Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters
We’re continuing our exploration into Hansel and Gretel retellings to a very, very different film. 2013’s Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters asks the question, what if after surviving their run-in with their first witch, those scrappy siblings grew into badass leather clad hunters played by Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton? There’s a very quick and traditional retelling of the original fairytale, but it turns out that after getting their first taste of blood, the dangerous duo decide to dedicate their lives to murdering witches with extreme prejudice.
While it’s a little disingenuous to talk about films only in terms of trends, I would like you to transport yourself back into the 2000’s to think about why this film was picked up. One trend is the “action film with dark fantasy aesthetic”; these films follow the same beats as a heroic action film but use a dark fantasy setting to get cool monster designs, leather dusters, corsets, and steampunk weapons - bonus points are awarded if the story is tied into a public domain story of character. Think of 2004’s beautiful mess Van Helsing, or 2005’s unremembered Brother’s Grimm, even the poorly adapted 2003 League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Also around this time are films with intriguingly schlocky titles, like Pride & Prejudice and Zombies (2016), Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012), or Snakes on a Plane (2006). The premise is so absurd, you’re trying to lure audiences in with the audacity of it. While most of those “gotcha” films are nowhere near as fun or absurd as their titles suggest, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a blast.
For starters, Hansel & Gretel moves at a quick gait. Ten minutes in and we’re in a montage of “newspaper clippings” of the siblings’ rise to witch-hunting fame (yes, there are “newspaper clippings” in fairytale Germany, because this film delights in anachronism with record players, machine guns, and wristwatches). The plot starts when we open on a town sheriff about to prosecute a woman for being a witch, only for Hansel & Gretel to swagger in, take one look at the woman and declare her innocent of witchcraft. It turns out that the mayor has hired the pair to find the witch that has been kidnapping local children. The sheriff, upset that he’s been shown up by these outsiders, challenges Gretel’s authority. In response she headbutts him, causing his nose to break with a gush of blood.
The second thing Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters really has going for it, is just how bloody it is. Now, violence in films is a complicated topic, and it’s probably better to explore how each film uses violence than making generalizations. That being said, personally I find the prevalence of CGI figures being smashed together like action figures boring. It’s bloodless by every definition of the word. H&G:W commits to a comical level of goriness, and I appreciate that. It isn’t surprising, considering the director is Tommy Wirkola, best known before this for Dead Snow, a gory, pulpy film about zombie nazis with the amazing tagline: “Eins, Zwei, Die!”
There’s a scene that perfectly encapsulates the film. Hansel & Gretel are in a tavern discussing the mechanics of the MacGuffin, when a fanboy comes to gush about them and show him his book of anachronistic newspaper clippings. As this is happening, a local hunter who has been cursed by the Big Bad Evil Witch, comes in to deliver a message as he stammers and shakes. Knowing what’s about to happen, Hansel moves the fanboy in front of him. The Hunter explodes into worms and viscera, coating the tavern, fanboy, and Gretel. “The Curse of Hunger for Crawling Things. I fucking hate that one,” Gretel says, blood and guts dripping off of her. It’s all there, the steampunk anachronisms, the gore, the “gives no fuck” attitudes of the protagonists.
I could not find a place to put this in the essay, but it’s revealed that being forced to eat so much candy as a child gave Hansel the “sugar sickness” and now he needs to give himself timed shots or he’ll die instantly. Pictured here is his wrist watch and syringe. That’s right, he has… MAGICAL DIABETES
Now while I’ve spent paragraphs talking about how surprisingly enjoyable this movie is, and it is a good popcorn flick, the reason why this film has stuck in my head for years is because of how it conceives of its witches. In this world, witches are apparently an all female species who are, in Dungeons and Dragons parlance, all chaotically evil. Also their use of dark magic turns them ugly. The witches look and act like Buffy demons - they have human level intelligence clearly, but they move animalistically and can enter a choreographed hand-to-hand fight easily. However, when Hansel & Gretel discover the remains of their old house near this town, the truth is revealed. It turns out there are good witches, white witches, who aren’t ugly and don’t use magic to harm people. Not only is Mina revealed to be a white witch, but so was H&G’s mom, and by that extension so is Gretel. BBEW captures Gretel because she needs the heart of a great white witch to complete the evil ritual, but Mina uses her magic to enhance Hansel’s weapons and they go to the Dark Sabbath, and gatling gun a bunch of witches in a ridiculous massacre.
The film wraps up in the place where it all started, the candy house, with a two-on-one fight between Hansel, Gretel and BBEW, where the siblings beat the shit out of her and then brutally behead her with a shovel. Mina ends up sacrificing herself, but Hansel, Gretel, fanboy and their new troll friend continue on, as the adventure continues setting up for a sequel that will never happen.
I think if I were in the writing room of this movie, I might raise my hand and say, “Hey, is it weird that literally every adult woman in this movie is a witch? Do you think having an all female species whose morality is also tied to how good-looking they are might be stepping into some hot water.” For me, this schlocky action film is a perfect illustration of how the cultural conception of “the witch” has changed and the tension that comes with that. On one hand, we have the witch as an unrepentant, uncomplicated monster. These witches are unambiguously evil so the audience has no problem enjoying the level of violence inflicted on them. On the other hand though, in the 21st century we also have the idea of the witch as a victim. The witch becomes a symbol of the unfairly prosecuted outsider, subject to the madness of the crowd. When Hansel & Gretel save Mina, it’s shown as these experts correcting some hicks. The movie tries to have their cake and eat it two by neatly dividing its witch species into two - the ones you feel okay seeing brutally murdered and those you don’t. I haven’t seen many films that are so blatant and insistent about having no moral gray areas.
Hansel has a bit of ending narration:
“We know who we are now, so do they. They know our story, our powers, what we can do, and they should fear us, all of us. There are good witches in the world, we know that now, but for the ones practicing the black arts, beware. We’re coming for you. No matter where you are we’ll find you and dead or alive we’ll take you down. My vote: dead.”
He says this as our group of heroes pulls a cart of bodies in the desert, before embarking on another high action adventure! And that my friends, is some powerful cognitive dissonance.