Anna Daniels
Gretel and Hansel hopes to update the familiar fairytale into something new and spooky, and it just might pull it off. The new Oz Perkins movie looks fairly creepy, with a lot of style and plenty of scary imagery. A new Gretel and Hansel featurette takes us into the world of the film, with Perkins talking about what he’s trying to do with his horrific fairy tale.
Gretel and Hansel Featurette
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekG_N8fRiFI?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
Oz Perkins’ movies aren’t for everyone. Some may find The Blackcoat’s Daughter and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House too slow for their tastes, but for me, they’re just right. I dig the creepy vibe he imbues he films with, which is why I’m looking forward to Gretel and Hansel. Perkins is taking the classic story of a pair of siblings who run afoul of a hungry witch and turning it into something new. It’s still not clear what’s going on here – the trailers are vague and mysterious – but it’s obvious the plot involves a lot more than gingerbread houses and trails of breadcrumbs.
In the featurette above, Perkins discusses “embracing the scary feeling of fairytales”, while Alice Krige, who plays the witch in the movie, speaks of how Perkins has brought a type of “magical realism” to the tale. “We tried to find a way to make it more of a coming of age story,” Perkins previously told EW. “I wanted Gretel to be somewhat older than Hansel, so it didn’t feel like two twelve-year-olds — rather a sixteen-year-old and an eight-year-old. There was more of a feeling like Gretel having to take Hansel around everywhere she goes, and how that can impede one’s own evolution, how our attachments and the things that we love can sometimes get in the way of our growth.”
In Gretel and Hansel, “A long time ago in a distant fairytale countryside, a young girl (Sophia Lillis, It) leads her little brother (Sammy Leakey) into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.”
Gretel and Hansel opens January 31, 2020.
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