Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

Released Year: 2013
Directed by Tommy Wirkola

Casted by:
 Jeremy Renner as Hansel
Gemma Arterton as Gretel
Famke Janssen as Muriel
Pihla Viitala as Mina
Thomas Mann as Benjamin "Ben" Walser
 Story:
Abandoned by their father deep in a forest, young Hansel and Gretel enter a gingerbread house and are captured by an evil, cannibalistic witch. The witch forces Hansel to continuously eat candy to fatten him up while enslaving Gretel and ordering her to prepare the oven, but the siblings outsmart her and she is roasted alive. In the fifteen years that follow, Hansel and Gretel become professional witch hunters, famed for seeking out and destroying hundreds of witches. The pair find that they are somehow immune to spells and curses, but the incident in the gingerbread house has left Hansel diabetic. He needs a shot of insulin every few hours or he will get sick and die.

Hansel and Gretel arrive in the town of Augsburg and immediately prevent Sheriff Berringer from executing a young accused witch named Mina, who Hansel decides is innocent. Mayor Englemann tells the crowd that he has hired the siblings to rescue several children who were presumably abducted by local witches. Berringer hires other hunters for the same mission in the hopes of disgracing the mayor and cementing his power. All but one of the sheriff's party are killed that night by the powerful grand witch Muriel, who sends one man back to the town tavern as a warning to the locals. Hansel and Gretel, along with the mayor's deputy Jackson, capture one of Muriel's witches and interrogate her. They discover that Muriel is preparing for the coming Blood Moon, where she plan to sacrifice twelve children in order to grant the witches an immunity to their weakness, fire. Muriel, accompanied by her witches and a troll servant named Edward, attack the town and abduct the final child. Muriel kills Jackson and launches Gretel out a window, rendering her unconscious. Gretel is rescued by Ben, a local teenager who is a fan of theirs and plans to be a witch hunter himself. Hansel grabs onto one witch's broomstick, but falls and is lost in the forest.

The next morning, Hansel is found stuck up a tree by Mina. She takes him to a nearby spring where she heals his wounds and makes love to him. Gretel searches for Hansel in the forest but is attacked by Sheriff Berringer and his posse. The men capture and beat Gretel before being stopped by Edward, who kills the sheriff and his men. Edward tends Gretel's wounds and tells her that he helped her because trolls serve witches. Hansel and Gretel reunite at an abandoned cabin, which they discover is both a witch's lair and their childhood home. Muriel appears in front of them, telling them the truth of their past. She reveals that Hansel and Gretel's mother was a grand white witch named Adrianna who married a farmer, and this is the reason Hansel and Gretel are immune to black magic. On the night of the last Blood Moon, Muriel planned to use the heart of a white witch to complete her potion. She found Adrianna too powerful and decided to use Gretel's heart instead. To get rid of Adrianna, Muriel revealed to the townspeople that Adrianna was a witch. The townspeople burned her alive and hanged Hansel and Gretel's father. Following this revelation, the siblings battle Muriel before she stabs Hansel and abducts Gretel for the ritual.

Hansel wakes up with Mina, who reveals herself to be a white witch. She heals his wounds again and uses the Abramelin grimoire that was found in the house to bless Hansel's arsenal of weapons. Hansel, Mina, and Ben head out to disrupt the Witches' Sabbath at a neaby mountain. Using the blessed guns, Hansel and Mina attack a large gathering of dark witches who came there from all over the world, massacring them and freeing the children. In the midst of the slaughter, Edward defies Muriel's orders and releases Gretel before Muriel throws him off the cliff. Some witches attempt to flee the carnage but are killed by traps, and Muriel too tries to escape on a broomstick but is downed by Ben. Hansel pursues her immediately while Gretel stops to revive Edward. Hansel and Mina follow Muriel's trail and battle her at the original gingerbread house. Muriel injures Ben and kills Mina before Gretel arrives. The siblings and Muriel then engage in a vicious fight that ends with Muriel being decapitated by Gretel, and her head being thrown into the oven, and Gretel picking up Muriel's magic wand, which responds to her touch. Back in Augsburg, they burn a heap of witches on a pyre and collect their reward.

Hansel and Gretel head out on their next hunt, now accompanied by Ben and Edward. Before the credits roll, they are all seen at work tracking down and slaying witches in a desert.
 L² Scored: 5/10

L² Comment:
Back in the old days of western & european countries, witches are known to be evil, very well being the presenter of the halloween night, am i right? So why don't i watch a witch movie during the chinese ghost month? lol

Back to the movie, this movie is make to be the sequel of the German's folklore fairy tale "Hansel & Gratel"... i kinda like this idea, but the storyline is a bit simple and not exciting enough... the most funny thing is to see Famke Janssen as the witch haha~ 

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