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Fairytale land: Hansel (Paul McGillion) of Hansel and Gretel fame has
all grown up and is a witchslayer now, accompanied by Lara (Sarain
Boylan), a witch who has given up her powers to fight onj the side of
good. She has equipped Hansel with quite a number of hi-tech (?) gadgets
though. Anyways, the two of them are on the trail of a warlock called
Abyss (Jefferson Brown) who is killing witches to ... well, I don't know
exactly why, but his trail leads to the queen of the witches (Shannen
Doherty). Trailing Abyss, Hansel and Lara pick up young and
inexperienced witch Ehren (Emilie Ullerup), who has not yet learned to
control her powers, but under Lara's tutelage, she becomes a priceless
accomplice in no time. Eventually, the queen of witches, who also has a
man-sized dragon at her disposal, manages to capture Hansel ... and she
turns out to be Gretl, his sister he presumed dead. But then, Abyss rather
unexpectedly frees Hansel, tells him that the queen isn't really Gretl at
all, tells him if he manages to find and destroy the body of the queen,
her soul will leave Gretl and she will become his sister again. Hansel and
Ehren find the queen's body and destroy it - they succeed, but then the
queen's soul possesses Ehren, and Hansel has no other choice than to kill
her. So Hansel and Gretl are reunited, with Lara as their sidekick, and
suddenly they find themselves pit against Abyss, who has only used them to
get rid of the queen ... and after he's gone, the queen returns, and ... Oh
well, it ends happily ever after. An "updated" Hansel
and Gretel-sequel that pretty much ditches the original story's
fairytale roots and turns it into a fantasy/action hybrid, in which the
witchslayers seem to be modeled after a SWAT team (heck, they even have
modern communication devices), and due to a lack of sets or discernible
costumes, the film seems to be rather ripped out of historic or geographic
context - and you know what, all this would be fine with me if the movie
had some atmosphere to it (as would be appropriate for a film of its ilk)
- but it just doesn't, it shows everything in boring as-is-fashion and
doesn't even use the simplest (and cheapest and most effective) means to
add mood to the proceedings, like inventive use of light or colour filters
or the like. As for the acting: Shannen Doherty might not be the most
dependable of actresses, but she was certainly caught on a better day here
and at least hams up her role appropriately, but the rest of the cast are
rather forgettable - but aren't given the best material to work with
either (again, Doherty fares best in that respect). In all, your rather
typical SyFy-fodder,
inasmuch as it's interesting material turned into a run-of-the-mill movie
- you might not exactly hate it, you'll just have forgotten it within days
...
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find Witchslayer Gretl at adultvideouniverse.com
