A long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside, a young girl leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.
A soon-to-be stepmom is snowed in with her fiancé's two children at a remote holiday village. Just as relations begin to thaw between the trio, some strange and frightening events take place.
A crew of oceanic researchers working for a deep sea drilling company try to get to safety after a mysterious earthquake devastates their deepwater research and drilling facility located at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
Director:
William Eubank
Stars:
Kristen Stewart,
Vincent Cassel,
Mamoudou Athie
When the owner and operator of a luxurious island invites a collection of guests to live out their most elaborate fantasies in relative seclusion, chaos quickly descends.
A defiant teenage boy, struggling with his parents' imminent divorce, faces off with a thousand year-old witch, who is living beneath the skin of and posing as the woman next door.
Directors:
Brett Pierce,
Drew T. Pierce
Stars:
John-Paul Howard,
Piper Curda,
Jamison Jones
Twelve strangers wake up in a clearing. They don't know where they are, or how they got there. They don't know they've been chosen - for a very specific purpose - The Hunt.
A young governess is hired by a man who has become responsible for his young nephew and niece after their parents' deaths. A modern take on Henry James' novella "The Turn of the Screw."
Director:
Floria Sigismondi
Stars:
Mackenzie Davis,
Finn Wolfhard,
Brooklynn Prince
When Cecilia's abusive ex takes his own life and leaves her his fortune, she suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of coincidences turn lethal, Cecilia works to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.
Director:
Leigh Whannell
Stars:
Elisabeth Moss,
Oliver Jackson-Cohen,
Harriet Dyer
Gretel and Hansel live in the countryside with their mother. When times are hard and Gretel cannot seem to find a job, their mother sends the children out of home to care for themselves. They have to journey through the dark forest without clothes and supplies. And just as they are starving, they come upon a house with good-smelling food, and decide to temporarily stay there in a care of an old woman. However, as they recover from fatigue and hunger in the house, they uncover suspicious things which might prevent them from getting to their destination at all.Written by
heyitsnuel
At one point a song floats over the soundtrack: "My mother, she killed me, my father, he ate me, and my little sister, my bones she kept, what a pretty bird am I!" This comes from another Grimm fairy tale, "The Juniper Tree,"widely considered by scholars as the darkest of all their tales. In it, a spiteful mother beheads her stepson and blames it on her daughter. She then cooks the corpse and feeds it to his husband, as the daughter picks up the bones from under the table and plants it under a juniper tree on the family's garden. A small bird appears from the grave, singing the song in question while picking a pair of new shoes, a gold chain and a mill stone, and then carries them to the house. The bird then gives the shoes to the daughter, the chain to the father and drops the stone on the stepmother, killing her. As she dies, the bird turns into a boy again and the story ends. The film borrows some thematic elements this tale. See more »
Goofs
The younger witch is shown with various tattoos of magical symbols on her body, particularly stars and the pentagram. However, she also strangely has what looks like a Star of David on her arm, which symbolizes the Jewish faith and is not connected to sorcery. See more »
Quotes
Hansel:
Tell me the fairy tale again.
Gretel:
It's too scary, you'll start seeing things that aren't there.
See more »
Oz Perkins, director of the overlooked spookfest called "The Blackcoat's Daughter" (and "I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House" which I regretfully haven't seen yet), serves up a new rendition of Grimm Brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel" with a twist - it's now called "Gretel and Hansel". Suppose they wanted the female character to be named first. Jokes aside, "Gretel & Hansel" is a visually arresting and atmospherically (really trying to be) rich horror tale with a script so lacking it hurts.
I wonder what did Osgood think when he read the script by Rob Hayes, for whom this was the debut in writing a full feature. It seems to me that the director has truly tried to fill a rather eventless script with his by-now-trademark-style (admittedly, the assumption comes from comparing only two movies) atmospheric shock devices. I cannot think of a better word than "spooky" - Perkins definitely has find his own interesting and effective filmmaking approach to horror. The story - which we all more or less know - has been spiced up a little, but the problem is that it halts to a long and nearly tedious stop already after the first act. The first half an hour is arguably the most entertaining one & the ever-awaited witch only appears at the end of it. Gretel and Hansel even trip balls on some fly agaric. After the repetitive and streteched-out second act, the third delivers a little more of the goodies and an perhaps unexpected ending, that's not to say it's very satisfying. "Gretel & Hansel" possesses two great cards, one of which are the performances by a decent ensemble of actors, from which the highlight belongs to Alice Krige in the skin of the witchy witch. The other card is by far the strongest and that is the all-around amazing visual design of the movie, from extraordinary-feeling cinematography to perfect coloring, good editing & subtly odd but interesting original score. Also, as far as pg13 horror movies usually go, this one's one of the most serious and limit-reaching I've seen.
It's the screenplay that punches itself in the nose with its uneven nature, lack of any real substance and a few silly dialogue lines as a bonus. I suppose the apparent and consistent female perspective does wonders for some viewers, but those changes did not save the movie. Other than that, a great art-house fairy tale if You just give it a chance. My rating: 6/10.
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Oz Perkins, director of the overlooked spookfest called "The Blackcoat's Daughter" (and "I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House" which I regretfully haven't seen yet), serves up a new rendition of Grimm Brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel" with a twist - it's now called "Gretel and Hansel". Suppose they wanted the female character to be named first. Jokes aside, "Gretel & Hansel" is a visually arresting and atmospherically (really trying to be) rich horror tale with a script so lacking it hurts.
I wonder what did Osgood think when he read the script by Rob Hayes, for whom this was the debut in writing a full feature. It seems to me that the director has truly tried to fill a rather eventless script with his by-now-trademark-style (admittedly, the assumption comes from comparing only two movies) atmospheric shock devices. I cannot think of a better word than "spooky" - Perkins definitely has find his own interesting and effective filmmaking approach to horror. The story - which we all more or less know - has been spiced up a little, but the problem is that it halts to a long and nearly tedious stop already after the first act. The first half an hour is arguably the most entertaining one & the ever-awaited witch only appears at the end of it. Gretel and Hansel even trip balls on some fly agaric. After the repetitive and streteched-out second act, the third delivers a little more of the goodies and an perhaps unexpected ending, that's not to say it's very satisfying. "Gretel & Hansel" possesses two great cards, one of which are the performances by a decent ensemble of actors, from which the highlight belongs to Alice Krige in the skin of the witchy witch. The other card is by far the strongest and that is the all-around amazing visual design of the movie, from extraordinary-feeling cinematography to perfect coloring, good editing & subtly odd but interesting original score. Also, as far as pg13 horror movies usually go, this one's one of the most serious and limit-reaching I've seen.
It's the screenplay that punches itself in the nose with its uneven nature, lack of any real substance and a few silly dialogue lines as a bonus. I suppose the apparent and consistent female perspective does wonders for some viewers, but those changes did not save the movie. Other than that, a great art-house fairy tale if You just give it a chance. My rating: 6/10.