Horst_In_Translation Review of Wild Witch

Wild Witch (2018)

Epic ambitions, limited talent - the only wild thing here is how the film lacks focus and feels all over the place

[4/10 · 27 October 2018]

"Vildheks" or "Wildwitch" is a new co-production between several European countries that resulted in this Danish-language movie directed by Kaspar Munk. It runs for a bit over 1.5 hours and is based on a novel by Lene Kaaberbøl. Munk himself is one of three writers here adapting the original material and I find it pretty disappointing how so many worked on the script and how disappointing it all turned out. The first problem is really that there is zero comedy in here, zero light moments at all and it takes itself completely seriously from start to finish. But it has no right to do so. There are many inclusions that you could expect from a 100-million dollar budget fantasy epic really story-wise, but the talent is absolutely not there to make these work. i would not really include most of the cast here. They do their best with what they are given, but they do not shine exactly either. Besides, there are even some plot developments that do not make any sense. They put so much emphasis on how everybody is safe inside the area, but the girl lived outside the area for over a decade and yet nobody tried to harm her despite the evil forces knowing who her mother is. Well, these evil forces are basically one person only, a wicked witch named Chimera and she is so bad and powerful that she threatens to destroy the whole wild world, yet she cannot kill a single boy/cat, a single dog or a little girl who knows nothing about her powers at all. It just doesn't make any sense. Speaking about the boy/cat, it was obvious from the very start that he is the cat, so yeah extremely predictable plot twist that eventually feels pointless even. A lot more feels pointless, such as the man running around near the shack in the second half. What was his purpose? The moment the film hits rock bottom is when the two girls open the gate that leads them to the main antagonist. Their singing and the cringeworthy "I need to go alone" moment that followed were difficult to stomach. She says she cannot explain why she needs to go alone. Oh well.. we in the audience don't know either. Looking at how many animals are included in this movie, it is another example of quantity over quality, even if some of them were nice to watch, but the glowing lizards etc. just needed better stories revolving around them. And what was with the weird chinchilla scene. Or the ending, i.e. the very final scene. I think it was supposed to show us how she is not sticking with false friends anymore? I don't know. It was all very bizarred and not in a good way. A disappointing film given Denmark's quality generally. Don't watch. If you want to see an actually good with-themed film mostly for kids, go for the most recent German take on Preussler's "Die kleine Hexe" starrking karoline Herfurth. That one is superior to this one here from every perspective really.