Osgood “Oz” Perkins’ directorial debut The Blackcoat’s Daughter received some mild praise in the horror industry for being able to effectively build atmosphere and tension while carefully navigating tropes of the supernatural thriller genre. While I wasn’t particularly blown away by the film, I was impressed by the originality of Perkins’ story and its reluctance to stick with a safe and sterile conclusion. Much like his debut, and what I’ve heard of his follow-up I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, his newest film Gretel & Hansel radiates a dark and brooding atmosphere while slowly building up suspense rather than go for constant cheap scares.
Gretel & Hansel is an update/retelling of the classic Brothers Grimm fairytale, directed by Perkins and starring Sophia Lillis and Alice Krige. In this variation, a teenage Gretel (Lillis) takes the lead of the pair of children, struggling to provide for them while fending for themselves in the forest after being disowned by their mother. More or less in keeping with the original story, they eventually come upon the house of a woman (Krige) who graciously takes them in and provides a seemingly endless supply of food while possibly harboring ulterior motives.
For as surprisingly stylish and stunning the production design and general look of the film is, every other aspect of the film was a complete flat-line for me. Creative liberties were taken with the story to attempt to ground some of the more fantastical elements in reality, extracting some of the fantasy from the fairy tale. The witch now lives in a very post-modern-looking cabin rather than a cottage made entirely of food, and there is a significant age gap between Gretel and her brother to position her more as a solo lead of the film. Although these changes do well to establish a more consistent grim and gritty look and feel to the film, they do very little to flesh-out a very bare-bones plot.
The only substantial change to the original story comes in the form of a subplot concerning Gretel studying the ways of witchcraft while staying at the woman’s house. While this has some minor plot ramifications (that could’ve been easily attributed to something else entirely) it also leaves the film with an abrupt and confusing conclusion that I couldn’t tell was a cliffhanger setting up a potential sequel or just something that was mangled in post-production editing.
All things considered, Gretel & Hansel could’ve turned out much worse than it did. What it lacked in creativity and an engaging story it attempted to make up for with style. Despite a few missteps in trying to revise the original story, the core remains intact. However, if they really wanted to swing for the fences, the film could’ve had an epilogue in which Gretel and her brother channel their childhood trauma into hunting down and killing witches. And Hansel now has diabetes as a result of being force-fed sweets for days on end. Yeah, that sounds good.
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