The Witches – ABC Film Challenge – Remakes – W – The Witches – Movie Review
The Pope's Exorcist Review - Is...Please enable JavaScript
The Pope's Exorcist Review - Is it Worth Watching (Spoilers)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Writer: Robert Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, Guillermo del Toro (Screenplay)
Writer: Roald Dahl (Book)
Cast
- Anne Hathaway (The Devil Wears Prada)
- Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water)
- Stanley Tucci (Spotlight)
- Chris Rock (The Longest Yard)
- Jahzir Bruno (The Christmas Chronicles Part Two)
Plot: A young boy and his grandmother have a run-in with a coven of witches and their leader.
Runtime: 1 Hour 46 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: The Witches starts when a young boy (Bruno) sees his parents killed in an accident. He is forced to move in with his loving Grandma (Spencer) as they both recover from their loss. When Grandma learns a witch is lurking around their home, she takes her grandson to an expensive hotel to hide.
Elsewhere, Grand High Witch (Hathaway) has just checked into the hotel at the same time, as the witch council. After the young boy discovers the witches, he gets turned into a mouse and must work with his Grandma to stop them from causing problems for children in the world.
Verdict on The Witches
The Witches is a remake of the classic Roald Dahl story about Witches wanting to turn children into animals. This one family sees themselves come together to fight back against the Witches behind it.
Having seen the original much more terrifying version when I was younger. This remake doesn’t seem to bring the pure terror the story holds. While the casting of Octavia Spencer is wonderful as the Grandma, Anne Hathaway fails to be as evil as she needs to be as the Grand High Witch. It is also a story with a dark outcome, that doesn’t seem as complete as it could be.
Final Thoughts – The Witches is a flat remake that doesn’t have the spark the original brought to the table.
