Mermaids! Monstrous Murder! Musical Numbers! It's All Here In The Lure!

Remember that brief period in the early 2010's when we had gritty reimaginings of fairy tales? It didn't last long, mostly because more classical retellings of those fairy tales proved to be far more financially lucrative, but for a moment, we got just enough of these titles to qualify as a mini-trend in American cinema. Jack The Giant Slayer, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters and Snow White & The Huntsman all emerged as attempts to rework children's fairy tales into dark PG-13 or R-rated cinema. In the end though, most of these attempts to be "adult" just ended up feeling derivative of other movies or tv shows and resulted in lackluster motion pictures (I do remember Giant Slayer being decent, to be fair).

Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters Review (Classic Write-Up)

The Witch Is Back

It needs to said right upfront: Maleficent, this is not. Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters wears it's R-rating on its sleeve, with numerous violent death scenes, blood, guts, heavy artillery and witches, Lots and lots of witches. Most of which suffer gruesome fates at the hands of Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton), who are, as the title suggests, witch hunters. They've gotten really good at this whole killing witches thing, but a duel with evildoer Muriel (Famke Janssen) could be their greatest challenge yet.