87 min | PG-13 | January 31, 2020 | Orion Pictures
Osgood Perkins flips the fairy tale and points the camera at the girl. Gretel and her little brother get lost in the woods and find a house that smells like food and rot. The witch is not the only thing hunting them.
Gretel and Hansel are children turned out into the world with nothing. Their mother has no food and no use for them. They wander the forest until hunger leads them to a house where a woman named Holda offers warmth and an endless table. Osgood Perkins takes the old story and reframes it around the girl. This is a film about a young woman learning that power has a price and that the women who hold it pay for it in their own children.
Sophia Lillis plays Gretel as watchful and tired beyond her years. She carries the burden of a brother who eats and sleeps while she does the worrying. Lillis lets the fear sit behind her eyes without ever tipping into hysteria. Samuel Leakey plays Hansel as a small boy who trusts the wrong people because he is too young to know better. Alice Krige plays Holda with a low voice and a flat smile that turns kindness into a threat. She makes the witch maternal, which is worse than making her monstrous.
Perkins directs from a script by Rob Hayes that moves on dream logic rather than plot. Galo Olivares shoots the forest in deep blacks and sick golds, and the witch’s house glows from within like a held breath. The compositions favor hard geometry. Triangles and pyramids recur in the framing and the production design until the shapes themselves feel like a spell. The score works in drones and pulses that never resolve, so the dread builds without release. The pacing is slow on purpose, and the film asks you to sink into the atmosphere instead of chasing the story.
This is a mood piece that values texture over momentum. The thesis is clear and the images are strong, but the screenplay gives Gretel less to do than the visuals promise. Long stretches drift on tone alone, and the spell occasionally loosens its grip. What lingers is the look and the idea that growing up means deciding what kind of woman you will become. Perkins delivers the feeling of a fairy tale told in the dark, even when the telling forgets to move.