Sophia Lillis faced all manner of on-screen horrors in her still-burgeoning career,
and there’s more to come. Following It, It Chapter Two, and Sharp Objects, the new Gretel & Hansel trailer offers up a deeper look at the 17-year-old’s journey through the woods for this even darker twist on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale.
We know the story of the two children, a brother and sister, who get lost in the woods and find themselves at the candy-covered home of a cannibal witch. In this film, from director Osgood Perkins, Gretel (Lillis) is much older than her brother (Sammy Leakey) and the stakes feel higher.
After getting kicked out of their home, the kids venture into the woods in search of food and work. But the forest play tricks on the mind. Amid the dark trees, they find a cottage where an old woman, the witch in question (Carnival Row‘s Alice Krige), resides. Yes, it looks like she still feeds on children, but there’s another kind of allure to her.
“This is your power,” the witch tells the young teen, “to see what is hidden and to take it.”
“It’s awfully faithful to the original story, it’s got really only three principal characters: Hansel, Gretel, and the Witch,” Perkins previously told EW. “We tried to find a way to make it more of a coming of age story. I wanted Gretel to be somewhat older than Hansel, so it didn’t feel like two 12-year-olds — rather a 16-year-old and an 8-year-old. There was more of a feeling like Gretel having to take Hansel around everywhere she goes, and how that can impede one’s own evolution, how our attachments and the things that we love can sometimes get in the way of our growth.”
Gretel & Hansel will hit theaters on Jan. 31.
