Gretel & Hansel (2020)

Director: Oz Perkins (as Osgood Perkins)

Notable Cast: Sophia Lillis, Alice Krige, Sammy Leakey, Jessica De Gouw, Charles Babalola

To set up this review of Gretel & Hansel, it’s necessary to set the scene by touching on director Osgood Perkins. When he came onto the scene, he did it in a bit of a sneaky way. His debut was The Blackcoat’s Daughter (released originally under the title February) but that was a film that took two years to eventually find its way to a mass audience. In the meantime, he directed a film that went straight to Netflix, titled I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, and both films were met with relatively mixed reactions from horror fanatics and more casual film fans. If you want to read my reviews for them please feel free to read them HERE, but to recap – I fuckin’ love them. The slow-burn approach, the suffocating atmosphere, and the intentionality of all of the subtlety plays right into my sweet spots.

This now leads us to the subject of this piece, Gretel & Hansel. Going into the film, there was a sense that Orion Pictures might make Perkins sacrifice his style for the sake of a more mainstream film, but – much to my own delight – this is not the case. Maybe it’s because Orion is trying to make their stake as a genre company, but Gretel & Hansel still features all of the long, meandering narratives and slow pacing that one would expect from a Perkins film. Granted, this was a controversial style that fed into the mixed reactions for both of his first films, but Gretel & Hansel is Perkins understanding how to make his style a bit more consumable while still rightly fitting into his auteur stamp. If anything, a part of me wanted it to be even more subtle, perhaps nixing the voice-over narrative by Gretel that works to bridge over the various set pieces, but the choices for a slightly more user-friendly product are understandable even if the film is still hardly mainstream.

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2017)

Director: Oz Perkins

Notable Cast: Lucy Boynton, Kieman Shipka, Emma Roberts, James Remar, Lauren Holly, Emma Holzer, Peter J. Gray, Matthew Stefiuk

Oz Perkins is setting out to establish and conquer a niche corner of the horror spectrum. I was a massive fan of his previous (debut) film, I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, and I was looking forward to see where he would go with his sophomore effort The Blackcoat’s Daughter. His first film was certainly divisive for those who watched it and while this one will most likely divide viewers again with its atmospheric and vague approach to plot, he improves on the style of his debut with a more complex narrative and even creepier unnerving tone that makes this film one of the best horror films of the year. This is a film that relies solely on execution to sell its concept and the execution is so effective that it didn’t need the plot, characters, or anything else to do the work for it. The Blackcoat’s Daughter is one of those statement films that earns its merits in that manner.

The Blood Splatter: 2016 Horror Vol. 5 [I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House, Clown, Ava's Possessions]

I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House (2016)

Director: Oz Perkins

Notable Cast: Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss, Bob Balaban, Lucy Boynton

Haunting and poetic, I Am the Pretty Thing that Lives in the House is not at all a film for most mainstream horror fans. Instead of a haunted house film that's full of tricks and things flying around like 2016 seems to have been full of, this is a film built on the nuance of character and an atmosphere so subtle in its crafting that often enough it never must show anything to get under the skin. It's driven by what amounts to 80% monologue from our lead actress and it hammers down on the simple horrors of its tale instead of the big jump scares the haunted house genre is known for. It uses its narrator to balance out its slow-burn visuals and is very much driven by the nuance of its language – words and visuals – to deliver the atmosphere. Considering its plot about a young nurse taking care of an elderly horror author, it’s a fitting way to tell its story.