Taking Snow White out of the Sanitized Disney Version and showing it more as the Brothers Grimm originally had it makes this a shock for most viewers.
This is a very good ensemble cast with reliably fine actors like Sam Neill, Sigourney Weaver, Gil Bellows etc. I had already seen Monica Keena as a high school rape victim on Law and Order and knew she could act as well as another episode with Gil Bellows (along with a very young Phillip Seymour Hoffman) as a gang rapist. Everybody any good turns up on some incarnation of Law and Order eventually and often when they are just starting out.
Although there are supernatural elements I like the way they showed the evil stepmother as basically mentally ill and perhaps manipulated by something evil living in her mirror. Her misguided maternal instincts gives her motivation to sink to any depth of depravity.
While good still saves the day for most of the main characters it is a far creepier and yet realistic journey to get there. I own this on DVD and watch is occasionally. It holds up over time as a more than fractured fairy tale.
This is a very good ensemble cast with reliably fine actors like Sam Neill, Sigourney Weaver, Gil Bellows etc. I had already seen Monica Keena as a high school rape victim on Law and Order and knew she could act as well as another episode with Gil Bellows (along with a very young Phillip Seymour Hoffman) as a gang rapist. Everybody any good turns up on some incarnation of Law and Order eventually and often when they are just starting out.
Although there are supernatural elements I like the way they showed the evil stepmother as basically mentally ill and perhaps manipulated by something evil living in her mirror. Her misguided maternal instincts gives her motivation to sink to any depth of depravity.
While good still saves the day for most of the main characters it is a far creepier and yet realistic journey to get there. I own this on DVD and watch is occasionally. It holds up over time as a more than fractured fairy tale.