Review: ‘Gretel & Hansel’ is a real horror(ible) movie

There’s a scene early on in the new film “Gretel & Hansel” when the two title characters accidentally scarf down psychedelic mushrooms in a forest and it produces one very strong feeling in the audience: jealousy. Rob Hayes’ script centers on Gretel — hence the title’s name swap — and turns her into woke, coming-of-age super-heroine who outsmarts a witch. This retelling seems to be a lesson about corruption or maybe environmentalism — “nothing is given without something taken away,” Gretel intones — but it’s all muddled by heavily stylized sets and intended-to-be-creepy set-pieces that are visually fascinating but add up to little, all set to a knock-off “Stranger Things” soundtrack. “What hides behind this pleasantness?” There’s also Charles Babalola as a fleeting nice guy who kills a demon with an arrow-driven head shot, an entire sequence that seems from another movie.