Directing: B-
Acting: B-
Writing: B
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B
Special Effects: C+

And here we are again, with yet another remake—at least this time, no one can claim the film being remade was “a masterpiece.” I saw Nicolas Roeg’s 1990 adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book for the first time just a few years ago, and I did not find it particularly memorable on its own. I recall thinking it was . . . fine.

This means a remake in this case is, if not particularly exciting, then also . . . fine. And Robert Zemeckis is a great choice to direct a film like this. In fact, coming in already armed with the knowledge of how mixed the reviews of this 2020 version have been, I spent the first quarter or so of this version of The Wtiches thinking it was going a lot better than I expected. I was quite enjoying myself.

In the first several scenes of this story, we learn the backstory of the orphaned boy whose story this is: his parents killed in a car accident (in a cleverly rotating-camera shot of him still strapped into the backseat of the overturned car), he is taken in by his grandmother (Octavia Spencer). When they realize a local witch has tried to offer him candy in a grocery store, Grandma takes him into hiding at an opulent resort where her cousin is the chef—and where, it turns out, a local conference of witches is convening. What bad luck!

The setting in this iteration is shifted to 1960s Alabama, and there’s something odd about the choice to make the principal characters Black, particularly from that era. The choice itself is not necessarily odd, but there are only two logical approaches here: either keep the characters as they were in the book, or, if the focus will be shifted to a Black family in the Jim Crow-era American South, there should be more direct acknowledgment of very real racial inequities. Minority actors (not to mention female leads, of which this film has both) getting work is always good to see, but pretending their unique real-world experiences don’t exist doesn’t make much sense. The closest we get here is Grandma telling the boy that witches are more prone to prey on “the poor” because their children aren’t as missed when they are gone.

That said, I did very much enjoy Octavia Spencer’s performance in this movie. Anne Hathaway, as the Grand High Witch, is a bit more spotty. There are moments when her delivery has some hilarious subtlety, and also moments when she goes too far over the top. That is when The Witches kind of goes off the rails.

The first half is much better than the last half. The Witches introduces itself with compellingly stylized visuals, and a nice sprinkling of humor. I laughed out loud several times, more than I had expected. The laughs evaporate in the second half, when the story gets overrun with slapstick antics and Zemeckis’s over-fondness for the grotesque: the witches’ hoof-like feet, their clawed hands with only three fingers, Hathaway’s SGI grin so wide on her face she looks like a second-rate Joker. To the credit of the effects team, the look still manages to be genuinely creepy.

I must bring up the effects, however. The cinematography in this film is its best feature, highlighting a production design packed with vibrant colors. The special effects never hit the mark. The Grand High Witch has a cat, which she has amusingly named Hades (mental note: name for a future pet cat of my own?), and rather than deal with a real cat on set, it is entirely rendered in CGI. I don’t know how they allocated this movie’s clearly big budget, but not much of it went to that cat. Even worse is the three talking mice that are also CGI rendered, all of them way more expressive than they need to be, as though literal cartoons inside what is supposed to be a live-action film.

I do go back and forth regarding how well this film works for children themselves. This is a kids’ movie, after all, and such movies have no obligation to speak to adults at the same time—though it’s always convenient when they do. Depending on the age of the child, The Witches might be eye-roll-inducing and dumb; it might be riveting from beginning to end; for younger children it could easily be terrifying. It all depends on the child’s age and maturity level, although I do like the dark places this film is unafraid to go, and that it doesn’t quite offer the type of “happy ending” one might expect—though it is one viewers can live with. It’s the getting there that is definitively a mixed bag.

Overall: B-