What I Liked: The first half is pretty dark, especially for
a kids movie.
All of the makeup effects look great even though they can
get kinda cartoony at times.
Anjelica Huston (The
Addams Family) gives an over the top performance as the Grand High Witch
that’s damn fun to watch. She has a spooky
witch look to her to begin with so the casting was spot on for this role.
The supporting players are excellent. Bruno’s father was particularly
entertaining. The guy is such a dick
with his constant complaining and arrogant attitude. I could watch a whole film of just him and the
Grand High Witch sharing awkward scenes together.
What I Didn’t Like: Unfortunately the second half really
turns on the kid movie-ness with cute mice animatronics and general shenanigans.
This may seem kinda mean but the lead kid who plays Luke is
not a very good actor. He’s better when
he doesn’t say anything because I do think his facial expressions are
good. However, he’s…uhh…sorta terrible
with his dialogue.
The makeup and costume job they did for the Grand High Witch
looks outstanding but we only get it for one scene. It would’ve made sense to have her come back
into her natural gruesome form at the end for the finale. But they didn’t do that which leads to the next
problem…
*Spoiler on this last point* There’s no final battle. I guess it’s just how the book went (this was
based off Roald Dahl’s book of the same name) but it doesn’t work very well, at
least in film form. The thing ends kind
of unsatisfactorily with one of the supporting characters killing the Grand
High Witch in her tiny rat form. That’s
bullshit. Luke’s grandmother should’ve
fought her. She would’ve settled a
decades old score by getting payback for the pinky the witch took from her
(that’s another problem, albeit a minor one, we never learn how the grandmother
lost her pinky to a witch). I’m sure
budgetary restraints plus an effort to follow the book prevented a bigger and
more fitting ending from materializing.
Overall Impression: I remember this being kinda creepy when
it came out and all these years later a bunch of that creepiness remains. The first half is really good and
surprisingly dark.
I love that they start by telling us how witches work in
this movie’s universe. They throw in a
lot of great details but some of them don’t even come into play, like that
witches have no toes. Really though, the
atmosphere is well set.
The bravado of this picture is kind of astounding if you
step back for a minute and think about it.
I mean one thing they do is kill off the parents after introducing them at
the beginning of the film (that’s not a spoiler by the way). That’s one of the ballsiest moves I’ve ever
seen in a kids movie. Usually if the
parents are dead then they died before the movie starts and they totally
could’ve done that here. But no. They wanted you see them alive and well and
then kill them off a minute later.
There’s also the Grand High Witch’s maniacal plot of killing
off every child in England. She doesn’t merely
want to murder more children than the year before, she wants to exterminate
them. This notion along with how the
Grand High Witch rallies the crowd with sweeping speaking power and the eastern
European accent and well…she’s Hitler essentially. I wonder if that was how Dahl wrote the
character or if that’s what they intentionally went with for the film or if it
was unintentional or what. And I really
don’t think this is a stretch. This
character is clearly modeled after Hitler.
Again, kinda dark for a kids movie if you ask me.
If you also throw in shit like the kids convulse while they
turn into mice and the Grand High Witch pushes a baby carriage down a hill
potentially to its death just to lure out Luke from hiding then you got a
pretty tilted production.
It’s no surprise that this wasn’t a hit and that it remains
somewhat obscure to this day. It doesn’t
get romanticized like other non-hits from the same era like The Monster Squad or Near Dark. Instead this one got quietly swept under the
carpet.
Look, The Witches
is no masterpiece but the first half alone is worth checking out for its eerie
and somewhat unconventional setup. If
you’re looking for something that isn’t very scary but at the same time has a
bit of a nasty edge then this just might be the ticket.
No comments:
Post a Comment