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Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters | 2013 | R | - 6.9.5

Now all grown up, bounty hunters Hansel and Gretel (Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton) have weapons, they know how to use them and their special family project is to eliminate the evil witches of their childhood, plus every other witch they can find. Also with Famke Janssen and Peter Storemare. Directed by Tommy Wirkola. [1:30]

SEX/NUDITY 6 - At a pond, a woman with her back to the camera removes her dress and we see full nude backside; walking into the water, she turns and we see her bare breasts briefly as a shirtless man removes his remaining clothing off screen and joins the woman in the water (we see both in the water covered by bare shoulders), they kiss and the camera cuts to the pair dressed on the pond bank with the man adjusting his belt (sex is implied).
 After being in a fight a woman is brought to a village house, where a teen boy washes her face, upper chest and cleavage, but the woman grabs his wrist and makes him stop.
 Throughout the film one woman wears tight-fitting black leather trousers and jacket; her blouse is scoop-necked and reveals cleavage. A woman wears a long-sleeved nightshirt that reveals one bare leg to the thigh. Several townswomen wear long shirts and scoop necked blouses that reveal cleavage and arms. Several witches wear scoop necked tops that reveal cleavage.

VIOLENCE/GORE 9 - Four bounty hunters go to the woods at night to find lost children and three of the men are killed by a woman that turns into a hideously ugly witch with black lips and claws, sunken eyes and black-lined face: one man is hung suspended in a tree and blown into small pieces in a long shot, with blood and gore flying outward, two other men are chewed up alive off screen by their dogs that are controlled by the witch and scream, and a fourth man suffers from bugs being placed under his skin and he eats a pot of maggots; when he returns to a village, he enters a pub, screams, "She killed them all!" and vomits maggots, gore and blood over all the people and toward the camera.
 Abandoned by their father in a forest at night, a boy and a girl with scratched and bleeding faces enter a gingerbread house: the round door is rimmed with incisor teeth and a frightening witch with cracked black and red skin, brown teeth, balding head and glowing eyes screams into the camera and tries to eat the children; she slaps and manacles each child and throws the boy toward a roaring oven when the girl escapes her chains and stabs the witch in the stomach with a knife (we see blood) and she and the boy put the witch into the oven (we hear prolonged screams).
 A teen boy with a rifle shoots at a witch and blows her broom up: when he approaches her with a man and a woman, they fight with the witch with fists, power bolts and choking and the humans chain her to a wall, pound her in the head and throw her to the floor; they then take a shovel and shove it through her neck to cut off her head (we see black gore, but no blood) and as the man picks up the head by the hair, the camera turns to the teenager, who is wiping his mouth, suggesting vomit, though we see none.
 A troll charges out of the woods toward a man as he begins to shout at a woman, and the troll knocks the man down and smashes his face and skull underfoot in a pile of ground up flesh and blood. Two witches fly into a web of metal strands spread across two trees where they splatter to bloody pieces and toward the camera.
 A man walks into a witch festival and tells the witches to let their child hostages go: when they refuse he shoots one witch, while a woman on a nearby hill begins firing a machine gun into the crowd and killing many of the witches (we see blood and black flesh spurt out); the man shoots several more witches, one witch receives a knife wound from chin to belly (opening up red flesh) while a man shoots her in the head and she drops dead in a pool of blood, witches fly off on brooms, and the man shoots them in the head and they fall in the distance.
 Two men argue about killing an accused witch: we see her head dunked into a tub of water in close-up from the vantage point at the bottom of the tub as villagers call for her execution; another man enters the scene, checks the woman's eyes and teeth and says she is not a witch and one of the first men says to kill her, but a woman points a gun at the back of his head to prevent the killing, a fight breaks out and the woman head-butts a man and breaks his nose (we see him in a leather nose brace for two days). A man with a broken nose attacks a woman and she bites his nose, breaking it again with a gush of blood.
 A man and a woman enter a hut and find a demonic looking witch with glowing red eyes, cracked skin, matted hair and claws; they fistfight with hands, feet and throwing knives until the witch flies away on a broomstick, the man catches her with a cable and hook and he and the woman take the witch to jail where they question her and hit her in the face with brass knuckles (she bleeds black from the mouth). Three fights between a man, a woman and two witches include fistfights, knife throwing, crossbows and gunfire: one witch is blown apart and blood gushes and spatters; the other witch stabs the man in the stomach with a knife and we see some blood. A woman fires a double crossbow to take down two witches and cuts their heads off with a sword, while blood flows; another witch appears and a man pounds her head into the ground with stones, but she rises unharmed. A woman uses a wand against a witch and she dies in an electric bolt with blood running from her mouth. A woman is shown being beaten by three men and her entire face becomes black and red with blood until a troll knocks the three men out and carries her off screen; the troll helps her wash her face, tells her that witches mistreat trolls, shouts at her when she will not drink some water and she drinks (later a witch slaps the troll in the face for no reason).
 We see a close-up of a cart carrying bloody arms and legs partially hidden under a canvas and being pulled by a troll, a teen boy, a man and a woman along with the troll enter a hut within a rock wall that looks like a snarling mouth of teeth, they find a witch who tries to fly away on a broom, and the troll punches the witch and makes her fall to the ground where a woman points a gun to her face and says, "I hate to break it to ya, but it's not going to be an open casket"; the woman fires the gun to end the scene.
 A black witch grabs a white witch, touches a dagger to her heart, and then lets her go; she tells a woman and a man that the witch killed their parents and a flashback shows their childhood home burning with the mother as a skeleton still burning on a stake in front of the house, and the dad hanging by the neck from a nearby tree in a shadow (we can't see his face). A witch tells a man and a woman that a Blood Moon festival with human sacrifices of children will take place soon, another witch appears, hangs the woman over a staircase landing by the throat but then releases her, and a man shoots at the witch, but cannot stop her as she kidnaps a little girl whose teen bother fires a shotgun at the witch; the witch points her wand at the teen and his mother, throwing them back against a wall, unconscious.
 About 50 witches of various types appear at a bonfire at the foot of a butte where a dozen children are paraded past: a male witch shouts that he wants the brain of one of the girls, a conjoined twin witch joined at the back brandishes two swords, several dwarf witches appear and one seems to have been cut in half and runs on his hands (no blood is seen), another witch looks like a skeleton with striped makeup over the body and face and another has golden ram horns and a pitch-black face; others look like humans but have shaved heads, short red hair or long black hair and many facial piercings. A dozen times, a beautiful woman with long dark hair and eyes changes into a frightening crone with cracked skin, moldering hair, sunken eyes and black claws.
 A witch on a broomstick flies over a village, throws a fireball and ignites an entire block of buildings; a bucket brigade fails to put out the flames as pieces of buildings fall, though no one is hurt.
 A man hangs out of a tree by one foot and is released by a woman (his face is partially covered with cuts and bruises); we later see him shirtless as his face is washed and we see long scars over his back, shoulders and chest. A woman has a few cuts on her forehead, one cheek and lower lip for most of the film, as does a man.
 We see a large troll eat a tusked boar raw, with blood spilling and covering his brown and green face while a witch with a pale face, black rimmed eyes and slimy spiked hair eats two live tree frogs with some splatter.
 While ominous background music plays, we see several line drawings of witches burning at the stake, being stabbed until blood gushes, being beaten, drowned and hanged; three of the witches are nude and doubled over with physical details hard to discern. We see line drawings of witches being killed and some newspaper clippings in a scrapbook that record the work of two bounty hunters in killing witches. Closing credits feature tall flames, gushing blood in close-up coming from off screen, guns firing at the camera, bullets flying in many directions and ominous music.
 A witch on a broom runs into a tree and falls unconscious; a man uses a double electric dagger like a stun gun to revive her and we hear and see sparks. A woman finds a troll lying on the ground, dead; she uses an electric double dagger as a defibrillator to revive him and he sits up and groans. A troll and a woman are locked in a cave with children held for a sacrifice festival; they plan to save the children.
 We see the lairs of two witches filled with potions (please see the Substance Use category for more details) and magic books. A man is diabetic after a witch forced him as a boy to eat parts of a gingerbread house and we see him self-inject huge syringes of insulin through his leather pants several times in close-up; in one scene, his sister injects him as he weakens while fighting a witch.
 We hear that the best ways to kill a witch are to cut off her head, skin her, stab her heart and burn her.
 Two boys have a pretend sword fight in the road of a village, using wooden swords.

LANGUAGE 5 - About 6 F-words and derivatives, 5 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 11 mild obscenities, exclamations (shut-ups), name-calling (idiot, fools, badger, scoundrel, creepy, whore), stereotypical references to fairy tales, bounty hunters, fan boys, superstitions, trolls, witches, all redheads are witches, corrupt sheriffs, witch hunts, lynchings, magical children, small towns, 2 religious profanities, 4 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - Several witches mix potions in vials and bubbling cauldrons that glow and one witch blesses a gun and bullets with a potion, several witches throw fireballs and glowing blue substances in the form of lightning bolts, a witch has a glowing red magic wand that throws people across a room, two caverns contain bottles of unmarked liquids that could be potions or medicines, we hear that a witch heals a man's deep knife wound and we see only a shallow scar on his abdomen, a medicinal spring helps to heal cuts on two people's faces, a man self-injects huge syringes of insulin through his leather pants several times in close-up, and a woman injects a man with insulin as he weakens while fighting a witch. Dozens of men and women drink beer from tankards in a pub, and a bottle of liquor sits on a desk in an office. A man smokes a pipe outdoors in three scenes.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Fairy tales, fantasy; witches and the occult; revenge, justice, family history, friends, loyalty.

MESSAGE - Traumatized children grow up to seek revenge and perhaps justice.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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