mina, who was about to be executed unjustly for witchcraft, the brother and sister set out to find the witches who are kidnapping all the children of Augsburg, discovering that behind the kidnappings is Muriel, a powerful witch intent on completing an ancient ritual that could make her invulnerable to fire.
That the Brothers Grimm, famous "collectors" of fairy tales, had a weakness for macabre and cruel stories is now known and little have served the literary reissues that have softened the crude aspects of such tales, because often these stories were bad and cruel from the foundations. But if we must look for the scariest among the fables made famous by the Grimm, "Hansel and Gretel" perhaps outdoes the competition, thus full of cruelty and violence to cause sleepless nights to children rather than lull them to sleep.
Cinema has often seized this famous German fairy tale to return it with cartoons and children's films (including a short film directed by Tim Burton in 1982), but the openly horror version was still missing and so the Norwegian Tommy Wirkola, called to Hollywood after the good success of his first feature film, the horror film with Nazi zombies "Dead Snow", presented in 2009 at the Sundance Film Festival. But just as it was with "Dead Snow", "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" seeks contamination, where there was a considerable component of comedy, here instead refuge is sought in action. And so, "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" does not present itself absolutely as a serious horror, but as a fun entertainment film in which action and splatter are mixed with effectiveness and naturalness, a fairy tale forbidden to minors that knows how to entertain with genuine authenticity.
The story that we all know is relegated to the first minutes of the film, a prologue that tells us in images the abandonment of the little Hansel and Gretel and their bad encounter with the witch of the gingerbread house that traps them to eat them. After that, we proceed with the original idea of the film, that "what if..." that takes us forward 15 years and shows us what happened to the two brothers, now grown up, after the experience with the witch. Obviously, that episode marked them and further strengthened their bond, transforming them into inseparable mercenaries who hunt witches for money. What strikes the most about this film, which only apparently fits into Hollywood's renewed taste for classic fairy tales after Burton's "Alice in Wonderland", is having succeeded in bringing to the big screen original, cruel and frightening witches as we haven't seen in a long time. Monstrous and cannibals, led by Famke Janssen of "X-Men", Tommy Wirkola's witches are the true hallmark of the film, a variety of fantastic hags that especially in the final sabbath parade in all their wonderful repulsion. And then, confirming his taste for excess already shown in the film with the Nazi zombies, Wirkola goes all out with the splatter, between bodies that explode, dismemberments, crushed heads, amputated limbs and whatnot, although it is always all shown in such a playful way that it results totally harmless.
Very good also the 3D, which adds depth in most of the scenes and sometimes plays with the relief, with arrows and bullets that come threatening towards the viewer.
In the cast, the two protagonists Jeremy Renner (already seen in the role of Hawkeye in "The Avengers" and in "The Bourne Legacy") and the beautiful Gemma Arterton ("Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time"; "Clash of the Titans") defend themselves well in the roles of the two brothers of the title, but perhaps the supporting characters leave more of an impression, starting with the wicked head witch of Famke Janssen and moving on to the character actor Peter Stormare and the seductive Pihla Viitala, who plays Mina.
Ironical and brilliant idea: after the indigestion of sweets that the witch caused Hansel as a child, the adult protagonist suffers from diabetes and is forced to have frequent injections of what is presumed to be insulin.
Take it for what it is, that is, an ironic and exaggerated entertainment film sui generis, "Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" will not disappoint you!
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