The film draws out the inherent horror of gender politics that exist within such stories, and moves Gretel’s coming-of-age to the forefront.
It’s a big bad world out there and the latest film from horror director Oz Perkins gives us just a taste of it. Orion Pictures’ Gretel & Hansel is a reimagining of the well-known Grimm’s fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, which sees two orphaned siblings Gretel (Sophia Lillis) and Hansel (Samuel Leakey) encounter a witch (Alice Krige) in the woods with her own designs for the children. In terms of narrative, the film’s deviations from the classic Brothers Grimm story are only slight. But in filling in the gaps of an already horrific tale, Perkins and screenwriter Rob Hayes give the familiar story a new sense of thematic urgency and frightful purpose.
So much of the horror genre stems from fairy tales: sinister witches, hungry wolves posing as men, merfolk, misunderstood beasts and child-stealing creatures, all bound by particular sets of rules. The stories that enchanted us as children have found their way to frighten us as adults. So many of these fairy tales have lost their original bite, expressly because they have been adapted and had their edges sanded down in the efforts to match our changing notions of what’s suitable for children. Disney, of course, has been a large part of this process, straying from the original darkness and tragedy that comprised the stories of The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, and making products that are magical, yet safe. But there’s nothing safe about these stories, and Gretel & Hansel is evidence of that.
One of the things Perkins’ film has going for it is that it, surprisingly doesn’t have a Disney adaptation to contend with in order to struggle against preconceived notions. Still, the film doesn’t so much as depart from our awareness of these stories as work within them, and its PG-13 rating is