This is a more horror-oriented version of the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", in which Snow White, in this case named Lilliana, or "Lila" (Monica Keena), has to deal with a psycho stepmother, named Claudia Hoffman (Sigourney Weaver) here, and ends up living with the seven dwarfs, or in this case, one dwarf and seven "rogues of the forest".
Snow White as a horror tale sounds like a good deal, and for the most part, it is when it comes to this film. However, there were a couple flaws that brought down my score to an 8 out of 10, but overall, this is a very good movie, well worth watching.
Let's get the flaws out of the way first--there are only two. The first is that some of the performances can tend towards melodrama, especially since director Michael Cohn does his best to ensure that no humor enters the proceedings. It's a very slight flaw, however, and is barely enough to subtract a point. On the whole, the performances here are very good, especially Keena and Weaver, and they are the focus of the film.
The more serious flaw is that a number of important developments in the plot go unexplained. There may have been an assumption that the audience is so familiar with the source material that they would be able to figure out these leaps, but most of the audience will only be familiar with filmic versions of Snow White, especially the Disney version. Questions such as "How did she awaken? Why did she spit the apple out?" are most easily answered by those with a familiarity with the original Brothers Grimm story. However, that's probably not a huge percentage of the film's audience. Having to piece together some of the plot is enough to draw the viewer out of the film's world a bit, and in conjunction with the melodrama, was significant enough for me to subtract two points.
But this film does a huge number of things right. It's clear from the opening scene, where Lilliana's parents are on their way home, riding in a carriage through a menacing forest. Vicious wolves, perhaps looking for food, attack, and the carriage goes tumbling down a hill. Lilliana's mother, pregnant and close to giving birth, is fatally wounded, and her father, Friedrich Hoffman (Sam Neill, playing a character undoubtedly named after E.T.A. Hoffman, another famous 19th Century fantasy writer), at Lilliana's request, cuts the baby out to save it, thereby also killing the mother. Although this isn't graphically shown, we do see blood pouring down the snow, which is another reference to the Grimm text, and this leads to the titles.
That kind of horror material occurs throughout the film. Make no mistake, this is not your typical family fare. We have hints of incest, cannibalism, rape, shrines to dead babies that later come back to life, and so on. Horror fans who also love more straightforward fantasy, such as myself, will love it, and in a way, it is much more consistent with the tone of the typical Brothers Grimm story (although the script is as far removed from this particular tale as Disney's is). Anyone with a more "sensitive" constitution should probably avoid the film, or at least make sure that they don't begin watching with preconceptions of a live action version of Disney's film.
Despite its flaws, this is a gem of a horror film--horror is "dark fantasy" after all--and deserves to be more well known.
Snow White as a horror tale sounds like a good deal, and for the most part, it is when it comes to this film. However, there were a couple flaws that brought down my score to an 8 out of 10, but overall, this is a very good movie, well worth watching.
Let's get the flaws out of the way first--there are only two. The first is that some of the performances can tend towards melodrama, especially since director Michael Cohn does his best to ensure that no humor enters the proceedings. It's a very slight flaw, however, and is barely enough to subtract a point. On the whole, the performances here are very good, especially Keena and Weaver, and they are the focus of the film.
The more serious flaw is that a number of important developments in the plot go unexplained. There may have been an assumption that the audience is so familiar with the source material that they would be able to figure out these leaps, but most of the audience will only be familiar with filmic versions of Snow White, especially the Disney version. Questions such as "How did she awaken? Why did she spit the apple out?" are most easily answered by those with a familiarity with the original Brothers Grimm story. However, that's probably not a huge percentage of the film's audience. Having to piece together some of the plot is enough to draw the viewer out of the film's world a bit, and in conjunction with the melodrama, was significant enough for me to subtract two points.
But this film does a huge number of things right. It's clear from the opening scene, where Lilliana's parents are on their way home, riding in a carriage through a menacing forest. Vicious wolves, perhaps looking for food, attack, and the carriage goes tumbling down a hill. Lilliana's mother, pregnant and close to giving birth, is fatally wounded, and her father, Friedrich Hoffman (Sam Neill, playing a character undoubtedly named after E.T.A. Hoffman, another famous 19th Century fantasy writer), at Lilliana's request, cuts the baby out to save it, thereby also killing the mother. Although this isn't graphically shown, we do see blood pouring down the snow, which is another reference to the Grimm text, and this leads to the titles.
That kind of horror material occurs throughout the film. Make no mistake, this is not your typical family fare. We have hints of incest, cannibalism, rape, shrines to dead babies that later come back to life, and so on. Horror fans who also love more straightforward fantasy, such as myself, will love it, and in a way, it is much more consistent with the tone of the typical Brothers Grimm story (although the script is as far removed from this particular tale as Disney's is). Anyone with a more "sensitive" constitution should probably avoid the film, or at least make sure that they don't begin watching with preconceptions of a live action version of Disney's film.
Despite its flaws, this is a gem of a horror film--horror is "dark fantasy" after all--and deserves to be more well known.