Robert Zemeckis directs Roald Dahl’s The Witches from a script he shares with Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, and the result is a children’s fantasy that leans on spectacle over substance. Based on Dahl’s 1983 novel, the film follows a young orphaned boy who moves to live with his grandmother in the rural Alabama town of Demopolis, only to find himself caught up in a gathering of witches led by the Grand High Witch herself.
The film runs 104 minutes, and it tries to balance comedy, horror and family entertainment across those genres. It mostly succeeds at being funny, occasionally frightens, and rarely feels like a proper family film.
Trailer, via Warner Bros..
Grandma and the Grand High Witch
Octavia Spencer plays the grandmother, a woman who recognizes the danger the witches pose immediately. She is wise, protective and warm, and her performance carries much of the film’s emotional weight. Her scenes with Jahzir Bruno, who plays the boy, are the film’s strongest stretches, giving the story a beating heart beneath the monster makeup.
Anne Hathaway plays the Grand High Witch, and she commits fully to the role. She is elegant, cruel and commanding, and her presence anchors the film’s villainy. Her interactions with the boy and his grandmother are the film’s most memorable sequences, even when the story around them strains to keep pace.
Stanley Tucci appears as Mr. Stringer, and the film leans on his physicality and timing for comic relief. His scenes are bright spots, though they often feel separate from the main plot rather than woven into it.
Chris Rock voices the older version of the boy, offering commentary and guidance from the future. Kristin Chenoweth voices two roles, Daisy and Mary, giving the film a touch of warmth in its supporting cast.
The Witches Themselves
The witches are the film’s biggest problem. They are designed to look terrifying, with rubber suits and prosthetics that push the limits of what audiences can stomach. Some viewers will find them genuinely frightening; others will simply find them silly.
The film’s tagline promises that witches are real, and it delivers on that promise visually. What it does not deliver is any sense of why these particular witches are worth fearing. Their motives are thin, their schemes are easy to follow, and their threat feels less like menace and more like a technical challenge.
“Witches are real!”
That line sums up the film’s attitude toward its own premise. It treats the witches as a given, a fact to be accepted, rather than a mystery to be explored. That approach works for a while, but it leaves the film without much depth once the premise has been established.
The Gathering at the Seaside Resort
The climax centers on a gathering of witches at a seaside resort, where the Grand High Witch has assembled her followers. The film builds toward this moment, but the buildup loses momentum along the way. The sequence is busy, with many witches moving through the frame, but the stakes never quite land.
The film also struggles with pacing. Its middle stretch drags, with too much time spent on filler scenes that add little to the central story. The final act rushes to resolve everything, leaving some threads loose rather than tied off neatly.
A Mixed Verdict
Roald Dahl’s The Witches is a film that knows how to scare and how to amuse, but it never quite becomes something greater. Its strengths are its cast and its visual design, and its weaknesses are its thin plotting and its inability to sustain tension. Spencer and Hathaway carry the film, but the screenplay lets them down by failing to give them enough to work with.
The film is best enjoyed as a light, entertaining ride rather than a deep exploration of its own ideas. It is not a failure, but it is not a triumph either.
6.3 of 10.
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