Gretel & Hansel

A small family struggles to survive in the wake of an extreme famine. The father, a woodsman, and his wife fear they won't be able to provide for their children or even themselves. The wicked mother hatches a plan. They take their children hiking and when they're far from home, sneak away and leave them to fend for themselves. The woodsman loves his children and resists, but his wife's mind is set. Their son Hansel overhears the plot and manages to collect his pockets fill of stones before morning. After their parents abandon them, Hansel reveals to his sister Gretel that he has marked the trail with his rocks. They return home and their father is overjoyed. A few days later, the mother makes a second attempt, but this time she makes sure to lock Hansel in his room so he can't collect stones again.

Being resourceful, he tears up his morning bread to mark their path, not knowing that the birds have eaten his crumbs behind him. Hansel and Gretel are lost, hopeless and hungry when they stumble upon a house in the wood made of gingerbread. Famished, they begin feasting until an old hag emerges and captures them. This witch has a taste for child flesh and sets about fattening Hansel up. Gretel is put to work as a maid. One day the witch asks Gretel to climb into her oven and clean it. Gretel asks if the crone can demonstrate, and when she does, Gretel slams the door closed behind her and lights the stove. They make a quick and triumphant escape. When they return home, they're joyously reunited with their father and discover their cruel mother has died in their absence.

What a happy ending. Hello, Sydney. It's your killer host! My name is Parker, your resident horror fanatic. I'm Caroline, Scaredy Scream Queen. I'm Ian, Scary Movie Skeptic. And welcome to. What's your favorite scary movie is a horror film podcast where we're on a journey to find our favorite scary movie one at a time. Whether you hate them or love them, join us and discover yours. Spoilers ahead, so plan your movie screening every weekend before the episode release. Oh hey, Parker. Um guess what? What? I am officially done with being furious about movies. Because guess what? I really enjoyed the movie that we saw tonight. What movie was it? Well, tonight we went to see Gretel and Hansel.

Obviously, this movie, Fresh into Theatres, is from the year 2020. It was directed by uh a man named Ozgood Perkins. Now, you may be asking, Perkins? That sounds familiar. Of all the names you just said, Perkins is not the one with that little light bulb in my head. Well, if you think back, Oz Perkins is the son of psychostar Anthony Perkins, who plays Norman Bates. Oh. Yeah. And so he was the son of, he is the son of Anthony Perkins and another uh actor, Barry Baronson. And a little bit of a conspiracy behind these these two. So obviously very sad and tragic. But when Anthony, or when Oz Perkins was a teen, his father Anthony Perkins died.

Uh I believe we discussed this on the psycho episode from complications from HIV. And then uh nine years and one day later, his mother died on Flight 11 in the 9-11 attacks. So it's pretty wild. Oz Perkins is the writer-director of The Black Coat's Daughter from 2015, which slaps. That movie was so good. Uh, and he also is the writer-director of I'm the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House from 2016, which was, I think, a straight to Netflix movie. Getting some some press there. Uh, and well, and then obviously now we have a big studio movie, so uh yeah, the press is paying off. Gretel and Hansel was written by Rob Hayes. He is uh a recurring writer for the show Chewing Gum.

Uh, and Gretel and Hansel is his feature debut. Quite a bit of um what would you call it? Like poetic language in this film. Poetic, uh, um is not maybe the word I'm looking for. What's not what's the word like very like um literary language, maybe? I don't think that's a term. I think you just said it. No, I think that's something. But like the language of the film is very stylized, just like the rest of it, and so it seems like a lot of people working together. And then I recently added this to the notes because I was blown away by the score in this movie. It was gorgeous. Uh so the score was composed by Rob, and Rob also composed the scores for Maniac from 2012, Horns in 2013, and Revenge, which you might remember from 2017.

Go back through the old files if you want to hear the cell. And lastly, uh Gretel and Hansel, obviously, is based on the folk story popularized by the brothers Grimm, and they're behind other stories such as Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, and Rapunzel. We have Samuel Leakey as Hansel. It was his feature debut because he's like all of four years old. I was about to say, shocking. Uh we have uh Sophia Lillis as Gretel. She was in It and all of those films. They're chill. She was in both. It and Chapter Two, yeah. Um also in Sharp Objects on HBO, which I haven't seen. Oh, you should. It's great. And she played the titular character in Nancy Drew and The Hidden Staircase from 2019.

Um Alice Creig plays Holda. She was in Sleepwalkers in 1992, Silent Hill in 2006, and quite a few TV shows, including Deadwood, The OA, and Carnival Row. Um she was also a performer with the Royal Shakespeare Company, impressive, playing many starring roles and played the popular Borg Queen character in various iterations of Star Trek. A woman of many uh genres. Do we know how old she is? I'm very into looking up how old all these ancient actresses were. I believe that I read that she spent up to four hours in hair and makeup every day. And so I'm going to assume that she is not as old as she looked in this movie. But perhaps. Let me see.

She did have a striking resemblance to the younger version of herself in this movie. You think so? I think so. The way that she talked, I feel like Oh, well, yeah. Like her like the movement of her mouth. Let's see. Born 1954. What's the math? Oh, she's 65. Okay, so not that old. She looks better as the the witch. Also, I made those notes before we saw the movie, and I don't think they s did they say the name Holda anywhere? No. So the whole time I was like, wait, that's her name, right? But that's what it says online. Holda. They didn't say her name. The IMDB summary reads Quote, a long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside, a young girl leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.

The Rotten Tomatoes critic score is fifty-six percent, and the audience score is twenty-one percent. The critics' consensus is quote Gretel and Hansel's rich visuals satisfy, even if this adaptation of a classic fairy tale gets a little lost in the woods on the storytelling front. So here we are. We've just sat down after getting back from the theater. Any opening thoughts on Gretel and Hansel, your experience viewing this film? Uh I was a little bit like pulled out of it trying to figure out like what the exact time period was. Like according to their language, according to like famine, apparently, according to like even I know you mentioned the the music, but that kind of drew me out of it almost.

Okay. And I understand that like maybe they weren't trying to do like a period piece, but Yeah, I would say not. But it was just I don't know. Like there were like too many things that were pulling me into like maybe like they should have gone all the way there, but then they were pulling us out at the same time. I can see that. I think the critic's consensus gets it pretty pretty on the nose. It got lost. Yeah, about three-fourths of the way through. I was like, what? Only three-fourths? I like did not know what was going on ever. I don't know. Like, as soon as they introduced the basement, I was like, I'm out.

I'm out of this. This is cool. I can't uh I think um the first there's you know, there's like an opening thing, then there's a title card, and then this first chunk with Hansel and Gretel um leaving their home and their mom and finding the witch, garbage. Like, I had no idea what was going on. Nothing made sense. Yeah, the the hunter and the like zombie guy and the yeah, there are a few things that I can't figure out because like I'm sure when they were making this movie, like they had to have known what was going on, and they weren't just like, yeah, let's just have a zombie here. Like I assume there's some sort of logic that they had when they were making it, but uh I'm a little perplexed at some of the things that happened in the first part of this movie that are just completely unexplainable.

Because that was bizarre. Yeah. But as soon as they find the witch, I was like sucked right in. I thought it was so cool, and I understand what you're saying, but those are things that I thought were really interesting, where it was like obviously like set in an old time, but then it was also like really modern at the same time, and like the shapes and the colors were all very like modern, and the music was really modern, and uh, you know, like even the architecture of her house, like I'm assuming nobody had a house like that whenever this was. Uh, and it was just so gorgeous. Uh, the woods that they were in were so pretty.

I want to go to those woods. They were in Ireland, in case you were wondering. So I would love to go to those woods because I thought they were hot. But um, the overall, like, no, it didn't make a lot of sense, but it was something where it was like rather than like dread that I look for in a lot of horror movies, like I felt like this movie was really driven by curiosity, and I would I would watch like this movie, but like way longer, or like another one or something, just because I like just want to know more. Like, I want to see more of it. It was all really stunning, I thought, and the character is really great.

I'm obsessed with The Witch now. Um, she was so cool in both old and young forms. But yeah, story, don't ask me. That's a super dark children's story. I don't remember ever hearing that in its full Really, because Hansel and Gretel, I feel like, is a story that I've heard many times that you listeners heard in the introduction to this episode. So yeah, it is really dark. And a lot of those Brothers Grimm uh stories are, but they've kind of been cleaned up over time by like, you know, like the like Disney Cinderella. Like they all have darkness in them that sometimes gets a little lost in translation. And this was also a very dark movie, um, that I think reflected kind of the bones of that story, really interestingly.

But obviously, some of the things are gone, you know, no trail of breadcrumbs. It's kind of iconic. There are also, it's interesting, there's a few stories within stories going on here because the movie also is like a little meta, a little scream, because they talk about fairy tales in this movie, which is a fairy tale. And one of the tales, and this is something that I was kind of lost on a little bit. The recurring story that they tell in the movie is about this young girl who's apparently very beautiful, but she's sick. And so her mom, or her Yeah. Yeah, the mom, because well, spoiler, it's the witch. Yeah. Her mom takes her to some witch who says, like, if you trust me compl what does she say?

Well, no, the fairy tale is that the dad takes her to this enchantress and then she gets her health back, but she also has a power and she like goes around like killing people. Well, the thing is, is the power is that she can see the future. And she said that people just didn't want to know what she said. Or they didn't want, you know, they ask what their future is, but it was too much for them to handle. So she becomes an outcast and she uses her power to start killing people because she I don't know, it's like sad. Um, and so they send her out into the woods where she lures children into the woods.

That's the story they tell at the beginning, I believe. But they also say something that's like it won't work. Oh, it won't work if you don't have courage and you don't trust in the darkness, I think is what she says. Yeah. And there's that really cool shot of the the the enchantress and her face is all covered up and she's like pulling the like disease out of the baby. Cool. So that's kind of point one. And that then, you know, fairy tale becomes reality by the end because the witch is like, Well, you know this story. Because Gretel says something like, What's your story? And she's like, You know my story, you've just been telling it wrong.

And so she reveals that she's the mother of the girl from the story, but she hated her daughter because even though she was pretty on the outside, she was dar she was uh uh bad on the inside, and she called her daughter her poison, and she uh she chose to make her poison delicious, uh, and that's how she found her power was by consuming her poison and like becoming one with the poison. So she eats her daughter and then lures children into eat the children as well to gain power, is what I was Did she have power before she ate her daughter? I don't know. That's a good question. It didn't seem like it. It seems like by eating the daughter, somebody gave her p the power.

Remember? Somebody did the same thing. They said, have courage and trust in the darkness, and so she eats the daughter, uh, and she is given the power. And I wonder actually, now that I think about it, there's a lot of satanic imagery in here. Uh-huh. So maybe it's unsaid that it is Satan giving because also there's kind of, if you think about it, like it seems like Satan this movie is very much about women, and Satan and women throughout storytelling seem to have a more intimate relationship. So that makes sense if you think about it. In the first home where there's the weird zombie, there's an upside-down crucifix on the wall, and then there's a star on the tree, there's a star on the tree.

And I'm sure there's more if you watched it a few times, but you know, there's a lot of wolf imagery on the walls in the house. Did you notice that? I didn't. Well, and I noticed it because the hunter. So when they went to the hunter, he said, Stay on the trail. If you go off the trail, you'll meet wolves. They like seem nice, but they make terrible conversation. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and Gretel's seeing all of these shadows in the forest. And she has a her her big thing throughout the movie is that the world is a bad place. Never trust the gifts that the world gives you because the gifts are just like the daughter. Like the daughter, they're pretty on the outside, but yeah, they take they take something from you.

Nothing's ever free, Gretel. I thought the sound design was really good. The whole movie. Like um the way they utilized space with their design of sound and sound effects was really well done. Like the axe coming from behind me. Yeah. And there's a lot of silence, and so there's a lot of um because there's a lot of silence, there's a lot of room for them to play with that too, which was nice. The only thing that stood out to me, like sound design-wise, was when she knocked on the window for the basement, and then it echoed. Don't remember that. She like, she's outside and then she like Oh, I thought that was a giant rock. That was a window.

No, it's the window that goes down into the basement. On the ground outside the house. Oh, I didn't know that was a first time she goes down there, she looks up and it's a huge rectangle, which is the rectangle that we see in the ground that all the kids come to. And they put a a glass window over it. No, but I did not make that connection. Yeah. Also, when he was sharpening the blades of the the saw. That whole scene was kind of unsettling. Oh, oh, the saw. I was thinking of the what do you call that stone she was using to sharpen the? Oh, that was weird. That was an unsettling scene. All of the things sharpener.

All of the stuff where the witch was like smelling handsel, or uh I could sometimes had a little bit of trouble hearing exactly what people were saying, but I think she sniffs his head and says, like, you're very handsome. And I was like, Yeah. They gonna fuck. Uh, they did not. So I was not in it until they got to the witch's house. You weren't in this movie? Shut up. I thought I saw you a couple times. Uh I was not immersed in this movie until they got to the witch's house. And then I just kind of thought to myself, like, you know what? I don't think this is suddenly about to start making sense. So I might as well just like go about this with a little bit more of like an explorer mindset instead of like a story-driven thing.

Because this is not it's not that. No. No. Um, I was listening to an interview with Oz Perkins, and um, he was talking about how this movie he wanted to be for kind of a to appeal to a wide audience, but something that he was really interested in was making a movie for children that pushes what children can handle and doesn't treat them like children. So this is PG 13, so like babies aren't gonna be going. But I thought it was interesting watching, because I remember him saying it's a movie for kids that he wanted to be scary and scary enough for them to be uncomfortable, but not scary enough to like destroy them, you know?

And watching it, I thought, I actually think that is done well. Like, it's just grotesque enough to like leave some last. Images, but I can't imagine a child enjoying that movie. Because I like when you're a kid, you know, what is there for a kid to latch on to in this movie besides the imagery? I feel like what's appealing to me about this movie is how much it made me think. And I don't know. Do seven-year-olds think? It might be one of those things where like a younger person might actually connect with the storyline in a way that we can't just because we're not that age. Yeah, maybe. Just like any Yeah, maybe we're thinking too hard about it.

Just like the double meaning with um, you know, like kids' movies and kids' shows. I also think like Gretel's journey as she is becoming a young woman. Mm-hmm. Yeah, she gets that period. She yeah, and like she's also like running into her first encounter of like, you know, that creepy old man was hiring like a maid, but he wasn't really hiring a maid. Yeah, well, that was some sort of sex house. Yeah, but they're like I think But no young person really would have probably picked up on that, I don't think. No, and even when he because he was asking her some explicit questions, but the language was coded. He said, Do you still have your maidenhood?

And I thought that was interesting because yeah, if you're a kid, you're not gonna know what that means. But if it's it's PG 13, so I'm assuming like 13 and up, like a 13-year-old girl going to that movie, seeing like, you know, what Gretel is going through, things she's being exposed to, like she has this big responsibility of her younger brother, like I definitely think, you know, that that would be a different experience. Uh something interesting that that actually just popped into my brain is if you think about it, the man running whatever that brothel was, talking to her and the witch are kind of the same. Like they're both approaching her with they're both predators, just you know, in different ways.

They're both trying to exploit something that Gretel has for like a broadly power. And um I think this feeds into something that I was noticing the whole movie, which is kind of the the role or the approach to life of men versus women. And specifically, you know, at the beginning when they first meet the witch and they're eating, and Gretel's like, I just want vegetables, and she's like, You don't want meat? And Hansel says something like, I'll eat all the meat so I can be strong like an ox. And the witch says, loosely, because I I wish so badly I had something to take notes because I wanted to write some of these quotes down, couldn't.

She says something along the lines of uh like she'll find her own strength, the ox finds strength in its vegetable fed bones and pulls the fat man who sits on the wagon, or something like that. Yeah. So kind of flipping around what Hansel was like kind of flippantly saying, she's like, actually, there's strength in the um in Gretel's lifestyle. Yeah, and Gretel's like carefulness and her um ability to like uh what's the word? Like telling things apart, like observation? Maybe she she's very like um metered. Yeah. Like she she it seems like she considers every option and every potential, and she knows how to make a an an educated decision. So I think you know it's about the approach.

That man was like coming straight out and being like, so vagina. And then the witch is ultimately wanting to use her womanhood as well, but you know, she's doing the same thing where she's being very careful and calculated with Gretel. So uh I thought that was really interesting. Another moment where that comes up is when Hansel and Gretel are playing chess, and Gret and Hansel's like, she's naked, and she says the king fears the queen because she can go anywhere she wants. Yeah, I loved the dialogue of that entire scene. Um, she also goes on to say, like, sometimes women know things that they shouldn't. Or like that whole like spiel that she does, I was like, right on.

Yeah, so and again, I don't know what the answer is, but I thought that there were some really interesting issues being brought up as a woman. Any thoughts? I always have like a hard time because I feel like more and more these days we're starting to see witches as like this like female empowerment thing, but ultimately they're bad. So I don't know what that says. And I kind of hated the way that this movie ended, where it was like, I can be a witch, but I can be a good witch. Like, I'm gonna change the world. Well, so I was thinking about that too, because that's dangerous, because the women that you see in this movie, Gretel, the witch, and Gretel's mom, and Gretel's mom is off the rails.

She seems like she's struggling with some mental illness, and she's like, get out of my house, children. And her what she the reason that she gives is not even like the book where it's like an issue of money, which it clearly is because Gretel's going out to find jobs and stuff, but she's saying things about how there are too many ghosts in the house and they can't fit anymore, so they need to leave, and then she acts as the table, which that part really irritated me. I was like, come on, don't try and pull these jokes with us, you know? Um, and I can't remember what it was, but there is something midway through that the witch says, and I know that the witch has some sort of sight, and so she knows things about Gretel that Gretel hasn't shared, but she says something that sounds exactly like the mom, but not like when she's like doing her like thing, like not like that where she's playing games with Gretel.

And I don't think the mom and the witch are the same person, but she says something where I was like, oh, like these women are very specifically connected. And then, you know, throughout the course of the movie, we find out that also the witch and Gretel have a really strong connection. Like, there's she says she says something like, We're made of the same material or the same matter or something like that, because they're women. And so I think it's interesting because going back to the conversation they were having about their poison, so the witch she trades in, you know, her children for she consumes her poison for power because she says, How else can you build up an immunity to the poison if you don't consume it?

And so she keeps eating children. Um, she tells Gretel at some point that Hansel is her poison. And I thought it was really interesting because that brings up the question of what do you do with your power? This movie is saying that women have power. What are they going to do with it? Do you make your poison delicious and crave it and consume it? Or do you do like Gretel and you send your poison away so that you can develop your own power and then spread that power? Because she releases the souls of the children with her her witchery that she does. So I think it's more of a contrast of intention, and even I was thinking maybe even about uh generations.

Obviously, the witch is envious of Gretel and Gretel's youth, and maybe there's some sort of statement being said about like how different generations handle conflict or handle oppression or like power. I don't know. I was just tossing that around in the brain. I think there could have been a better way for them to portray that at the end because I understand like that's what they were going for, but it came off very like cheesy. I mean, yeah. Like staring into the wilderness, I'm gonna be a good good person. Yeah, I mean the whole movie was a little silly, but I thought it was really striking. I really liked the black fingers. I thought they were kind of cool.

You'd make for an easy Halloween costume. I was thinking that get a cool hat, paint your fingers black and a big cloak, old person makeup, put one b bad contact in. You look cool. Um, I keep going back to this whole like poison thing with like an Adam and Eve kind of thing. Like we saw a lot of like fruit imagery and like food and and all of that, and especially like consumption of kids as poison. Yeah, and even um you know, all the food they were eating the whole time was rotten. Yeah. They were consuming the children as well. And they just didn't know it. Yeah, I definitely think there's some sort of subs subversion of religion here.

And especially like even I was noticing in the trailers, you know, there you they do the trailer and then there's some sort of like poo, and like the like title comes up, and the title is on top of a big pentagram. So I do think that and I think it's buried deeper than the rest of the stuff, but there is something about religion in there. And like she says so many times, this actually was really striking to me too. You know, as many times as the witch says, You have to trust the darkness, at the end, Gretel says, You ha I have to trust myself. So she changes the words that they were saying, she changes darkness to me.

So she's finding the power from within instead of pulling from outside sources. I think kind of the centerpiece of this movie is all of these dream sequences. They're really cool. Uh so some of it, I'm assuming by the end, it's real. But for a while, you're like, what's real, what's not? And even so, most of the dreams involve Gretel going down to the basement where she's in this huge white stone room, and one, there are a bunch of bodies on a table, and they start bleeding, and she pulls the uh the towel the the sheet off of them, but then she wakes up, and and one, she um goes down and finds Hansel in the basement, and then the young holder, the young witch, uh, I guess comes out of a a spout as fluid and then rises up out of it.

Freaking cool. And then she turns all of the the children body parts into the food that they've been eating. And so those were nightmares, but then she also, there's one where at night, um Hansel's like, I want to leave, and she gets really mad at him, and she's like, if you want to leave, then I'll show you how to do it. And she walks him outside and leaves him, and then a witch comes and takes his hand and takes him away. And then Gretel wakes up and she doesn't know if it's a dream or not. So I think those are kind of the three main nightmares before the finale. And I liked how they kind of kept you guessing about what was just Gretel having nightmares and what could be real.

And I would assume you're supposed to assume that all of it was real. I don't know. But the finale of the movie I kind of was obsessed with, where Gretel is she tries to pull a quick one on the witch and poison her, and the witch is like, Hell yeah, I've trained a good one. And uh, she wakes up, you know, chained to a table and she's trying to march Hansel up into a cage above this big fire, and then Gretel uses her powers to get whatever this rod is that the witch has been using. She rams her into the wall and it lights her on fire, and then she busts out of her shackles and saves her brother.

I thought that these sequences were stunning. I w I could watch those all day. I hope I have the same dreams. It was really beautiful, and like I said, with the addition of the score, I I felt like it was really immersive. And because I I think I've discussed on one of our episodes before that I love a fantasy world, and this world just seems you I know I think y'all said the exact same thing last time. I was like, fantasy, and y'all were like, Really? Uh but I just felt like the way that this was all constructed, not that there was like a huge amounts of detail or background, because there actually was the opposite, there wasn't, but the way it was constructed was so outlandish that I thought it felt really like I felt really swept up in it, and like I said earlier, I felt really curious to know more and to see more.

And I I just loved those dreams. I thought they were so cool. When she pulled the wall back and found the little door that goes down to the basement. Yeah. I thought it was a camera at first. Me too. And there was gonna be like a I was hoping it was. And then I was like, what the hell? Like what time period are we in right now? Like how it would have made it so epic. I well, and that's where I was like, okay, like I'm kind of coming to terms that like this is like a different dimension where like time doesn't exist, technology, like I still think that could be true. But it was not a camera.

Yeah, but it I I got excited about that, and then she opened the door and I was like, Well, these doors were all tiny. Even the front door Greta walked up to to the beginning and was taller than girl in there. These doors get it together. Uh, I remember when she had the dream where the witch comes up from the puddle and turns all of the body parts into the feast, and then it zooms in and she's hot. She's got this long black hair, long black dress, hot tattoos, and then she uh the camera like zooms in on her face and she opens her eyes and ones the dead eye. I gasped. I was like, the witch.

It kind of like had this feeling of like Narnia to me a little bit, like the sexy witch, and like you think that witch is sexy, Narnia? Well, not in the movie. In the book, they like describe her to be like this lovely, heaving seductive with um No, the guy or the the young son, like kind of falls. Yeah, he wants her Turkish delight. Yeah, he does. Uh it feels like Narnia, like the the doors, the like kind of like advanced I don't know, technology. Satan Narnia. Yeah, yeah. Into it. Little kids running around, some religious undertones. Yeah. A cat. Um, oh that fucking cat. I wanted to reach out and touch it. It was so cool.

When the cat was like sitting in the room and they were having private conversations, I was like, ah, it's the witch she has transformed and she's listening in on them. But then yeah, didn't go there. I think you could you could probably make an argument. You never see the cat and the witch at the same time, I'm just saying. And that's logic. Yeah. Also, I thought the slide outside the house was gonna come into play and it did not. Yeah, just a way to draw those children in. Um, yeah, I think that my main takeaway is that nor like I recognize this movie's shortcomings, but I think that its issues, like not making sense, are the things that kind of allowed me to like lose myself in it.

So that doesn't make sense. I think, you know, as we kind of saw in The Rotten Tomatoes, Scores seems like a divisive movie, you like it or you don't. And it's like I understand why people don't like it, but I did. The last thing I do want to say is that so I've seen Oz Perkins's uh The Black Coat's Daughter, and it's also very visually interesting, and it also heavily features Satan, um, a bit more explicitly than this. So I think that this movie was definitely a more art house approach to the a Satan-y story than the Blackcoat's daughter was. Uh, that one had, you know, a much stronger story or a higher concept, and this one wasn't, but I think he didn't write it, but I think you can really see the the artistry behind the direction in this movie.

And definitely you have to give props to the cinematographer because the shots were incredible and the way that the shots moved were incredible, but also like you can see the vision that Oz Perkins had behind it. So that must be a killer team. They should stick together for their next movie. Totally. Because it seems like they know how to vibe. Really, not I mean, yes, murder, but not really any explicit murder. So, what would you say is your most memorable moment from Gretel and Hansel? I mean, we saw it in the trailer for months, but when she pulls out the hair from her mouth. And that was a gasp moment. Yeah. It wasn't quite as gross as I thought it was gonna be, as they let it on to be in the trailer.

I think the grossness is in the concept of like Gretel being like, well shit. Also the crunches leading up to it. A noisy eater. Caroline. Um, I know that this was on the screen for like 0.25 seconds, but um the little girl's dad shoving a like hot rod in his mouth. Oh yeah, that was gross. I don't like we didn't actually see it, but just the thought of that. Yeah, I would have loved like half a second more. Um, I'm definitely going to see my favorite part was the first dream sequence where you see the young witch, and specifically I'll say the moment when she opens her eyes and one is white, and I was like, Oh my god, it's her.

Uh I oh man, that was a good moment. Uh, and I think that was also the moment where I was like, does this movie slap? So I remember um when I saw Midsummer, and I think I talked about this in our Midsummer episode. I remember I thought halfway through the movie, I thought, is this the best movie I've ever seen in my life? And by the end, I wasn't I wasn't there anymore. Midsummer takes the cake. Midsummer is great, but like I just I had a moment in Midsummer where I was like, This is my life is changing, and then just like it it did it did, but it didn't. Um I had a couple of similar moments in this movie where I was like, This movie is really special, and I'm having a moment.

Um and that's kind of the last thing that I want to like really applaud this movie for is like, so this is a movie, the budget wasn't massive. I think it was like five or six million dollars. Um, but this was a movie from a big studio. This is an MGM movie because Orion is a a branch of MGM, and I I'm kind of shocked that this type of movie is coming from a huge studio. Like, if this were an indie film, I would get it, but like I'm just like I'm kind of floored that this movie was like approved for mass distribution from a studio like MGM. And I just think like if we want to talk about risk taking and like really putting like putting yourself out there for something interesting, like I think this is it.

This movie may not have the this strong story that might have like really like blown it out of the water for me, but I don't I just think that's really exciting, and I think this is probably the most artistic movie I'm gonna see for a while. It's probably I mean, it's probably a signal that consumers are wanting more indie style movies. I hope so. And the thing about indie movies is you see that like that's all in this movie, and then just that little bump from having a big studio backing and funding is what makes this movie probably that much better with that much slickness, and just allowed the vision to be a little more explicit than it probably would have been on its own.

So I I hope the trend continues. On a scary scale, one to five, what would you rate Gretel and Hansel? Also, Hansel was an idiot. He need to like get it together. I'm gonna give it a two. I know they weren't aiming for scares really, but I would have to agree, probably about a two. I'm gonna give it a one. I think that it's not super scary, but it is grotesque, and there are like disturbing images. So I think it gets that point for just being Memorable. Memorable in a spooky way. But I don't I was never scared. And like I said, I never felt dread or tension. I more felt curiosity and like a desire to see more.

Yeah, the like the sense of danger wasn't really there. Yeah, in fact, I would say the most dangerous scene was when she was interviewing with the old man. I felt really uncomfortable during some of that. And I did feel tension in that, but it did not because the witch has a a longer game that she's going for. I felt the most uncomfortable when she was at home with her mom. Oh yeah, that was Yeah, the when her mom is like, I'm gonna cut you into little pieces, and you're like, Yeah, she will, because she's fucking crazy. That was the only danger. Yeah, it could have been a really short movie. And then would you give Reddle and Hansel a smash or a baby with a cut and a slash?

I'm gonna have to give it a slash. Tragic. Yeah, I mean I want this team to make another better movie because I know that they can. I had a couple of problems with Gretel that like pulled me out. I think some of the delivery of her lines were just like But at the same time, do you think that was Gretel's fault or that script seemed out of control? I I yeah, it I think it definitely revolved around the language. Um it just it didn't it didn't work with me and I like wasn't fully immersed in it because of that, and I I don't think I could really get the full vision. Yeah. I think that I feel exactly the opposite about Hansel, where I was like, boy, you need to stretch, you're really stiff.

Uh but because of the language, I was more forgiving. Because like the language is a little stiff. Yeah. And the language was weird in general just because it wasn't like period link, it wasn't like the witch where there were all these like these and ths and whatever. It was just very like it felt like you were reading like gothic fiction. But like in very plain dialogue and delivery, like there was no, I don't know, like fluctuation of intonation or like it was just like I was bored at all. Yeah. And it pulled me out and I didn't kind of really get into it. It uh to mirror what Caroline said, but to add, I think like I said, the score and the sound design, I think they could win awards.

But at the end of the day, you can have the best sound effects and the best score, and you can have the best team. But if the script or the storyline falls, like I can't approve it, so I gotta give it a slash. But everything else was really awesome. I'm gonna give it a super hard, uh, but you know, in privacy, because there are children present, smash. Um I I pretty much loved this movie. Besides that first little like what, like 10-15 minutes before they got to the witch's house. I loved all of it. And like I said, like once I kind of accepted that the story was never going to make sense or be that strong, I think everything else was incredible.

And I didn't even mind just because I liked watching it so much. So I'm gonna give it a huge old smash. Uh so all that said, what's your favorite scary movie? I'm still stuck on the shining. Upsetting. I think it's still rare exports. It certainly is for you. Um, you know, you guys might slap me in the face, but I think I'm going to say my new favorite scary movie is Bretle and Hansel. No, I loved it. And I'm not You're giving the movie that has no, like, admittedly no storyline. I loved it. I think that that bare bones simplicity gave the movie the ability to really fly and find creativity in other areas. The story really the the sparseness of the story really has no it has no bother for me.

Ian, you can't say a thing because your favorite one is rare export. That's a good movie, Caroline. You need to back off of Rare Xboard. You didn't hate it. Roll the tapes. She thought it was fun. You can hate it all you want, but I I feel like it has a I mean you were like this for whatever reasons. I actually liked the turning more than I liked this movie. The turning was boring. I liked it more. Well, don't say anything because you gotta pay for that opinion. Patreon.com slash scary movie page. We should say something because you guys need to go listen to it because it was it was a good movie. One of our best Go pay and listen to it.

I can't. That opinion is what's the last straw. No, I'm just kidding. Uh no, I didn't like the turning. Or did I? Go listen. Um It's one of our strongest episodes ever. Yeah, you'll have to find out. Um, and I know that I'm putting Gretel and Hansel above a lot of classics and really object uh objectively incredible films. But like I kind of said when I picked Doctor Sleep, first of all, we've seen a lot of garbage so far in theaters this year. And this is kind of the first time where I'm like, we're out of the tunnel. Um It was the best shot movie I've seen in a long time. I would say maybe ever.

Like it was pretty incredible, and like I said, a little ballsy too. Um but no, I'm just picking it because shot on 18 millimeter. Uh and interesting aspect ratio. He said something is he said his biggest advice for filmmaking is to have confidence. He used multiple aspect ratios. Yeah, the beginning was different. Yeah. But he said that uh his biggest advice is to be confident, and if you want something like 18 millimeter or you want this fancy aspect ratio, you go in and you tell them you want it, and that's what you do. And I was like, okay. Um so I'm picking it simply because I think there's value in recognizing like modern, like new achievement, and I really love this and hope that this movie, you know, gets some traction, spawns more movie like movies like it, and I would like to give it that recognition because I I'm smitten.

So you may be asking, Gretel and Hansel, what a fabulous episode this was on What's Your Favorite Scary Movie. What will we be hearing next? Well, you know what? I got an answer for you. Next time on What's Your Favorite Scary Movie, we will be heading back to the movies to see The Lodge. So, two new releases straight in a row. I hope you've got your tickets ready because I'm also really excited to see The Lodge. So join us for that. And until you do, you can head over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. Special shout out to Funky Mac 2015. Funky Mac. How funky. Yeah, I love my Mac and Cheese Funky.

Thank God. Funky Mac 2015 said, I'm a scaredy cat, but this is a fun show. And they watched all the scariest stuff, so I don't have to. Uh, five stars. Five stars. You know, funky Mac, keep it funky because I love that review. I would love for you to watch some of the scary movies, but we'll keep reviewing them for you. Alright. Well, you know what? My name's Parker Heron. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Letterboxd, and the slash rap at Parker Del Rey. R-E-Y. My name is Carolyn. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Caro Manifesto. My name's Ian. You can find me on the internet. And you can find all three of us also on the internet at Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Scarymovie Pod.

You can send us some hot feedback at scary moviepod at gmail.com. And like we teased earlier, if you're thirsty for a little more, what's your favorite scary movie? And you want to hear our thoughts on some hot releases, because you better believe there's more coming up, you can head over to patreon.com slash scary moviepod. Show us some love and some support so we can keep creating this for you. And it's not like you're getting nothing. You get to hear our thoughts on even more stuff. So head on over there. Finally, you can go and check out everything. What's your favorite scary movie? And if you forget all of the links to all the stuff we just mentioned, you can find them all at Scarymovie Pod dot com.