Mark Reviews Movies: THE WITCHES (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 21, 2020

With The Witches, director Robert Zemeckis lets technology and disparate styles get in the way of a fine, twisted story. This is the second movie adaptation of the children's novel of the same name by Roald Dahl, following Nicolas Roeg's demented and potentially traumatizing adaptation from 1990. Those descriptions aren't meant as criticism, but praise, and the mere fact that likely no one will talk about this new adaptation in the same way is probably its most obvious shortcoming.

This version's screenplay, written by the director and Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, doesn't set out to update the tale. Indeed, it goes back in time to the 1960s—before either the first film or even the publication of Dahl's book in 1983. There's a certain quaintness to this decision, presenting a romanticized account of the era and backdrop (the Southern United States) that may be far from accurate (Our protagonists, a young Black boy and his grandmother, face only the suggestion of racial prejudice, for example) but does lull us into a sense of nostalgic security. Then, the witches show up to prove it false.

Zemeckis' primary idea of updating the material—likely and falsely seeing it as an upgrade—is to infuse it with all kinds of visual-effects trickery. The first sign of the director's intentions comes with the first appearance of a witch. While at a small-town general store, our young hero boy (played by Jahzir Bruno), as he's listed in the credits, encounters a woman offering him candy in her gloved, extended hand. Slithering down her sleeve, winding itself down and around her arm, comes a hissing snake.

The first thought of this sight is not fear, and the first impression of Zemeckis' approach to the scene is not that he's establishing the tone and basic premise of this story. No, the first thought is that the snake is an obviously digital creation. Our first impression of what Zemeckis is doing here is of trying to show off, ironically and without any apparent awareness, by taking the easy path.

While the filmmaker has embraced new and innovative technology for most of his career, Zemeckis' recent dabbling in trying to revolutionize movies exclusively within the digital realm (mostly his forays into computer animation, either as the entirety of the movie or as isolated sequences) has had mixed results. This outing is a mixed bag unto itself. It gets the setup right, from the cast, to the way the time period is incorporated for mood, and to the look of the grand hotel where most of the story takes place. Once it comes time for all the supernatural and magical elements to take over, though, the movie tries to let its shaky visual effects do all of the work.

After the death of his parents and moving in with his grandmother (played by Octavia Spencer) and meeting his first witch, our hero boy learns the scary truth: There are witches everywhere, looking to kill children or, better, doom them to lives in transformed states (A childhood friend of the grandmother was turned into a chicken). Grandma decides to take a brief vacation at a fancy hotel with the boy, hoping to get the witch from the store off his trail.

The gag, of course, is that they end up amidst a coven of witches, also visiting the hotel to enact a plan that will rid the entire world of children. Their leader is the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway, appropriately and menacingly chewing scenery in between lines spat out in a thick Scandinavian dialect), who has concocted a potion that transforms kids into mice. The witches will open candy shops around the world and spike the sweets with the magic liquid.

After he's discovered by the witches, our eavesdropping hero is turned into a mouse. The rest of the story has the mouse-boy—along with his grandmother and two other children, Bruno (Codie-Lei Eastick) and Mary (voice of Kristin Chenoweth), who were transformed into mice—trying to stop the witches—perhaps by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

The first problem here is that the witches, bald women without toes and with claws of elongated fingers stuck in the devil horns sign, aren't too frightening. The Grand High Witch has a lengthwise-extended jaw, which opens long and wide, but the creatures' threat is constantly undermined by our constant awareness of their digital falsity and manipulation.

As for the mice, the filmmakers lean into a cartoonish look and an anthropomorphized approach to those digital characters. The animation is technically impressive in this regard, although there's never a doubt that we're seeing visual effects. More importantly, the cutesy appearance, manner, and comedy of the mice constantly downplays the inherently darker elements of this tale.

To say that Roeg, who incorporated practical effects and puppetry to create his supernatural illusions, did it better is true, if also unnecessary. Zemeckis has decided to ditch that sense of the tactile in The Witches. Instead, he takes advantage of visual effects—not in that they work, but in the sense that he clearly hopes they'll do most of the work for him.

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