When the boy spots a witch at the local grocery store, his grandmother insists that they leave town, and they decamp to a fancy hotel on the Gulf Coast. Here, the grandmother is also a little more proactive, with proficiency in folk medicine that helps her ward off witches, although this is another cultural addition to the story that doesn’t really go anywhere. As before, the main character’s parents have died in a car crash, and his grandmother passes on her extensive knowledge about witches, vile creatures who disguise themselves as human women and prey on children.Īlso as before, the grandmother tells a story of encountering a witch when she was a child, although the disturbing tale of her childhood friend being trapped in a painting has been changed here into a slightly less disturbing tale of that friend being transformed into a chicken. Making the central characters Black in the South in the 1960s is a pointed choice that the filmmakers never really explore, aside from a handful of vague references to the racial divide in America. That commentary comes from the shift of the setting from contemporary (at the time of the book’s release) England to 1968 Alabama, where the unnamed main character (Jahzir Kadeem Bruno), an 8-year-old orphan, has moved with his also unnamed grandmother (Octavia Spencer). RELATED: The Witches Trailer Gives Us a Remake (Almost) Everyone Can Get Excited About It feels less like a unique nightmare vision and more like something plastic and prefabricated, despite its muddled efforts to introduce an element of social commentary into Dahl’s story. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, the new version of The Witches is as CGI-driven as any modern studio blockbuster, in contrast to the detailed practical effects from Jim Henson Productions in the original. It’s hard to say whether the late Dahl would be more pleased with this new film, which in some ways follows his book more closely but makes other, more substantial changes than Roeg’s movie did. was set to be a major theatrical event, until its release was shifted to HBO Max thanks to ongoing pandemic-related theater closures. It’s become such a cult classic that the new remake from Warner Bros. But it made a significant impact on the audience that it did reach, specifically children who were mesmerized (and possibly scarred) by its grotesque imagery and dark subject matter (despite the slightly more palatable ending). And Nicolas Roeg’s film, featuring Jim Henson’s final work before his death, was a box-office failure as well, seemingly confirming Dahl’s objections. Author Roald Dahl famously hated the 1990 film adaptation of his 1983 novel The Witches, especially the way that the filmmakers changed his dark ending into something more upbeat.
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