Upon going to see the new movie Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, directed by Norwegian Tommy Wirkola, I wasn’t expecting much of anything.

A movie about the now-grown siblings going after witches is not the kind of film I would usually gravitate to, but I saw it anyway.  Surprisingly, I found it really good.

The movie is based off of the the German fairy tale Hansel and Gretel which was published in 1812.  With the 2013 R-rated remake, Wirkola brought a new twist to the fairy tale: after escaping the witch in the candy house, the siblings grow up to be be bounty hunters committed to keeping communities safe and ridding them of witches.

Although movie critics and some people I talked to weren’t fans of the movie, I thought it was entertaining and suspenseful.  Without spoiling the plot, the movie was based on Hansel and Gretel trying to stop the evil witches from sacrificing children at the Blood Moon.

Jeremy Renner, who also starred in the Hurt Locker and was nominated for Best Actor in the Academy Awards, played Hansel.  Although he is 42 years old, he was supposed to play a younger man.  He obviously looked too old for the role, but his acting made up for it.

Gemma Arterton, a British actress, played the role of Gretel.  She is much younger than Arterton, being 27 years old, and looked her part.  She was more daring and friendly than Hansel in the movie, and was a great actress.  She was a strong, smart and courageous hero in Hansel and Gretel.

The plot was pretty suspenseful and had some surprising revealings and the cast was good, but the animations were what made the movie really interesting to me.

The movie was in 3D, and at first it gave me a headache, but when I got used to it I was able to see how much it enhanced the movie.

Hansel and Gretel was very gory and dark, and so were the animations.  When witches and people were killed, nothing was held back.  The noises and visual effects made me cringe, but were also pretty believable.  The setting of the movie was animated well too, and the scenes of flying witches and giant monsters looked realistic.  The evil witches themselves had nice special effects.  Their faces would change from a normal woman’s face to an old, scary-looking witch right before the audience’s eyes.

In my opinion, Hansel and Gretel is a good movie to see for gory scenes and other-worldly animations, even though it has a pretty predictable story line.