I was going through my social media accounts one day, minding my own damn business as usual, when I saw the advertisement for this movie. I didn't even know a new version for "The Witches" was coming, and I was beyond excited when I saw the promo.
I remember reading the book multiple times when I was in middle grade. That was the time when I read many of Roald Dahl's classics, and "The Witches" novel amazed me. It was weird, granted, but it was still a fun read.
If you don't know what "The Witches" is about, it's the story of a young boy (who's never named in the book) who lives with his grandmother after his parents die in a terrible accident. The grandmother loves him deeply, and she always tells him stories about witches. In this world, witches are essentially demons in female form. Witches have no toes or hair; their hands are actually claws; their nostrils are exceptionally large; and in the book, they also have eyes that change color or reflect strange things, and they have blue spit.
The grandmother is a retired witch hunter, and that's how she knows so much about the topic. She takes her grandson to a hotel in England, oblivious to the fact that the British witches are holding their annual convention there, led by the Grand High Witch herself (she's like their queen, so to speak). Here is where the adventure begins.
The book was already adapted in 1990 and it starred Anjelica Huston, who did an amazing job as the Grand High Witch.
In this post, I will be making a review of the new book adaptation. It was marketed not as a remake of Huston's film, but rather a reimagining of the book, and it delivered that in some ways. I must warn you though: there will be SPOILERS! Also, please remember these are just my opinions, so don't take them personal.
The review will be divided in three parts:
1- Things I Liked
2- Things I'm Not Sure How I Feel About
3- Things I Didn't Like
Without further due, let's get started!
I. Things I Liked:
1- Main characters' race change: Both in the book and the original film, the grandmother and the kid are white. They come from Norway and move to England. In this new adaptation though, they are both black and live in the south of the United States. Why did I like this? Because it's not very often we see lead characters who are not white in stories like this; more often than not, we see white characters involved in adventures and magic, so it was very refreshing to see a new race perspective in the story.
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Also, Octavia Spencer is a phenomenal actress.
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2- Social Commentary: At one point in the movie when the grandmother and the kid are discussing witches, including a very recent attempt on his life by a witch herself, the grandma delivers a very harsh truth. She states that witches mostly attack children like him, the ones who are considered outcasts and outsiders; children that our society would (sadly) not make a big fuss about their disappearance. This was a subtle but important message, one that reflects our society even today.
In the movie, the boy protagonist is black, and the little white mouse was an orphan girl. No one worried too much about her disappearance back when she was turned into a mouse.
3- Aesthetic of the movie: This movie is set in the 1960's, and boy did it look beautiful! Everything was so pleasing to the eye, from the cars, the clothes, the places, but mostly the hotel itself. The hotel was so incredibly beautiful! I wanted nothing more than to stay there- minus the witches, of course.
4- Grand High Witch: As with the original one, the Grand High Witch steals the show! Anne Hathaway (in my opinion) did a pretty good job portraying the movie's main villain. Long gone is princess Mia Thermopolis, as now Hathaway steps into a demon's high heels. She looked regal, evil, proud, vain, sadistic, rude, menacing and ultimately narcissistic. She was like Fiona Goode but hideous. My only problem was with the forced German accent they made her do.
I also liked how the character's powers were expanded. Neither does the book or original film explain the extent of the High Witch's powers; they only mention that she is the most powerful of them all. This movie finally showed how powerful she truly is, possessing gifts such as:
- Telekinesis
- Electrokinesis
- Flying
- Super strength
- Longevity
- Enhanced sense of smell (stronger than other witches).
- She could also stretch and elongate her arms, and that looked twisted and creepy as hell.
5- Ending closer to the book's: In the 1990 film, the main boy is turned back into a human by a witch-turned-good; she leaves him with the promise to turn Bruno (the other victim of the witches), back into a human boy as well. But in the book, the boy and Bruno both stay as mice forever. Furthermore, in the book Bruno stays with his parents, and the girl Daisy/Mary never existed (at least not like in the movie). Nevertheless, even with these differences, the 2020 version stayed true to the book's ending: there are no good witches, and no one goes back to their original form.
Now, let's go for the next section.
II. Things I'm Not Sure How I Feel About:
1- Appearance of the witches: Granted, I'm not a big fan of the witches' appearance in this universe at all. I even find them kind of lame; I just really dislike them. But still, I was expecting several things I didn't see, such as Anne Hathaway removing her face and revealing her demonic side. Also, some elements of the witches' bodies changed, namely their hands and mouth.
In the book and original film, the witches have all their fingers, but not nails; instead they have claws.
In the 2020 version though, their hands look like this:
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. I mean, they look pretty cool in their own way. I'm just not sure I completely like them.
Now, for their mouths. That change was a pleasant surprise, as it added something new to their appearance, and it looked very creepy. It was as if I was watching female versions of Pennywise the dancing clown.
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OH HELL NO!
In this house we believe in going to the dentist, young lady. |
What I didn't enjoy that much about their mouths was that you could always see their scars, even when their mouths were in normal mode.
If only the Grand High Witch had had those scars then I wouldn't complain, but all of the witches did. Aren't they supposed to go mostly unnoticed by people? Wouldn't anyone suspect something was a little off after seeing a large group of women with the same scars? It also ruined the big mouth reveal for me a little, because the scars already teased that something was off about their mouths.
Last but certainly not least, let's take on the next part.
III. Things I Didn't Like
1- Grandmother being a voodoo priestess: This element is brand new to the story, and I wasn't a fan. First of all, it came out of nowhere and it served no purpose whatsoever. You take that element out of the movie and it remains virtually the same. The grandma only used it twice, and it was pretty unimpressive. Also, isn't this a reinforcement of black stereotypes? Always associating black people with voodoo and occultism might be a counterproductive thing. I might be wrong, but at least that was the perception I got.
2- Some very bad CGI effects: I remember I was discussing this movie with my best friend over voice messages the very next day after seeing the movie, and something she said really stuck with me. How come a movie made in this era has crappy special effects? They can't claim having a low budget, as they clearly had enough for the set, and for paying actors such as Stanly Tucci, Octavia Spencer and Anne Hathaway. Then... what the hell happened?
Some effects looked decent, such as the High Witch flying.
Also, the arm stretching thing looked nice too. I mean, seeing the bones breaking and reshaping all at once was disturbing enough. But the super strength effects... those looked plain terrible; there's no way around it. There is one specific scene during the third act of the movie, when the grandmother faces the High Witch in the latter's hotel room. The High Witch comes in and she rips the bed's backside by sheer force. Those effects looked terribly bad.
Last, I didn't like how the main boy became a mouse. I'm sorry, but the CGI for that transformation was full of crap too.
3- The Witches themselves: I get that the main witch is the Grand High one, but still. The others were merely part of the background. They served almost no purpose, and they never gave me the feeling that they were dangerous. For me they were just there. This brings me to my other issue: we didn't spend enough time with them.
I was hoping for their scene with the Grand High Witch to be longer, and full of more tension and danger. Instead, it was over in a couple of minutes. The tension was never felt, and we never saw enough of their dynamics with their queen. This was actually my favorite part of the book: reading about their convention and all the things that happened there, sensing the tension they felt around their leader, and how they calculated the genocide of England's children.
In the movie, they looked more like mindless drones. After all, the story is called "The Witches", not "The Grand High Witch" only.
4- The voice over and some sappy quotes: I really disliked Chris Rock's voice as the narrator. He was meant to be the older version of the main boy, and it was awful. He made it too funny for my liking, and many things sounded exaggerated. When he said the quote, "Witches are REAL!" it sounded like someone on drugs was speaking to me. I hated every second of it.
As for the sappy quotes, there weren't that many, but one in particular irritated me. When the Grand High Witch was stretching her arms to get to the grandmother, the old lady said something about the power of love being more powerful than evil. I couldn't help but roll my eyes. I'm so sick and tired of listening to this kind of crappy quotes: "Oh, the power of love will do it!", "Love can do anything", "You might have everything, but you don't have love". LADY: you're about to be murdered by a possibly-centuries-old entity, and all you can think of saying is that?? Exactly how is the power of love involved in this? I would understand the power of good or even light (maybe). But the quote itself was full of cringe, and it was delivered in the worst way possible.
FINAL RATING:
The movie wasn't terrible. I mean, it wasn't "Cats"! Like I stated above, it had several good things which would make it a decent movie, at least for children. But overall, the movie for me is pretty forgettable, and way too silly in many instances to be taken seriously. I am personally sick and tired of children movies being dumbed down for their audiences, as if children couldn't handle things. Yes, they're children and many topics will be obviously toned down. But just because they're children that doesn't mean they're stupid, and I loathe with all my soul whenever they make villains silly.
My final verdict is:
That's all for today folks! As always, thank you for reading. Follow me on Instagram as @emabooks_stuff
Take care and I'll se you next Sunday.
P.S. Can somebody please take me to that beautiful hotel?
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