Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
In late 1967, a young orphaned boy goes to live with his loving grandma in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis. As the boy and his grandmother encounter some deceptively glamorous but thoroughly diabolical witches, she wisely whisks him away to a seaside resort. Regrettably, they arrive at precisely the same time that the world's Grand High Witch has gathered.
The 2020 adaptation of Roald Dahl's classic novel relocates the story to 1960s Alabama, a fresh touch that adds some cultural texture, but the film largely struggles to distinguish itself from the 1990 Anjelica Huston version or the source material. Anne Hathaway leans hard into campy villainy with mixed results — entertaining in bursts but broadly cartoonish. The CGI is functional but inconsistent, lacking the tactile menace of the original's practical effects. The ending departs from Dahl's famously dark conclusion in favor of a sanitized Hollywood resolution, which frustrated many fans and critics. Overall it's a competent but unremarkable fantasy-family film that doesn't fully justify its existence as a remake.