Susan Granger’s review of “The Witches” (HBO Max)
Back in 1990, Nicolas Roeg made a terrifying version of Roald Dahl’s children’s novel, starring Anjelica Huston as the villainess, utilizing anthropomorphic mice from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. When Dahl saw the result, he wrote Henson, deploring the “vulgarity, bad taste and actual terror displayed.”
In this new remake narrated by Chris Rock, director Robert Zemeckis opts for macabre silliness although, at times, it also gets a bit too intense for impressionable youngsters.
Shifting the locale from 1980s England to late 1960s Alabama, the story is told by an eight year-old Black lad (Jahzir Kadeem Bruno) whose parents died in a car crash. When he goes to live with his maternal Grandma (Octavia Spencer), she feeds him cornbread and gives him a tiny white mouse that he names Daisy (voiced by Kristin Chenoweth).
One day, at the grocery store, he’s approached by a bizarre woman (Josette Simon) offering him candy. Soon afterward, Grandma warns him about witches, noting they always wear long gloves to hide their claws and wigs to cover their bald-and-blistered heads.
Sending danger, Grandma calls in a ‘favor’ from a cousin and seeks refuge at the Grand Orleans Imperial Island Hotel on the Gulf of Mexico. She’s sure they’ll be safe there because the resort is filled with rich, white folk – and she believes that witches primarily prey on the poor.
But that luxurious beachfront hotel is just where the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) is meeting with her coven, secretly teaching them how to turn children into mice, utilizing “Formula 86.”
Originally conceived by Guillermo del Toro, who shares screenwriting credit with Zemeckis and Kenya Barris, as a stop-motion animation feature, it’s now a live-action fantasy.
While the CG chase scenes are diverting, there seems little reason for this muddled remake. Octavia Spencer oozes warmth, but Anne Hathaway must have practiced her pseudo-European accent at the bottom of a cauldron because she’s often unintelligible.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Witches” is a creepy 5 – not as bewitching as it should be.
