'The Witches' Review
PG: Scary images/moments, language, and thematic elements
Runtime: 1 Hr and 45 Minutes
Production Companies: ImageMovers, Necropia Entertainment, Esperanto Filmoj
Distributors: Warner Bros. Pictures
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writers: Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci
Release Date: October 22, 2020 (HBO Max)
Reimagining Roald Dahl's beloved story for a modern audience, Robert Zemeckis's visually innovative film tells the darkly humorous and heartwarming tale of a young orphaned boy who, in late 1967, goes to live with his loving Grandma in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis. As the boy and his grandmother encounter some deceptively glamorous but thoroughly diabolical witches, she wisely whisks him away to a seaside resort. Regrettably, they arrive at precisely the same time that the world's Grand High Witch has gathered her fellow cronies from around the globe — undercover — to carry out her nefarious plans.
Beloved director and uncanny valley aficionado Robert Zemeckis has been on a losing streak lately, directing failure after failure for the last… When was Flight? 2012? Yeah, let’s say 8 years. Now he’s back with a feature adaptation of Roald Dahl’s beloved book The Witches. The film was originally set for a theatrical release, but in a last-ditch effort by WarnerMedia, they shifted its release to HBO Max. That was a smart move because this film would’ve bombed if it was sent to theaters.
Anne Hathaway, honey, you are trying your best. Hathaway delivers a fun, over-the-top performance as the Grand High Witch. Despite doing a weird Russian accent, she tries her best to make the weak material work. She clearly had a fun time as the big, bad witch queen and relishing in the character’s nastiness.
If there’s an area in The Witches that impresses me thoroughly, it’s the production design. Since this film takes place in the late ‘60s, all of the interior locations, especially the hotel, aesthetically pop. It all fits the era perfectly. The same can be said for the wardrobe and costume designs.
Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 adaptation of The Witches was fun and memorable for three reasons: Anjelica Huston, creative horror sequences, and most importantly, the use of practical effects. When you’re working alongside the Jim Henson Company, you know the production is going to be special and an effort will be made to create a realistic and terrifying experience. When you ask someone like Robert Zemeckis — a filmmaker who has become a CGI addict — to remake The Witches, it’s not surprising that it results in a weak, dull, and weightless CGI fest that feels like it was made 10 years too late.
The CGI in Zemeckis’s movies are either really good or absolutely god awful. There’s no inbetween. The Witches falls into the latter category. Once the film reaches its second act, it becomes over-reliant on the use of CG effects, which look more cartoonish than anything else. The animation isn’t completely rendered and it comes off as either disturbing or weightless. Instead of being a family horror flick, The Witches aims for an adventure-based angle. Most of the “action” sequences are CGI-heavy and involve things like mice scurrying.
As much as I’m riffing on the CGI, I have to give credit where credit is due: for someone who can be considered the master of uncanniness, Zemeckis does not disappoint. What’s a Robert Zemeckis movie without a little nightmare fuel? It’s his signature trademark. There are brief moments of horror that are actually terrifying. The witches are designed to be visually repulsive and it works. Granted, they don’t even look like witches. Imagine if Mileena and Baraka from Mortal Kombat procreated and had bald children with huge, fanged teeth. However, the majority of the horror truly comes from the transformation sequences as kids are turned into mice, especially since it was rushed and done poorly.
The screenplay has a bizarre barrage of writers involved. It’s written by Kenya Barris, Guillermo del Toro and Zemeckis. For some reason, you can smell all the pieces that each writer contributed. For starters, it’s a period piece set in America and focuses on an orphaned Black kid who loses his parents in a car crash and must live with his grandmother. This is definitely Barris’s department because it has the classic Black southern atmosphere. Agatha is written to be the generic but caring grandmother who applies God to everything and cooks stereotypically Black meals for Charlie, like fried chicken and cornbread. Of course the only thing that prevented me from rolling my eyes to the back of my skull was Spencer’s committed and charming performance. That woman can make gold out of water.
The hotel setting becomes a tug of war between the three screenwriters as it often explores different tones and goes through the motions, resulting in the film having little to no identity. While its ending actually remains faithful to the source material, the majority of the film is dull and uneventful. It lacks excitement and even the violent climax feels anticlimactic.
Watching this poor adaptation made it clear why Zemeckis has taken a nosedive in the past decade. The man is too preoccupied filming each project in a gimmicky style that belongs in the early 2010s. Remember when nearly every other movie that utilized CG effects was being released in 3D so that it could provide more of a cinematic experience with objects popping out towards you instead of being good, memorable movies? One of the leaders of that pack was Robert Zemeckis. Can somebody please take his CGI toy box away and tell him that the 2010s are over? This style of filmmaking has completely run its course. He did a great job with The Walk, but outside of its IMAX 3D experience, it wasn’t memorable at all. As heartbreaking as it is to say, the more he relies on CGI for his projects, the weaker his effectiveness as a filmmaker gets. If there’s anything The Witches (2020) is good for, it's to introduce kids to the ‘90s film and teach them the effectiveness of practical effects and how that technique of production is far more grand, timely, and realistic than this weightless CGI trash.
