The Witches

Directed by Robert Zemeckis
2020, Warner Bros. Pictures
1 hour, 44 minutes

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I went into The Witches hoping it would fit the witchy, cottagecore niche my wife has been chasing. What pulled me to the movie was the fact that the original story was written by her childhood darling Roald Dahl, and it stars her favoured actors Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, and Stanley Tucci. Seeing as I have a tendency to psyche myself out on media, worried it won’t be worth my time, I deliberately didn’t look too much into the movie ahead of time. I vaguely remember watching the 1990 film of the same name when I was a child, though I didn’t really have any fond memories of it. Either it scared me or it wasn’t interesting enough to hold my attention. Whatever the case may be, I didn’t want to taint my experience with this new version of The Witches before watching it myself.

My anxieties were not misplaced. The Witches is an awful movie, saved only by some of its production design and Anne Hathaway’s campy performance. It fails both as a narrative and as children’s entertainment, being nonsensical and flat most of the time, with very little of value for young children to learn. Throw some casual ableism, sexism, and fatphobia into the mix, and you get a generally unappealing waste of time. The movie does try to grapple with African-American emancipation in the 1900s, but falls short of actually doing anything with it other than vaguely gesturing in that direction. Overall, a disappointing and dull movie that I wouldn’t show to any kids, even on the slowest of days.