This is a movie which you watch for the action and the special effects and pretty much nothing else. As such it is a excellent movie. The original story of Hansel & Gretel is essentially only used to boot this movie. The movie itself plays out when Hansel & Gretel are adult witch hunters.
The movie is pretty much action all the way. It is fairly violent and goory action at that. It is not a movie for the kids. To me this is an advantage. I do not think I would have liked it as much if they had dumbed it down to a standard PG-rated Hollywood creation. I really enjoyed the hard-ass Hansel & Gretel duo kicking witch ass in so many way.
The special effects are not bad and the medieval yet kind of modern weaponry that Hansel & Gretel swings around are quite cool looking. Not very believable perhaps but then neither are witches so… The witches themselves are also fairly cool. Especially the witch-gathering near the end of the movie is indeed a grim (ha ha) collection of freaky creatures.
I was not too thrilled about the idiot law keeper. His utter stupidity bugged me throughout the entire movie. I really whished they would have dragged out the end for him a bit more. Well he did meet a suitable end at least.
Overall, I enjoyed this movie a lot. If you though this was to be “just” a Hansel & Gretel movie the you are probably going to be disappointed. I knew more or less what I went for so I was just enjoying myself. I was surprised at the level of gore, exploding heads, troll-squished humans etc… but, as I said above, I think it was a good thing that they did let it be done in the way the producer/director obviously intended for it to be made.