Their brand of rude cheeky humour is very much alive in Wirkola's first English-language feature, who had demonstrated through his debut movie lampooning Quentin Tarantino – Kill Buljo – that he is perfectly in tune with their sensibilities. That same irreverence pervades the entire movie, which shouldn't come as a surprise if you paid attention to the opening credits and spotted Will Ferrell and Adam McKay as producers of the movie. Case in point? Just before she forces someone to turn a shotgun on himself and splatter his brains onto the wall, Muriel comments how the room they are in looks somehow drab and could do with some colour. That doesn't mean however that this reimagination is predictable instead, Wirkola keeps you riveted with a surprisingly effective blend of horror and hilarity often within the very same scene. Savvy viewers will be able to spot the connection once the clues are laid, so don't expect a revelatory surprise at the end. Of course, as narrative dictates, Muriel's plan would have something to do with Hansel and Gretel's own past, as well as their extraordinary ability to be immune from the spells of witches. But the bitter Sheriff and his band of hunters are the least of their problems – indeed, their most pressing concern is the Grandmother Witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) and her hench-women, who have been keeping the children they have kidnapped locked up in wait for a much more sinister plot to make them even more powerful. Seeing no visible signs of sorcery on her, Hansel and Gretel free her, inadvertently setting themselves on a collision course with the Sheriff. The Mayor (Rainer Bock) is not so fast to pronounce judgment on her for the spate of disappearances, and has hired Hansel and Gretel to get to the bottom of it. One particular such mission brings them to the town of Augsburg, where a beautiful blonde-haired woman named Mina (Pihla Viitala) is due to be drowned in front of an angry crowd by the shifty Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare). And so Wirkola fast- forwards the story many years later, where he would like us to believe that Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton) have found their calling as witch hunters, travelling around from village to village killing the evil ones who kidnap children and rescuing their abductees in the process. What you may or may not remember about the Brothers Grimm' story is over and done with in the first ten minutes of writer-director Tommy Wirkola's revisionist treatment of the classic tale, which basically imagines what happens after the happily ever after.
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