Better as a jumping off point

I'm not going to say that Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a better movie than Gretel & Hansel, but I'm disturbed that I'm even considering saying it.

The former is a violent and silly action horror with one foot firmly planted in the realm of camp, while the latter is a serious and stylish vision from the man who directed one of my top ten films of last decade, The Blackcoat's Daughter.

The difference that benefits the former?

The former uses the classic Grimm fairy tale as a jumping off point. In the latter, well, the fairy tale is the point itself.

Say what you will about fairy tales, but they rarely would be confused for traditional narratives with a beginning, middle and end. Or at least with satisfying versions of those components. I can't tell you how many fairy tales I've read -- and we were doing that regularly a couple years ago, reading from this beautiful old book with illustrations that we acquired at some point -- where I thought the ending was abrupt and nonsensical.

As a matter of fact, Hansel & Gretel itself is an example of this, at least in version that appears in the book we have. After the children resolve the core conflict by defeating the witch, they still have to cross this lake on their way back to their house. There are a number of paragraphs devoted to this "set piece" and yet it ultimately is totally superfluous, as they successfully cross the lake and make it home.

Fortunately, Gretel & Hansel does not have the bit about the lake. But most of the rest of its action is restricted to the children being cast out from their home, wandering the woods, and coming to live with the witch, whose sinister plans become revealed to them gradually over the course of their stay.

It's all done with an incredible amount of style, and a few moments that might activate your sense of revulsion, but not very much forward momentum. Osgood Perkins, Anthony's son and the guy who directed Blackcoat, favors slow burns, so not having a huge amount of story is suited to his style. It's just that in a story you already know, it feels like a lot of time spent getting to its various points. The striking visuals sustain you, but only so much.

He seems to have not been following his own advice from Blackcoat, as well as the approach taken by Robert Eggers in a similar film, The Witch. The less you see of your primary antagonist, the better, and the fleeting images of that character are one of the best aspects of his previous work, and of Eggers' work. Make no mistake, Alice Krige is great in the role of this witch, and in fact, her gaunt face made her a good choice for the role. Krige's face has always made her suited for such parts, back from when she was in the little-seen movie Ghost Story to her casting as part of the Borg in one of the Next Generation Star Trek movies. But this film spends so much time with her on screen that anything ominous about her dissipates pretty quickly through sheer familiarity.

I'm not sure if the best way to translate Hansel and Gretel on screen is to having them dropping f-bombs and shooting witches with crossbows, as happens in Tommy Wirkola's goofy 2013 film. But it does seem like a good idea to do something with the characters other than just put them through the familiar arc of the fairy tale. As it turns out, it's not enough, even for a movie that's only 87 minutes long.