On Gretel and Hansel

Full review up soon, but here’s a sample of my thoughts regarding the movie, as well as my final score:

I don’t mean this to be a major insult but it felt like everyone involved in the making of the movie set out to do an “A24” sort of movie, but failed to commit fully to the idea. The result is a half-measure that failed to land.

An A24 horror film is patient, atmospheric, often esoteric. They’re nothing like the pop-culture/main-stream sort of horror movies, that rely on quips and jump scares and simplistic supernatural elements. A24 films create a feeling of dread and rely on a palpable, unshakable mood to keep the audience unsettled. Pop-horror movies—after you’ve seen them a time or two and know where all the “scary moments” are—tend to become tedious and boring. You realize that they have long stretches of nothing in between fleeting “moments” (literally) of scares.

Really, they’re not even “scares;” they’re “surprises.”

A24 movies (and again, I know this makes me sound super pretentious and I don’t mean to be) often, in my experience, are able to be revisited time and again, with that same foreboding and unsettling feeling coming back every time you watch. When you watch The Conjuring (a very well-made pop-horror film) enough times, you know when every scary moment is going to happen, so you’re not scared anymore. Can it really be called a horror film at that point? If you’re not scared what are you even watching the movie for? You’re not watching it; you’re just sitting through it.

On the other hand, I can watch Hereditary for the umpteenth time and still walk away with a mildly upset stomach.

Gretel and Hansel wants to be an A24-sort of horror movie. It has long, slow takes, a lot of slightly unnatural, almost dreamlike, dialogue, bizarre imagery with little explanation, and a moody atmosphere. Where it stumbles is in a failure to fully embrace those ideas, or to trust that the movie can work with just those ideas. It’s made with a lot of confidence but I wonder if producer notes didn’t interfere with Osgood Perkins’ vision for the movie.

The movie feels like a missed opportunity. It was so close to becoming a cult favorite, had it only been a little more daring. I think the people in charge got cold feet and watered the film down in the hopes of creating a mainstream, pop-horror hit. Instead, the movie will be forgotten in a month and rarely commented on again.

7/10 – Gretel and Hansel’s greatest sin is that it’s only okay, when it could have been so much more.