movie review the witches

• Login / Sign Up

Believe that journalism can make a difference

If you believe in the work we do at Vox, please support us by becoming a member. Our mission has never been more urgent. But our work isn’t easy. It requires resources, dedication, and independence. And that’s where you come in.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

The new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches is incredibly strange and almost offensively bad

The Witches is a weird, unfunny lesson in how not to adapt Roald Dahl’s classic — and problematic — horror tale.

by Aja Romano

Many movies that fail to win critical regard still frequently succeed as entertainment, if only because they turn into delightful excuses for their actors to have fun. One might certainly expect this to be the case for The Witches , Robert Zemeckis’s new adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic, horrifying children’s novel, now streaming on HBO Max.

But I must, alas, report that no one — on-screen or off — is having enough fun to save The Witches from being a dull and puzzling thing. While Anne Hathaway as the head witch seems to love swanning around the great coastal Alabama hotel to which Dahl’s witches have bizarrely arrived, no one else seems to be enjoying themselves. Perhaps it’s because the premise of this new version of The Witches inexplicably overlays two separate stories onto one another, and no one else in the cast is quite sure which one they’re in at any given moment.

Are they in a story where a young Black boy in the post-Jim Crow South confronts racism and ethnic hatred through the thinly veiled guise of a convention of kid-ocidal witches? Or are they in a macabre , modern-ish cautionary tale, one where boys can meet monsters and be forever altered at the whimsy of a delightfully unpredictable universe?

If you’re not sure these two stories go together, you’re not alone : The Witches isn’t sure either. Despite the film’s quizzical efforts to blend them together, the two halves never cohere into something that makes much sense — or remotely justifies the strange execution.

The Witches is an oddly literal adaptation, except when it’s a wild departure

The Witches , transplanted from its original Nordic and English setting to 1960s Alabama, recounts the delightfully morbid story of an unnamed Boy (Jahzir Bruno) who moves in with his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) after the death of his parents. Shortly thereafter, he encounters a witch at the local drug store, and his grandmother, something of a spiritualist herself, initiates him into a world in which child-hating murderous witches are everywhere. These witches, unfortunately, look exactly like the typical woman of the ’60s: They always wear wigs and nice shoes, they have giant expanding nostrils, and they always wear gloves.

Not long after this revelation, the Boy comes face to face with not only one witch, but an entire huge coven of witches who’ve all assembled — where else? — at a large hotel convention. And it’s, ironically, held at the very same hotel to which he and his grandmother have traveled to try and escape the witch! Because his grandmother has taught him how to recognize a witch, he immediately realizes what he’s stumbled upon. The results are calamitous (and genuinely creepy) for the Boy.

At first, Zemeckis’s version of The Witches appears to be made to order. But Dahl’s novel is really less about a story than it is about a feeling, a sense of things being terribly disordered, unreal, and unfair. This is where everything quickly goes awry.

Roald Dahl, the author of childhood classics like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , James and the Giant Peach , and Matilda , gave us a body of work that feels almost intrinsically British. In the classic tradition of British children’s literature, he represents the world to children as a cold and indifferent place, in which wonders, magic, and human kindness are rare, sought-after treasures. In a Dahl story, children are often abused by their caretakers and other indifferent adults until they discover some form of fantastical escape. His work built on and influenced the youth-oriented fantasy genre, with series like Harry Potter later providing direct echos of Dahl’s work.

It’s important to understand this context because, when you watch The Witches , you’re hit with the discrepancy between Dahl’s story world — where the universe is both randomly cruel and full of random mystical delights — and the “real” world in which Zemeckis sets his film. Zemeckis’s The Witches takes place in a post-segregated Southern Alabama, where Black life is still radically unequal to that of white Southerners, and where a Black woman staying at a grand hotel on the Gulf is so extraordinary that the Black bellhops jaw-drop at the sight of her. This dissonance is striking even if you’ve never cracked open a Dahl story.

In Dahl’s version, the Boy is originally Norwegian and encounters witches after moving to England with his cigar-smoking granny. In Zemeckis’s version, co-written by Zemeckis, horror icon Guillermo Del Toro, and Girls Trip screenwriter Kenya Barris , the Boy’s grandmother is a tough , determined homemaker who coaxes her grandson out of his grief with helpings of cornbread and plenty of Motown.

Spencer, typically a master of comedic timing, has too many elements working against her to pull that off here, starting with a script that can’t quite figure out what her deal is. Is she a sensitive grandmother masking her own grief in order to care for her grandson, a voodoo practitioner with a secret life, or a would-be adventuress? It’s hard to know what the film intends her to be. Then again, it’s equally hard to know what the film itself intends to be.

Is it a campy, rollicking farce with a touch of rosy pastel-tinged nostalgia for ... a South that’s barely past segregation? Is it a creepy, sinister children’s tale? Particularly when compared to the classic 1990 film adaptation from horror icon Nicolas Roeg, it’s certainly not very scary — which is probably the worst thing to be said about a movie based on a book whose witches are terrifying. In the original novel, there’s a truly chilling moment when our narrator, the Boy, realizes that all the women in the room he’s trapped in are wearing gloves. We never come close to anything that scary in Zemeckis’s version of The Witches because we’re all assumed to be in on the joke that the witches are in the hotel the whole time.

But the joke just isn’t that funny. As the head witch of the coven, Anne Hathaway’s Grand High Witch is both Catwoman and the Joker, with a hilariously overwrought German accent. While Hathaway has her moments of melodramatic fun, she’s the only actor who does.

And then there’s the matter of race. Even though on the surface, Zemeckis is faithfully retelling Dahl’s story of a boy and a coven of witches, he’s also giving us a story of a Black boy facing racial and class prejudice in the South that resonates with the American political climate today, even if the prejudice has been dialed back so far as to be barely more than a hint. Every Dahl story puts the trappings of white British privilege front and center, pitting our maligned waif hero against snooty rich children and their terrible parents. When that story gets transplanted onto the story of Southern life, however, it inevitably feels much different.

Dahl’s stories depend upon their hyperbolic caricatures of childhood and adulthood for much of their whimsical appeal and their ability to speak directly to young children. It’s difficult for an American viewer to find this kind of hyperbolic whimsy, however, in a recently desegregated South. It’s even harder when the potential for larger world-building around the theme of racial injustice seems to have been utterly ignored. (What does it mean that a boy would rather be a mouse than a boy in America? There’s a question ripe for exploration — but The Witches doesn’t think to ask it, let alone suggest an answer.)

In the Witches novel, what’s striking about the narrator and his grandmother is their aloneness in the world — they really only have each other. But in Zemeckis’s version, Spencer’s character lives in a small town, goes to church, visits her local shopkeepers, and has a whole history of growing up in a Depression-era community where witches were apparently a part of the local lore. But whatever community she’s a part of is only shrugged at, never brought to bear on her actions or the story itself.

What’s even more glaring and strange is that in a community of church-going Black women in the 1960s, where most women typically wore nice shoes and gloves, just like witches, the film doesn’t attempt to address the problems that would inevitably arise if you’re a kid trying to decide who is and isn’t a witch. The film could raise this extremely obvious question, and because it’s chosen to take Black characters living in a Black community as its heroes, you’d think it would. That it doesn’t just adds to the level of disconnect between Zemeckis’s impulse to inject modern-day diversity into The Witches and the all-British story he’s telling.

But perhaps we should discuss why a modern retelling of The Witches would want to be diverse. Because the other crucial piece of context for The Witches involves its subtext — and to understand it, we have to ruin your childhood a little. (Sorry.)

Roald Dahl was an anti-Semitic, misogynistic misanthrope

Roald Dahl is one of the most celebrated children’s authors who ever lived. But he was also indisputably one of the most bigoted. He was a profound anti-Semite, perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes and falsehoods — like that of Jewish people controlling the economy and the publishing industry. In 1983, Dahl, then 67, told The New Statesman that Jewish people “provoke animosity” and blamed them for being too “submissive” to fight back during the Holocaust. “I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere,” he said. “Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”

Unlike, for example, the ongoing debates around H.P. Lovecraft’s racism , we know Dahl was anti-Semitic because he literally said so. “I am certainly anti-Israel, and I have become anti-Semitic,” he reportedly told The Independent in 1990. Still, despite these direct quotes to the media, critics were calling reports of Dahl’s anti-Semitism “ unjustified ” as late as 2009. And in 2016, Steven Spielberg, director of the Dahlian adaptation BFG , expressed disbelief that someone who could write such a kindhearted book could really be anti-Semitic. Spielberg argued that, as a classic misanthrope, Dahl often said contentious things just to aggravate others. “Everybody in his life, basically, his whole support team, was Jewish,” Spielberg added.

Dahl might have surrounded himself with Jewish staff, but that doesn’t mean he treated them well; in fact, Dahl’s increasingly anti-Semitic attitude toward staff members at his longtime publisher, Knopf, ultimately led to Knopf’s extraordinary decision to fire him as a client late in 1980 — though that was also because Dahl was allegedly horrible to the staff in general. Dahl has also been widely read as a misogynistic writer, in large part due to the openly misogynistic theme of The Witches , in which women are literally demonized for dressing up, feminizing their appearances, and framed as monsters lurking inside seemingly sweet and complacent disguises. They’re also coded as anti-Semitic, with large, hooked noses, reptilian features, a ready stash of mysterious cash, and a plot to take over the world and kill children, all tropes derived from longstanding anti-Semitic conspiracies. (As a bonus, while I’m ruining your childhood, Matilda, a sweet telekinetic orphan, was originally meant to be something of the villain of the book, terrorizing her parents instead of the reverse.)

Perhaps it’s an awareness of this troubled history and a desire to do better — or perhaps just a desire to engage in diverse casting — that sparked Zemeckis’s attempt to build his version of The Witches around Spencer’s character and her grandson. But if that’s the case, it seems the exercise hasn’t shown us much — except, perhaps, to underscore that a thoughtless kind of diverse representation isn’t much better than no representation at all.

The Witches falls apart because of its inability to reconcile its very different stories

Zemeckis’s version of The Witches seems to offer nothing whatsoever to attempt to remedy the embedded issues in Dahl’s original writing. The writers have chosen not to substantially re-work the story, not even to think through the ways a bunch of witches might manipulate their Southern gothic environment. (In Alabama, on the Gulf of Mexico, are there really no swamp witches around? No Cajun priestesses doing spells in moss-covered mansions or nearby pirate coves?) Then again, none of the witches really exist at all outside of their single-minded goal to squash children.

The anti-Semitism Dahl himself professed doesn’t necessarily play a role in most of his other works, but it’s directly relevant to The Witches , a story that’s explicitly about detecting imposters in the midst of society. This is, to be blunt, the theme of most anti-Semitic conspiracies throughout history, and has led in its most extreme form to the idea that Jewish people “hide” in plain sight while essentially controlling the world.

In The Witches , witches hide in plain sight by disguising themselves as ordinary women — but the tells that give them away are also coded as anti-Semitic: they’re bald beneath their wigs, have reptile-like hands and feet, and have noses that expand when they sniff out children. The grand high witch also speaks with a German accent, one that can easily pass for Yiddish.

The 1990 film unfortunately perpetuated all of these traits, and I hoped that Zemeckis’s version would take pains to shift its witches far away from this stereotype. But it’s not clear if any attempt was made to remove the story’s discriminatory bits. At least the hooked noses are gone. Even so, there’s a lot of anti-Semitic coding ported over, especially when you’re also trying to signal a commitment to diversity by casting Black actors (and an entirely atonal Chris Rock as narrator) to deliver this story. It seems as though zero forethought or even insight went into the portrayal of the witches; and honestly, perhaps this movie needed to hire a culture critic as a consultant in order to save it from itself.

Perhaps that lack of insight about the film’s symbolism and coding is why everything else in The Witches just feels so off-kilter. There are shoehorned CGI mouse adventures that don’t feel remotely fun; the CGI effects feel flattened against the perpetually pastel tones of this movie, and our talking mice are given very little character development outside some cursory backstory (and some obligatory fat-shaming of Boy’s portly friend Bruno, because it wouldn’t be a Roald Dahl adaptation without some fat-shaming). And given Stanley Tucci’s vacillating faint Southern accent, for example, he doesn’t seem to be entirely sure where he is, just like it’s not entirely clear whether racism exists in this universe or not.

Y’all, Kristin Chenoweth is in this film, and I was so discombobulated I didn’t even notice her — that’s how weird this film is.

The Witches is a children’s film, and perhaps this deep overanalysis proves that children’s films should never be subjected to this much rigorous scrutiny. But children’s films that endure are the ones that remain compelling in adulthood. With The Witches , so little thought has gone into the process of creation that it seems as though it’s destined to be a lesson in how not to adapt a problem-laden story for the 21st century.

It’s a cautionary tale, alright — just not the one the director intended to make.

Correction : A previous version of this article misstated Zemeckis’ religion. He is Catholic.

Most Popular

• Your drawer full of old cables is worth more than you think Member Exclusive
• France’s government just collapsed. What does that actually mean?
• Why do so many young people suddenly have cancer?
• The horrifying implications of today’s Supreme Court argument on trans rights
• Take a mental break with the newest Vox crossword

Today, Explained

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

This is the title for the native ad

More in Culture

For music lovers, streaming has never felt more stale.

The Hawaii resident’s disappearance became a viral internet mystery. That may have made things worse.

Harassment against women on X has never been worse.

Desserts at restaurants have gotten boring — here’s why.

It’s not cocaine, but it can be just about anything else — except a good idea.

What 3 new books reveal about where the housing movement goes next.

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

The Best Kids' Entertainment of 2024

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Jewish Experiences
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Multicultural Books

YouTube Channels with Diverse Representations

Podcasts with Diverse Characters and Stories

Parents' guide to, the witches.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 11 Reviews
• Kids Say 24 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

By Nell Minow , based on child development research. How do we rate?

Some kids will love it, some may find disturbing.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this story has a genuinely twisted flavor that some children will love and others will find disturbing. Luke is exceptionally brave and enjoys being a mouse (in the movie, he is changed back, but in the book, he stays a mouse). Children may be upset not only by the witches, but also by the…

Why Age 9+?

Scary witches, children in peril, including baby in carriage pushed down a hill

Any Positive Content?

Luke is exceptionally brave.

Parents need to know that this story has a genuinely twisted flavor that some children will love and others will find disturbing. Luke is exceptionally brave and enjoys being a mouse (in the movie, he is changed back, but in the book, he stays a mouse). Children may be upset not only by the witches, but also by the death (offscreen) of Luke's parents and his seeming indifference to it.

To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Violence & Scariness

Scary witches, children in peril, including baby in carriage pushed down a hill (and rescued), Luke's parents are killed in an (offscreen) accident, which does not seem to bother him too much.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Positive messages, where to watch, videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents Say (11)
• Kids Say (24)

Based on 11 parent reviews

What's the Story?

Luke hears about witches from his grandmother (Mai Zetterling). She says they have to wear gloves to hide their claw-like hands and shoes that fit their square feet without toes, and that they are bald and scratch under their wigs. They have a purple gleam in their eyes. They are evil and they steal children, who are never seen again. Luke's parents are killed, and his grandmother takes him to England. When she is diagnosed with mild diabetes, the doctor advises a vacation, so they go to Cornwall. As it happens, a convention of all the witches in England is staying in the same hotel, posing as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Their leader is slinky, black-clad Eva Ernst (Anjelica Huston). Luke overhears her telling the witches to wipe out all the children in England by turning them into mice, and he watches as she demonstrates by giving a potion to a greedy child named Bruno, transforming him into a mouse. The witches find Luke, and after a chase, capture him and turn him into a mouse. With the help of his grandmother, he steals some of the potion, and puts it into the soup to be served to the witches, who are all turned to mice, except for Eva's assistant. Luke manages to get Eva's trunkful of money, along with her notebook listing the addresses of all the witches in America, and he and his grandmother plan to go after them.

Is It Any Good?

This story has a genuinely twisted flavor that some children will love and others will find disturbing. Children may be upset not only by the witches, but by the death (offscreen) of Luke's parents, and by his seeming indifference to it.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the notion of witches. Are you fascinated or disturbed by the idea of these strange women with magical powers?

Why do you think most witches are portrayed as evil?

Movie Details

• In theaters : August 24, 1990
• On DVD or streaming : June 22, 1999
• Cast : Anjelica Huston , Jane Horrocks , Rowan Atkinson
• Director : Nicolas Roeg
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Warner Bros.
• Genre : Family and Kids
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Book Characters
• Run time : 91 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• Last updated : October 12, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Best magical movies, best fantasy movies, related topics.

• Magic and Fantasy
• Book Characters

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

"The Witch," a period drama/horror film by first-time writer/director Robert Eggers , tellingly advertises itself as "a New England folktale" instead of a fairy tale. Fairy tales are, at heart, parables that prescribe moral values. "The Witch," a feminist narrative that focuses on an American colonial family as they undergo what seems to be an otherworldly curse, is more like a sermon. Sermons pose questions that use pointedly allegorical symbols to make us reconsider our lives, just as one character uses the Book of Job to understand her role in her family (more on Job shortly). But "The Witch" is not a morality play in a traditional sense. It's an ensemble drama about a faithless family on the verge of self-destruction. And it is about women, and the patriarchal stresses that lead to their disenfranchisement.

For a while, it is unclear which character is exactly the focus of "The Witch." It's probably not grieving mother Katherine ( Kate Dickie ), though Eggers gives ample consideration to her mourning of infant son Samuel, who has disappeared under unusual circumstances. And it's definitely not Katherine's mischievous young twins Jonas and Mercy ( Lucas Dawson and Ellie Grainger , respectively), though Mercy does often speak for her and her brother's inability to understand how the world works after their family is banished to a foreboding forest by a nearby colony. The film's main protagonist might be William ( Ralph Ineson ), Katherine's troubled husband. Or it could be her eldest son Caleb ( Harvey Scrimshaw ), a young man desperate to defend his father from his mother's frustration. 

But more often than not, "The Witch" concerns Thomasin ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), the eldest of Katherine and William's five children. Thomasin undergoes puberty under the mistrustful eyes of her family, but realistically, they're not too concerned with her when crops are failing, money is scarce, and Samuel is missing. Still, Thomasin absorbs the brunt of her family's anxieties: her younger siblings look to her for comfort, but she balks at the added pressure, especially after her mother makes her do more chores than the rest of her family members. There are other subplots in "The Witch," but all roads eventually lead to Thomasin. That's the dark beauty of Eggers's expansive story: it's not just about the marginalized presence of women in a male-dominated microcosm, but the harsh conditions that can, even under extremely isolated circumstances, lead women to resentment, and crippling self-doubt.

"The Witch" is, in that sense, an anti-parable. Eggers eventually leads Thomasin out of the woods, but he takes his time in clearing her path. The result sometimes feels like an imaginary Harold Pinter-scripted version of " The Crucible ," since it follows desperate, lonely souls who do everything—set animal traps, milk goats, till the fields, do laundry—to avoid thinking about what's really troubling them. It takes a while for Thomasin's clan to even consider that their problems are caused by witch, or demonic enchantment. But it eventually happens. Before that, there are only signs and portents, particularly evil-looking animals: a tetchy goat, a twitchy hare, and some talkative crows. Eventually, Thomasin's family personify their fears of nature, a gnawing uncertainty that is predictably gendered as feminine. And suddenly, the family's day-to-day troubles—almost all of which stem from the fact that their land seems cursed—takes the form of a fairy tale witch.

Which brings us back to Job. In the Book of Job, God hurts Job in order to test his faith. The reader knows that God exists, and has a divine, or perhaps just Mysterious, reason for trying Job. But until Job's body is plagued by God, he doesn't question that there is a reason for his torment. The same is basically true of William and his family. Until events lead his family to start clawing at each other's throats, he goes about his business as best he can. As a result, when you watch "The Witch," you often don't seem to know what the film is about. But the film's title is a big clue: this is a fantasy about empowerment, albeit through unorthodox methods. 

I've talked a lot about what "The Witch" is about without mentioning how well it's about it. That's partly because the film is so consistently engrossing that I surrendered to it early on. Eggers' hyper-mannered camerawork draws you in by evoking Johannes Vermeer's portraits and the landscape paintings of Andrew Wyeth (there's also an overt reference to one of Francisco Goya's more famous paintings, but I can't tell you which one for fear of ruining a surprise). The complex sound design and controlled editing also help establish a mood that is (paradoxically) both inviting and somber. "The Witch" draws you in so well that you won't realize its creators have been broadcasting exactly where they're taking you. 

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

• Lucas Dawson as Jonas
• Ralph Ineson as William
• Harvey Scrimshaw as Caleb
• Ellie Grainger as Mercy
• Anya Taylor-Joy as Thomasin
• Kate Dickie as Katherine

Cinematographer

• Jarin Blaschke
• Louise Ford
• Mark Korven
• Robert Eggers

Leave a comment

Now playing.

Hard Truths

Nosferatu (2024)

Sweethearts

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Our Little Secret

Heavier Trip

Nutcrackers

Dear Santa (2024)

Latest articles.

Margo Martindale Anchors the Clever, “Fargo”-esque Tale of “The Sticky”

Kyle Mooney and Edward Winter Go Back in Time with "Y2K"

James Gunn Launches His New DCU with Clever "Creature Commandos"

Female Filmmakers in Focus: Marielle Heller on "Nightbitch"

The best movie reviews, in your inbox.

We sent an email to [email protected]

Didn't you get the email?

By joining, you agree to the Terms and Policies and Privacy Policy and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

username@email

By continuing, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

Log in or sign up for Rotten Tomatoes

Trouble logging in?

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes and to receive email from the Fandango Media Brands .

By creating an account, you agree to the Privacy Policy and the Terms and Policies , and to receive email from Rotten Tomatoes.

Email not verified

Let's keep in touch.

Sign up for the Rotten Tomatoes newsletter to get weekly updates on:

• Upcoming Movies and TV shows
• Rotten Tomatoes Podcast
• Media News + More

By clicking "Sign Me Up," you are agreeing to receive occasional emails and communications from Fandango Media (Fandango, Vudu, and Rotten Tomatoes) and consenting to Fandango's Privacy Policy and Terms and Policies . Please allow 10 business days for your account to reflect your preferences.

OK, got it!

• About Rotten Tomatoes®
• Login/signup

Movies in theaters

• Opening This Week
• Top Box Office
• Coming Soon to Theaters
• Certified Fresh Movies

Movies at Home

• Fandango at Home
• Prime Video
• Most Popular Streaming Movies
• What to Watch New

Certified fresh picks

• 89% Wicked Link to Wicked
• 91% The Order Link to The Order
• 95% Beatles '64 Link to Beatles '64

New TV Tonight

• 95% Star Wars: Skeleton Crew: Season 1
• 93% Creature Commandos: Season 1
• -- Jentry Chau vs the Underworld: Season 1
• 97% Black Doves: Season 1
• -- Paris Has Fallen: Season 1
• 83% The Sticky: Season 1
• -- Earth Abides: Season 1
• -- Beastars: Season 3
• -- Girls Gone Wild: The Untold Story: Season 1

Most Popular TV on RT

• 76% The Madness: Season 1
• 100% Arcane: League of Legends: Season 2
• 95% A Man on the Inside: Season 1
• 71% Dune: Prophecy: Season 1
• 65% The Agency: Season 1
• 85% The Day of the Jackal: Season 1
• 93% Say Nothing: Season 1
• 44% Senna: Season 1
• Best TV Shows
• Most Popular TV

Certified fresh pick

• 93% Creature Commandos: Season 1 Link to Creature Commandos: Season 1
• All-Time Lists
• Binge Guide
• Comics on TV
• Five Favorite Films
• Video Interviews
• Weekend Box Office
• Weekly Ketchup
• What to Watch

DC Comics TV Ranked by Tomatometer

100 Best Computer-Animated Movies, Ranked by Tomatometer

What to Watch: In Theaters and On Streaming.

Awards Tour

2025 Critics Choice Awards Nominations: Full List of Nominees

The Moana 2 Cast On Recording New Music and Hidden Easter Eggs

• Trending on RT
• Anticipated TV Shows
• New Holiday Movies
• Renewed and Cancelled TV
• Holiday Horror

Roald Dahl's The Witches Reviews

It’s not a classic for all ages, and Zemeckis has undoubtedly been better, but for fans of the book and the director, there are certainly far worse options out there.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 13, 2024

The Witches is a great new reimagined story based on Roald Dahl’s classic 1983 children’s book. The film has just the right amount of campy and creepy.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jan 16, 2023

a wickedly funny and stylish take on a childrens classic that conjures family fun with a typically dark Roald Dahl edge.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 26, 2022

Most of the movie contains some measure of digital imagery that doesnt quite look right.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Feb 17, 2022

Thankfully, the new version is less scary than the original, although I personally wouldn't be showing it to anyone under 10, it's still quite scary. But also great!.

Full Review | Nov 19, 2021

It is, broadly speaking, an enjoyable film. There are better films out there.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 14, 2021

This entertaining new version is much truer in tone to the book, where the line separating the silly and the sinister is often blurred.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 29, 2021

There's nothing here bad enough, not even Chris Rock's atrocious narration, to weigh down the lightweight playfulness that The Witches manifests when at its best.

Full Review | Jun 5, 2021

I can't even tell what Zemeckis was getting at. This is not scary, not silly, not topical. Least of all entertaining.

Full Review | Apr 22, 2021

There's a lack of overall magic, either of the twisted or charming type - unless sending viewers clamouring to find wherever the original is currently streaming counts.

Full Review | Mar 9, 2021

Robert Zemeckis never tries to make the slight story anything more than what it is, hitting the high points from the book with the gusto they deserve.

Full Review | Feb 5, 2021

Those who were terrified by the 1990 version may be put off by a lack of practical effects and Hathaway's absolutely over-the-top performance in the 2020 film. But the new version ought to inspire and truly terrify a new generation of budding horror fans.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2021

This new adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic is yet another example of how a film can end up being so much less than the sum of its parts.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jan 15, 2021

Hathaway gets off the easiest, vamping it up with an accent best described as "Norwegian Dracula," while Spencer is reduced to playing straight woman to a bunch of mice.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 14, 2021

Audiences have understandably not taken kindly to the filmmakers' artistic licence.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 30, 2020

Dodgy CGI aside, The Witches is a colorful, cartoonish treat for the whole family that boasts a never-been-campier Anne Hathaway as the Grand High Witch.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 30, 2020

As the whimsy comes in different forms in this picture, it distinctly separates itself from the earlier adaptation.

Full Review | Dec 29, 2020

Despite all, there's delight in the wonderful 60's costumes and art design and in Spencer's dignified strength and warmth. Get an early look at Bruno who could be at the start of a big career.

According to the 30-year-cycle theory of popular culture, anything in the zeitgeist of 1990 should be coming around again, right... about... now!

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 28, 2020

Dahl demands some darkness and edge, but instead there's a bright Hollywood-y antic sense, and the overused and unconvincing FX only serves to further trivialize what we're seeing.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Dec 22, 2020

‘The Witches’ Review: A D.O.A. Fantasy Made From Dahl Parts

• By David Fear

He’s given us eccentric candy moguls, massive traveling peaches, a dapper fox and his friends, telekinetic moppets, big friendly giants and more — but discerning fans of Roald Dahl’s work tend to have a weakness for his witches. Published in 1982, The Witches was one of Dahl’s darker excursions into kid’s-lit, which is saying something; pitting a seven-year-old boy against a coven of kid-hating hags (disguised as high-society women), it garnered praise and controversy in almost equal numbers. Some called it horribly misogynist. Others consider it the ultimate flipped bird against adulthood, with the author not so subtly suggesting that grown-ups want to figuratively and literally destroy the child-like qualities of youth.

The book has won awards, made countless Best YA Books lists and been banned from libraries. It’s been used as an example of Dahl’s talent for not sugar-coating his Fisher-Price-My-First-Macabre tales for underage readers and for how he was a textbook “problematic author” before the term became part of our everyday lexicon. It’s been adapted into a multi-part radio drama and an opera. No less than Nicolas Roeg, the man behind The Man Who Fell to Earth and other gloriously bizarre ’70s movies, turned this fractured tale into a film in 1990. It’s now considered by many to be a cult classic. Dahl loathed it.

Every generation should get The Witches it deserves, which begs the question: What did this current generation do in order to deserve a dull, D.O.A. interpretation? Writer-director Robert Zemeckis ‘s new stab at Dahl’s delightfully demented novel (it begins streaming tonight on HBO Max), with help from no less than Kenya Barris (!) and Guillermo Del Toro (!!) on the screenplay, makes two highly intriguing decisions very early on. First, it relocates the story from England to Demopolis, Alabama circa 1967. Suddenly, a whole world of subtextual possibilities open up when you drop this story into the George Wallace’s South. It’s also a great excuse to play a lot of Motown and Stax on the soundtrack, and let your costume designer go crazy with the vintage couture. You quickly begin to realize which of these factors may have played a bigger part in the period setting.

Editor’s picks

The 100 best tv episodes of all time, the 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 200 greatest singers of all time.

The other is to make the unnamed child an African-American kid. Referred to as “Hero Boy” in the credits, he’s played by the charismatic child actor Jahzir Bruno and voiced, in his older incarnation, by Chris Rock . Taken in by his kindly grandmother ( Octavia Spencer ) after his parents perish in a car accident, the youngster has an encounter with a strange woman at the local grocer. Grandma is deservedly worried; she once saw her best friend get turned into a chicken. Witches prey on the poor, the overlooked, the kids no one makes a fuss about, she says. They have to hide out where it’s safe: “a rich white folks’ hotel,” because no one will think to look for them there. So Grandma, Hero Boy and his new pet mouse, Daisy, check in. How were they to know that this is the same place that the International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, a.k.a. the Southern-belle coven run by the Norwegian Grand High Witch ( Anne Hathaway ) herself, is scheduled to hold a huge gathering?

That’s how Hero Boy and Daisy find themselves trapped under a stage in the hotel ballroom, as Her Highness — played by Hathaway with an an ever-evolving Scandinavian accent located north of a fondue restaurant’s maître d’ yet south of The Muppets ‘ Swedish Chef — preps her assembled acolytes for their master plan: unleashing a purple elixir that will turn children into mice. There are a few things that characterize witches, you see. They may look like normal, snobby human beings with an unlimited line of credit at Nordstrom’s, but actually they have claws for hands, feet with a single bird-like talon instead of toes, and CGI-enlarged jaws, all the better to chew scenery, my dear. And they hate kids. So imagine the sight of largely (but not exclusively) white horde of well-dressed ladies, pulling a small black boy by his legs into the middle of the floor, and descending on him like ravenous predators. It’s a bit of imagery that feels nightmarish whether it’s in the incendiary late Sixties or reflecting back on our recent summer of rage.

That’s the extent to which that notion goes, however. Maybe you can’t blame Zemeckis and Co. for not milking this scenario for boldfaced commentary, even though they’ve purposefully trod into this fertile ground — they want to make a work of fantastical escapism that merely hints at something potentially deeper, but doesn’t actually bother to spelunk beneath the surface. Fair enough.

'The Social Network' at 10: Fincher, Facebook and the Faking of an Empire

Beatlemania 2.0: the making of 'i wanna hold your hand'.

Except The Witches 2020 can’t seem to find a proper manic-to-ghastly rhythm that makes the material work, either, which is a bit more of a dealbreaker. The director and his longtime cinematographer Don Burgess ( Forest Gump, Cast Away, Flight ) zip the camera around, often at mouse level, through scurrying passerbys and around posh rooms, yet everything feels curiously inert. Once Hero Boy is turned into a mouse along with another youngster at the hotel — Daisy, too, is a former human being, and sounds a lot like Kristin Chenoweth — we’re robbed of this actor’s expressiveness and are simply left with digital rodentia. Spencer does her best to keep the humanity intact, while Hathaway overcompensates for the lack of spark elsewhere by going bigger, broader and more googly-eyed batshit than you can imagine. No one is expecting her to step into Angelica Huston’s stilettos, given the bite and brilliance that actor brought to Roeg’s movie 30 years ago. But it’s a performance that’s larger than the movie its in. It’s probably also larger than the TV screen you’re watching it on, the multiplex screen this was originally meant for pre-Covid, and the city block where that multiplex resides.

It all ends with a postcard montage that, even by Hollywood’s happily-ever-after standards, feels cut-rate and totally alien to Dahl’s vision or voice. Zemeckis has made his share of notable movies over the past four decades, from gross-out comedies to serious dramas. Ever since the turn of the century, however — around the time he filmed an airplane crash so harrowing and realistic in Cast Away that it left you suffering from PTSD — his work has begun to feel like it’s more and more concerned with the formal experiments and tech-pushing spectacle over the storytelling. (See: The Polar Express, Beowulf, A Christmas Carol, The Walk, Welcome to Marwen. ) Thankfully, The Witches doesn’t devolve into deafening bells and whistles. It just doesn’t really come together in any aspect, sort of limping and flopping to the finish line. This isn’t a disaster. It’s just less of a tribute to the source material then a mild attempt at family-friendly fantasy composed of spare Dahl parts.

'Scrubs' Creator Bill Lawerence Will Develop Series Reboot

• By Larisha Paul

'The Order': Jude Law vs. Neo-Nazi White Supremacists. Guess Who Wins?

• Movie Review

Jamie Foxx Declares 'I'm Back' and Tears Up in Trailer for Stand-Up Special About Health Scare

• What Happened Was
• By Jodi Guglielmi

Six Times Robert Pattinson Magnificently Lied to the Press

• Fool You Once
• By Charisma Madarang

Delays, a Rumored Cancelation, and Cast Shakeups: What We Know About 'Euphoria' Season 3

• Euphoria 2026
• By Kalia Richardson

Most Popular

'last week tonight' withdrawn from critics choice awards consideration amid controversy (exclusive), oscars predictions 2025: the state of the race after first week of critics awards, archaeologists discovered more than 1,000 artifacts beneath notre dame cathedral, sophia loren’s lookalike granddaughter lucia’s vintage look paid homage to her grandma, you might also like, cynthia erivo on directing ambitions and dangers of ‘wicked’ cyber-bullying: ‘it’s easy’ to ‘type words about a person you don’t know anything about’, jimmy choo returns to madison avenue with new flagship, the best yoga mats for any practice, according to instructors, ida awards tip documentary oscar contenders like ‘no other land’, mcgregor ordered to pay legal costs of sexual assault plaintiff.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.