A great classic of the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales returns to the cinema but, this time, it gives the right space to the true protagonist of the story right from the title: Gretel & Hansel plays with the traditional title of the story with good reason because it immediately makes it clear that it is the girl who is the resolving character of the whole narrative.
The plot is always the same: two young brothers – in this version of sixteen and eight years old, respectively – find themselves in a dark, inhospitable and spooky forest, alone and forced to look after themselves. Gretel, the eldest, and Hansel, the younger brother, meet Holda, a woman who turns out to be a powerful evil witch. The rest, more than history, is history.
Behind the camera we find Oz Perkins, American director, actor and screenwriter on his third experience in directing a film. Specialized in the horror vein, which he has already experimented with I am the beautiful creature that lives in this house and February – The innocence of evil, his two previous works, this time Perkins is measured with a story known by everyone reviewed, revisited, reinterpreted and already rewritten countless times.
Strengthened by his particular taste for gloomy atmospheres and for horror in the widest possible sense, this time the director wants to tell the tale of Hansel and Gretel by pushing very hard precisely on the front of the horror suggestions and on the terror that, however, is absolutely not lacking in the original version of the Grimm brothers. In this sense, the trailer already gives a rather precise idea of ​​the atmosphere of the film: livid, pale, spooky and extremely disturbing.