This remake isn't less terrifying than the original book or the 1990 adaptation, and can still frighten children... or even adults.
Trailers
- The “How to Spot a Witch”
trailer shows just why the witches have Glasgow Grins; As shown in the page image, their mouths are actually that wide, complete with Scary Teeth (and a forked tongue in the Grand High Witch’s case). - The manner in which the protagonist is changed into a mouse. The Body Horror is bad enough when he starts growing mousy features, but his transformation begins with purple boils covering his entire body.
Movie
- The movie starts with a realistic and disturbing moment: we see a young boy strapped to his seat within a car wreck, hanging upside down. After catching his breath, he starts calling for his parents. They don't respond. It's a horrific way to die, in a massive car crash.
- In a flashback, Grandma's friend Alice Blue is transformed into a chicken by the Grand High Witch. It’s some major Body Horror as her feet turn into claws, she begins pecking at the counter and she comes out onto the porch as a shrunken half girl, half chicken before transforming the rest of the way.
- In one of the earlier scenes before the meeting, the Grand High Witch looks at herself in a hand mirror and we see in lightning flashes (which illuminate underneath either her physical mask or her magical Glamour, whichever it may be) that her face is decayed, with a skull like nose, horrible Glasgow grin (and she's smiling, at that) and horrible wormholes in her face. It brings to mind the book's original description of the GHW's appearance when she removed her mask.
- Also, in a freeze-frame moment of foreshadowing, we see her extended line of teeth underneath the Glasgow Grin.
- The initial introduction to the Grand High Witch in the meeting is pretty creepy. Not only the reveal of the clawed three fingered hands of the Witches, the single clawed toe on the GHW and her showing her wig rashed scalp (peeling a maggot out of her skull before eating it) but the full view of her horrible sharp toothed Glasgow smile splitting as wide as a snake swallowing a mouse as she shouts angrily in a harsh, metallic and creepy voice at the assembled Witches.
- Her incineration of one of the witches that speaks up for the plan. The witch turns into black metallic dust, but the real terror is how casually she does it without any warning poem, she doesn't seem as intensely angered by her plan being mocked like the original and it seemed to be just for insubordination for speaking out of turn, even when she made a valid point. It speaks to how much of a Bad Boss she is compared to the original version, which was already a nasty boss.
- The transformation scene is new as, rather than go through the bother of pinching the Boy's nose shut to get him to open his mouth for the Formula 86, the Grand High Witch does it the "Shakespeare way", pouring the formula into his ear. We get the lovely sounds of it hissing like acid as the boys pained screams are muffled by another witches hand before the trailer scene of the boils covering his body occurs.
- There's also the added horror of the Grand High Witch appearing right in front of the vent the Boy is hiding behind, tearing it from the wall as she is face to face to him and dragging him out by his ears. And somehow, in doing this she's able to creepily (and rapidly) slide backwards with him without moving her legs at all (or even by slithering like a snake), in a sort of gliding levitation effect across the floor.
- The Grand High Witch doesn't just let the Boy run off when he's transformed. She actively stretches her limbs down the ventilation shaft to try to catch him and we get the LOVELY noise of cracking bones as the limbs distort, crack and stretch. There are more joints than humanly possible as she is trying to catch the transformed mice, up until the mice lead her hands into a spinning fanblade, slicing up her fingers, spraying black metallic Alien Blood. We get a shot as she draws back her hands of her sobbing and screaming in pain and we see the deep cuts in her fingers very clearly. Surprisingly, this movie is PG.
- Just before the climax, the Grand High Witch recognizes the Grandma, getting out of her seat before taking the soup and makes a beeline straight for her. She then engages in some very nasty Evil Gloating as she remembers her as the girl that got away and then mocks her friend's Forced Transformation.
- Which awakens some Paranoia Fuel in that the Witches will recognize the children that got away, even if they turn into adults.
- The transformation of the witches with the Formula 86 is much simpler than the original film, but rather than turning into cute little mice, they're turned into big vicious rats that hiss at people as they transform and actively attack the guests rather than simply scurrying about as the hotel staff try to exterminate them. It seems clear that these witches hold an apathy against humanity in general, specifically wanting to exterminate children in their day to day business but when forced into a vulnerable transformation, attempt to destroy all the people present in a last ditch effort.
- The Witches also turn on each other, with the transformed and yet untransformed witches attempting to kill each other despite knowing what's happening, out of nothing but mindless rage.
- The Grand High Witch confronts Grandma, threatening her as she exposes her horrid teeth, her extended limbs snapping and distorting as she says she will reach into Grandma's chest, tear out her heart and squeeze it until it bursts. This wouldn't necessarily be scary by itself, but since its from the point of view of the Grandma, it's like the GHW is talking to you. Major moment of The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You.
- After being transformed into a rat thanks to the mice feeding her the potion, the Grand High Witch is an enormous and bald headed rat with the same long clawed fingers and the same horrid wide smile, with big patches of fur missing from her flesh. She seems almost a hybrid between a woman and a rat. She chases after the kids, knocking aside the mouse traps she had set earlier as if they were nothing as she attempts to murder the children in revenge.
- The GHW in One-Winged Angel, still humanoid form in the original movie's climax was scary, but as she devolved and shrank into a rat she was no real threat to Mr. Stringer; disgusting, yes, but not intimidating. This version stands in sheer contrast. She is sprinting after the mouse kids like a demonic werewolf, and you get the sense that if it weren't for Grandma's intervention, she would definitely murder the children in furious revenge.
- The implied Cruel and Unusual Death Just Desserts, in which the Grandma unhooks the door to the cat cage so that Hades, the Grand High Witch's cat can eat his former master. There's a slow build up as the cat removes each book and finally the container before finally pouncing on the transformed witch, with the Grand High Witch alternating between begging to not be eaten by her former pet and insulting him before being eaten off screen with a frantic whelp. She definitely deserved it, but it's still a very nasty way to go.
- The witches' voices. Starting with the Snake witch, there's something very strange about the way she talks to the Boy and draws out certain words.
- In the meeting at the hotel, the Grand High Witch has this up to eleven, slipping back and forth from her more human voice to her darker, distorted one.Grand High Witch: This morning, I'm having my breakfast and I'm looking out the window, at the beach, and WHAT AM I SEEING? Hmm?
- In the meeting at the hotel, the Grand High Witch has this up to eleven, slipping back and forth from her more human voice to her darker, distorted one.
