20s Movie Review - The Witches

Director: Robert Zemeckeis
Genre: Fantasy/ Adventure/ Family
Runtime: 106 minutes
Year: 2020
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci, Chris Rock

Description: A young boy and his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) have a run-in with a coven of witches and their leader (Anne Hathaway).

Review: “The Witches” is a visually overwhelming and unbalanced remake that misses the mark by a wide margin. While the 1990 original struck a perfect balance between horror and childhood nostalgia, this modern retelling gets bogged down with bad CGI.

The film follows a young orphaned boy who movies in with his loving grandmother in Alabama in the late 1960s. After they encounter a mysterious woman, Grandma decides to flee to a luxury hotel on the coast to escape her. Coincidentally, a glamorous yet terrifying group of witches arrives at that very same hotel for their annual gathering. Led by the Grand Witch, they hatch a terrible plan to turn all the children in the world into mice. When the boy and his new friends are actually transformed, they must find a way, as mice, to stop the witches.

Although director Robert Zemeckis has a star-studded cast that includes Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spences and Stanley Tucci, the film never really manages to capture the magic of Roald Dahl’s books. The biggest culprit is the overuse of CGI, which is truly terrible at times. The digital effects look unnatural and cheap, making the transformed mice and the Grand High Witch’s terrifying smile come across as laughable rather than believable.

In addition, the film suffers from an identity crisis. The tone veers all over the place: at times, the atmosphere is far too grim for (young) children, with disturbing transformations and a menacing undertone. At the same time, it lacks genuine, palpable suspense. Fortunately, for the generation that grew up with the original, there is one consolation: no matter how gruesome this version sometimes tries to be, its still not as traumatic as the 90s version from my childhood. Anjelica Huston’s terrifying, hand-crafted transformation remains the ultimate nightmare. One that this soulless CGI remake has absolutely no chance of dethroning.

Rating: 2/ 5