It gets a little bit lonely sometimes to be a horror fan, as sometimes nobody wants to sit next to you to spend a couple of hours watching a film like Halloween, The Wicker Man, Possession, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre…  

However, horror fans can enjoy with their families scary films like Coraline, Gremlins, Poltergeist (I am aware that it might be a bit of a stretch, but it is indeed rated PG) and The Witches. 30 years after its release, the Nicolas Roeg’s adaptation of the book by Roald Dahl has been remade, with Robert Zemeckis at the helm and Anne Hathaway with the almost impossible task of replacing the great Anjelica Huston as the Grand High Witch. 

I still remember being a child and feeling the chills going down my spine when I watched for the first time Huston transforming into the witch and children being transformed into mice. I was not aware back then of the fact I was watching a film made by the director of Don’t Look Now, I felt scared and, obviously, afraid of witches, and of Anjelica Huston too. So, I decided to watch the remake, to see if it could live up to my expectations. 

Starting on a positive note, it should be said that the shift on the location of the story (from England to Alabama) not only feels like a necessary and welcome change but also works perfectly, as Octavia Spencer shines with a warm performance in the role of the grandmother who has to raise her grandson after his parents died in a car accident.

The choice of having Chris Rock as the narrator of the story might prove to be less successful, as although he manages to transfer energy with his voice every time he intervenes, his tone is too childish for its own good, and it might make you feel as if you are watching an episode of Everybody Hates Chris.    

With such a big task as it is replacing Anjelica Huston in one of her more memorable roles, Anne Hathaway manages to be good in an over the top role, with an incomprehensible accent, and impossible wigs. However, no matter how hard she tries, as she never achieves the levels of wickedness Huston reached. It does not matter that Hathaway is given a mouth that made me think constantly of Tom Holland’s 1985 classic Fright Night, her character does not seem to be destined to be feared -or even remembered- by children in the years to come. 

Many things have been said about the happy ending of Roeg’s film -whose own son was so afraid of some scenes, that they had to be cut from the final version-. However, the 1990 version had a darker edge and enough memorable moments and thrust to make it a critical success and a worthy adaptation of Dahl’s book (despite the ending, though). It is a pity that a filmmaker like Robert Zemeckis, who in 1988 made a film as enduringly zany as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? has created a bland remake that lacks a more original and risky approach to the story, a version that lacks the punch of the original, and its more peculiar elements -and it even wastes the casting of the always great Stanley Tucci-.

Nevertheless, praise must be given to Zemeckis’ version of The Witches, as despite generally being inferior to the 1990 adaptation, it manages to capture the ending of the original book -something that Dahl would have loved- which could be its saving grace.

What is worse, is the fact that we could have had a remake of The Witches as Guillermo del Toro -whose name figures as one of the authors of the screenplay, as well as one of the producers (together with Alfonso Cuarón)- originally intended, i.e. a stop-motion picture in the vein of Coraline or ParaNorman. Had the project made it into fruition, we might have seen a more worthy remake of Nicolas Roeg’s cult classic.