Gretel e Hansel

....it just falls short, and kind of leaves you unsatisfied. It's beautiful and dark visually, and it had so much potential to be a great movie, but ends up being something better watched at home.

The lighting, ambience, color and soundtrack are spot on to being a dark fantasy. All the things are there for this to be a good movie. It's deeply creepy. It's delightfully pagan and devilishly witchy! I didn't know the rating of this when I watched it for the first time. I honestly thought this film was Rated R from just how unsettling, dreary and nightmarish some of the visuals were. There's no way in hell I'd go into a house that looked like that, resembling a witches pointy hat. NOPE! This movie will rattle your bones if you're an adult but I think the kids will think its just a traditional fable movie to watch on Halloween in the future!

Osgood Perkins' 'Gretel & Hansel' is a visually arresting and atmospherically rich horror tale with a script that doesn't quite reach the heights of the storyline told through imagery. The movie loses itself too often in a dreamscape horror without rectifying or clarifying, which leaves the metaphor foggy and the horror muted. The performances are decent: Sophia Lillis holds the screen with a quiet confidence as Gretel and the sensational Alice Krige making for a supremely chilling The Witch.

A film that you can fill in the blanks from your own imagination. Loosely following the story Hansel and Gretel. The soundtrack certainly adds to the film. It's not an ott typical USA film. Using the fantastic scenery of Ireland, that can be made to be very haunting. My only criticism is sometimes the sound of dialogue is not clear enough and difficult to understand a few mumbled lines. Otherwise watchable.

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 excercise 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!