Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Jemma Arterton) were abandoned by their father in a forest and captured in a gingerbread house by a wicked witch. They ended up pushing her into the oven in which she wanted to cook them. Eleven years later, they are famous witch hunters and have killed hundreds of witches. Somehow, spells and curses don’t seem to work on them, but Hansel has diabetes from the sweets on which he was fattened up by the witch as a child. He must take insulin every few hours.
They arrive in the Town of Augsburg and prevent Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare) from executing a young woman named Mina (Pihla Vitala) for witchcraft. Mayor Engelmann ( Rainer Bock) has hired the team to rescue the town’s missing children, whom he believes have been taken by witches. The Sheriff hires trackers to disgrace the mayor and obtain power. Hansel and Gretel capture the horned witch (Ingrid Berdal) and discover that the entire coven is planning to sacrifice twelve children during the Blood Moon.
Grand Witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) attacks the town with an army and abducts another child. She attacks Gretel, who is saved by Ben (Thomas Mann), a young witch hunter fanboy. Hansel falls from a broomstick and is lost in the forest, to be found the next day by Mina. She heals and seduces him. Gretel is attacked by Sheriff Beringer and his posse, who beat her until they are stopped by a troll named Edward (Derek Mears). Edward kills Beringer and his men and tells Gretel that he is supposed to help white witches, of which she is one. Hansel and Gretel find their original home, abandoned in the forest.
Muriel appears and tells them that their mother was a white witch named Adrianna who married a farmer, thus their immunity to magic. Muriel planned to sacrifice Gretel instead of the too-powerful Adrianna on the next Blood Moon. She spread the story of Adrianna being a witch so the townspeople would get rid of her. The mob burned her alive and hanged their father, who had tried to save them by abandoning them in the forest. They battle Muriel. She stabs Hansel and abducts Gretel. Hansel wakes up to find that Mina has healed him and she blesses his weapons with a grimoire.
Hansel, Mina, and Ben disrupt the Blood Moon ceremony, Mina firing a gatling gun (!) while Hansel saves the children. Edward releases Gretel and Muriel throws him off a cliff. The witch hunters follow Muriel to the original gingerbread house. Muriel kills Mina before Hansel shoots her. After a brutal battle, she is decapitated with a shovel They burn her body and collect the reward for saving the children. Then they are off on the next hunt with Ben and Edward.
This dark fantasy was written and directed by Norwegian director Tommy Wikola, known for the Nazi zombie film Dead Snow. It was based on the fairy tale printed by the Brothers Grimm, produced by Paramount Pictures and filmed in Germany. It received mostly negative reviews for a weak script and gratuitous violence but was a box-office hit. Wikola was surprised that people were not put off by his film. It is a kind of steampunk meets Goth fairy tale with modern weapons, in which the retro-futuristic shotguns look like they were built by the town blacksmith. It is a Western with magic, and a lot of big, dumb, violent fun, based on a logical idea: given that Hansel and Gretel were traumatized by a witch in their childhood, how would the PTSD trauma manifest itself in later life? Famke Janssen and Gemma Artertron were both Bond Girls.