If the Jeremy Renner vehicle Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters deserves scorn for anything, it’s for inadvertently encouraging the mockbuster Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft into existence. It’s so bad, you’ll want to shove yourself into an oven.
In this flaccid effort at a contemporized fairy tale, orphaned siblings Hansel and Gretel Jonah and Ella (real-life siblings Booboo and Fivel Stewart, respectively) are sent to an elite private school that turns out to be — bleached shades of Suspiria! — founded by witches. Although on the surface overseen by Mr. Sebastian (Eric Roberts, DOA: Dead or Alive), the institution is ruled by a secret society called The Circle, constituted of magic-makers and spell-casters who have gone on to be presidents, CEOs and other captains of industry. Hansel and Gretel Jonah and Ella are destined to join so they can help fight a character who is revealed to be an evil witch, but whose identity you would guess far before the reveal. (I say “would,” because I implore you to avoid watching.)
Bearing the production values of porn, the obviously rushed Hansel & Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft aims for that teen-dream Twilight feel (a franchise being Booboo’s claim to fame) and succeeds, in that it is boring to the point of depression. The young Stewarts seem to be vying to out-not-act one another, and their bid is threatened by every young member among the compact, cost-efficient cast. Although leagues above in talent and screen appeal, Roberts, Vanessa Angel (Kingpin) and former Runaways vocalist Cherie Currie (Charles Band’s Parasite) can’t help but be tainted simply by association.
Not even on his best day would Daniel Day-Lewis be able to salvage such a stupid script by first-timer Larson Tretter (“Ella! I read in the paper you like pizza, right?”) or the lazy direction of the legendarily prolific David DeCoteau, whose bottom-drawer/bottom-dollar filmography includes Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, 1313: Giant Killer Bees! (exclamation his), and the cult curiosity A Talking Cat!?! (exclamations and question mark his). I know his budget for H&G:WOW had to be tight, but couldn’t he have grabbed three establishing shots of the campus instead of re-using the same one?!? —Rod Lott