You have to assume NetFlix had a slot open for YA Horror and filled the niche with this ill conceived project. A film so overloaded with creepy crawly CGI, decorative grue and faux degraded animated interludes, it seems expressly designed to shut down the imagination of its intended audience. The basic idea splices an up-to-date HANSEL & GRETEL story with SCHEHERAZADE as horror obsessed little Alex (Winslow Fegley) slips out of his big city apartment (Mom & Dad none the wiser) and hits the elevator’s lobby button. But the car gets stuck between floors, opening onto some mystery space between two floors. The train platform to Hogwarts? No such luck. Instead, he goes down the hall and winds up in Witch Krysten Ritter’s apartment. (A classic New York ‘6', the lucky dog!) He might be the delivery boy . . . delivering himself . . . as lunch. Yikes! Fortunately, the witchy gal is crazy for scary stories and he’s got a dozen ready in his backpack. One tale a night or he’s toast . . . literally. But there’s another lunchable in there with him, the house servant, catering to the witch’s every whim & hunger pain. A slightly older Black girl. (Yep, the one Black in the film is the maid. Good grief.) Naturally, these two plot an escape, discover their witch answers to a higher/meaner/more dangerous witch and find a furnace to shove her in. Nothing especially wrong with the set up (other than the Black teenage domestic angle), but so physically over-elaborated and choppy in David Yarovesky's directorial execution, you’ll feel nearly as trapped as the kids do. The ones in the film and the ones watching on the couch.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Nicolas Roeg’s Grand Guignol take on Roald Dahl’S THE WITCHES/’90 is the go-to title on these things.
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