Abraham Lincoln hunted vampires, Red Riding Hood hunted werewolves, and next year Jack will be killing giants, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before yet another old story got the action/horror movie treatment. While my money was on an adaptation of “The Goose-Girl at the Well,” it appears Hollywood has found another Grimm’s fairy tale to plunder… I mean explore. Friends, Romans, Countrypeople – I give you Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.

0:06-0:14 – WOODS! KIDS! DARKNESS! POWER CHORDS!
0:14-0:16 – Okay, it should be “My sister and I.” Minus 5 right away.
0:16-0:26 – “We almost died at the hands of a goblin-y witch.”
0:27-0:31 – Does witch blood taste like candy? Cuz I think that’d be the only way I’d even try it. Where do they get shotguns and stuff?
0:31-0:35 – Or, for that matter, fully-automatic crossbows? Oh, the Steampunks out there must be already wetting their restrictive leather outfits.
0:35-0:39 – Okay. Couple things: Witches are now day-werewolves I guess; are there really no other ways to kill witches than to shoot them? Aren’t witches supposed to be wily, mystical spell-casters? Is there nothing more in-continuity for them to do besides literally running and jumping at people? Does Jeremy Renner have a steampunk shotgun?
0:40-0:43 – “Uh, hey! Aren’t you gonna clean this up? We don’t have a fire brigade here, this apparently being the early 1800s. Hello?”
0:43-0:50 – No, it isn’t. I refuse to believe either of you possess names like “Hansel” or “Gretel” with those accents. Do Germans sound like they’re from Southern California now? Also, Gemma Arterton is English; can’t Hawkeye do a halfway decent English accent? I would buy that a lot more easily.
0:50-0:55 – Okay. There. Peter Stormare, while Swedish, is clearly more appropriate, accent-wise, to be in this movie. Silly mustache notwithstanding.
0:55-0:58 – Wow, she knocked him out simply with the wind created from leaning forward quickly.
0:58-1:03 – “That’s why we developed these decapitation guns, because nothing short of cutting off their head works. Also, we saw a trick in Return of the Jedi we tend to use a fair amount.”
1:03-1:06 – The most useful three seconds in trailer history.
1:06-1:12 – If witches can just tear down doors in the middle of the night and steal children, what exactly was the point of having a damn house made of candy?
1:12-1:20 – Ah, so this is abnormal. Movies seem to do this too much; have list of rules that creatures follow but then, uh oh, this time around they aren’t following them. So, since we don’t know the rules already, they’re pretty meaningless.
1:20-1:23 – Sooooo then it SHOULDN’T be called Hansel and Gretel: WITCH Hunters, should it?
1:23-1:26 – Hey, why is that clockwork person from “The Girl in the Fireplace” riding a broom?
1:26-1:29 – This seems almost like the plot of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, doesn’t it? If there’s even one tunnel in this movie, I’m calling “rip-off.”
1:29-1:31 – That was an unnecessarily extravagant way to take the tarp off of that. Also, no way no way no way no way.
1:32-1:34 – “Really? ANYTHING that moves? What if it’s a deer, or a butterfly, or one of the many kidnapped children we’re trying to save?”
1:34-1:37 – A half-second shot of Famke Janssen. That is not enough seconds.
1:37-1:45 – Oh, so with Gretel captured, it becomes Jeremy Renner beating up and killing women for the entire climax of the movie? Real broad-minded, guys. Also, can we please stop having people dodge things by limbo-ing? It was cool in The Matrix, but that was 13 years ago. Nobody can move like that; I don’t care how much witch blood they’ve tasted.
1:45-1:50 – Ugh. A Gatling gun. Of course it’s new, genius; they weren’t invented until the mid-1860s.
1:50-1:55 – Witches look a lot like demons in this. Really, nothing about them suggests that they actually are witches except, perhaps, the broom thing.
1:55-2:01 – Okay. Sure. Why not. All that stuff. Sure.
2:01-2:10 – Would that I were kidding you, Gretel, but alas, it’s true: you are to face off against the large, grunting beast-witch we haven’t animated yet. Good luck.
2:10-2:18 – And it’s in 3D, of course. Just another reason I won’t be seeing it.

This all being said, I’ll probably… who am I kidding? I’m not gonna see this at all. Looks right stupid.

-Kanderson’s TWITTER and PODCAST