Welcome back to Movie Recaps.
Today I will show you a fantasy, adventure film from 2005, titled The Brothers Grimm.
Spoilers ahead!
Watch out and take care.
In 1796, a poor widow sends her son Jake to sell their only cow so they can get some money
to pay a doctor for her sick daughter.
However, when Jake returns, he reveals he exchanged the cow for magic beans.
His brother Will gets furious and begins punching him, blaming him for their sister's eventual
death.
Fifteen years later, in French-occupied Germany, Will and Jake Grimm are now adults arriving
at the town of Karlstadt.
They go to the mayor's office to hear the story of a witch that is haunting the local
mill, and all the details are written down by Jake in his book where he compilates tales
from all over the country.
This particular case sounds rather difficult yet they're willing to tackle it if they're
paid well.
The mayor is shocked to see the amount the brothers are asking for, but since they're
the only ones that can do it, he accepts.
Jake and Will go to the mill with the owner and get everything ready, including drawing
a five-pointed star on the floor, putting on armor, and filling their arrows with baby
tears.
The witch ghost shows up before they are ready though, so they have to improvise a little.
After flailing around the mill with the wrong choice of tools, the brothers finally find
the right spot to aim their gun and crossbow at the witch, who uses her magic to make them
turn their weapons on each other.
Fortunately, they have plenty of experience dealing with this, so they break out of her
control and manage to shoot her.
Her body becomes a bunch of snakes, so Jake puts them in a bag and tells the mill owner
to seal it in a mirror-lined box, then bury it far from any river.
The man leaves after paying them, and as soon as he is out of sight, Jake complains about
this demeaning job because he used to be a scholar.
As Will answers being famous is better, the details of the job come to light: there's
never been any supernatural in the mill, the witch and the magic were tricks made by the
siblings' sidekicks Hidlick and Bunst, who also get part of the pay.
The Grimms go from town to town creating mayhem using special effects and Jake's myth knowledge,
then they charge the locals to get rid of it.
Meanwhile in the forest of Marbaden, a little girl wearing a red cloak is picking up flowers
when she hears some growling behind her.
As a tree starts moving on its own, the girl runs away, but before she can make it back
to town, the beast jumps on her.
All that is left is her red cloak stuck in the branches of a tree.
Back in Karlstadt, the brothers are celebrating their success in an inn.
When they go to bed though, they are approached by a group of French soldiers and Italian
torturer Mercurio Cavaldi, who ties the siblings to their horses so they can be dragged through
the inn floor.
The following morning, they're taken to see General Vavarin Delatombe, who has already
captured Hidlick and Bunst and made them confess everything.
Delatombe wants to execute the sibling for all the lies and thievery, but he's willing
to forgive them if they can help with a little problem.
In the town of Marbaden, kids keep disappearing, and the culprit also uses tricks to make it
look like magic.
The brothers of course accept to solve the mystery.
In the woods of Marbaden, two more kids get lost while trying to find the missing girls,
even though the boy leaves a trail of bread crumbs behind him.
Distracted by the possibility of coming across a witch's gingerbread house, the girl gets
separated from her brother and loses her shawl when a branch takes it off her shoulders.
She chases it down the river until it gets stuck in a hole filled with bugs, and that's
when the Huntsman finds her.
The next day, Cavaldi takes the Grimms to Marbaden and they are received by wary townspeople
with weapons in their hands.
However, when they mention their name, young Sasha comes in their defense, saying she's
heard of their heroism.
The townspeople accept their help and tell the brothers all the details of the disappearances
- as Jake writes it all down, Will can't help to notice how expensive it would be to pull
off these advanced tricks.
To start working though, they're going to need someone that knows the forest well, so
the townspeople send them to see the trapper, who they believe is cursed.
This trapper turns out to be a huntress called Angelika, whose sisters have also been taken.
She doesn't want to help at first but changes her mind when the brothers promise they're
capable of saving the kids and Cavaldi gets a little too violent.
Unaware the Huntsman is following them, the party enters the forest, and Angelika asks
them to leave the horses for the last stretch.
Eventually, they make it to a very tall tower with no way in, surrounded by crypts.
Angelika tells Jake the whole story as her father used to tell it: the Christian king
destroyed the forest people and burned it all down to build a town.
This king was married to the Mirror Queen, who was beautiful and adored by everyone,
but also very vain.
When the plague came and took the king, the queen built the tower and locked herself away,
safe from the horrors below.
However, the wind carried the plague to her, and everyone in the area could hear her screaming
when she started to rot.
Since the plague destroyed the town, the forest regrew around the tower.
While the Huntsman feeds some tiny spiders to one of their horses, Jake can't help feeling
a sense of dread, and freaks out when he notices a tree moving on its own.
The party finds themselves surrounded by bugs and crows, so Angelika decides it's time for
them to leave.
Will is confused by the direction she takes since it isn't the one they came from, but
Angelika reminds him they shouldn't trust the trees.
Then she picks up a toad and licks her, saying this is the kiss for Grandma Toad so they'll
be guided through the forest.
Following the toad's directions, they safely make it back to their horses, and Jake notices
his own is acting weird.
When they return to town, Angelika tells the brothers she won't go to the forest with them
again.
Her father had been taken by wolves and shortly after, her sisters were the first kids to
disappear, which is why everyone calls her cursed.
Will insults her and an argument ensues, which ends with Angelika deciding she'll do her
own searching.
After night falls, Jake's horse begins whining loudly in the stables.
A little girl hears this and thinks she can make out a voice asking for help too, so she
goes to check on the horse, commenting on what big eyes and big mouth it has.
She's suddenly surprised when she notices the horse's mouth is filled with spider web,
and the animal opens it wide enough to swallow her whole.
The Grimms hear the kid screaming and come looking for her, only to freak out when they
find the hose with a huge belly and the girl stuck in its throat.
As the horse runs into the forest, the brothers begin arguing about how such a trick could
be pulled off, but drop the subject when they see Angelika pass by.
The whole party decides to follow her into the woods to save the girl, but the trees
begin moving to stop them and even kill a few of Cavaldi's men.
Angelika manages to free herself from the branches and finds a wolf, who she starts
pursuing to avenge her father.
However, when he comes closer, he doesn't attack because he seems to recognize her,
and Angelika thinks she can see intelligence in his eyes before he runs away.
The party runs back to town, and Jake is starting to believe in magic now.
Will insists it's a trick, and Cavaldi agrees, so he blames them for the deaths of his men.
Sometime later, Cavaldi goes to see Delatombe to tell him what happened and ask for the
Grimms and Angelika to be punished in his special machines.
They don't believe Jake when he says the forest is cursed, so in order to save their lives,
he changes the story and tells Delatombe that this whole deal has been a secret plan from
German rebels.
Politically obsessed as he is, Delatombe agrees to free them and send them back to Marbaden
to finish the job, but under one condition: if they fail again or try to escape, he'll
burn the town and the forest to look for them.
The Grimms return to Marbaden with Cavaldi, Hidlick and Bunst.
Will thinks they should try to make a run for it, but Jake has other ideas: he's remembered
he heard the story of the tower before, which ends with the queen using a spell for eternal
life.
This means she's still in the tower right now, waiting for someone to serve her and
find the final spell.
Jake asks Angelika for her help, but Will cuts in and insults him for living inside
a story that isn't real, just like it happened with the magic beans.
Hurt, Jake runs away into the forest on his own, which is pretty dangerous.
Angelika and Will try to go after him, but Cavaldi suddenly shows up and catches Angelika
to keep her with him so he can be sure the brothers will come back.
In the forest, Jake is testing a catapult with Hidlick and Bunst as a possible method
of entering the tower.
Will arrives to try to stop them, so a furious Jake punches him, tired of his brother always
taking everything away from him.
All his life, Jake studied fairy tales, and now he's found one that is real, all he needs
is his brother to support and believe in him.
Will finally admits he's been behaving like a jerk and accepts to help by offering an
idea: instead of the catapult, they should use a grapple and a hook to climb the tower.
Scared by the swarm of insects that are now surrounding them, Hidlick and Bunst run back
to town, where Sasha is taking water out of the well.
Inside the bucket she finds something more though: a crow that begins throwing mud at
her.
When she cleans off her face, she finds her mouth and eyes missing as yet another thing
climbs out of the bucket: a pile of mud that takes the form of the gingerbread man.
Everyone in town comes out when they hear Sasha is in trouble, including Angelika and
Cavaldi, but no matter what they hit the little mud man with, it just puts itself back together.
Unable to be stopped, the gingerbread man stretches its arms and takes Sasha, absorbing
her into its body before running away into the forest.
Back in the woods, Jake is climbing the tower as Will keeps the rope attached to a wheel
on the ground.
The rope breaks though, and Jake almost falls - luckily, he manages to hold onto the roof
just in time.
Reaching the top of the tower, Jake looks around and discovers there are twelve crypts
around it, evenly spaced in a circle like a clock face.
Then he enters the tower through the window and finds many interesting things inside:
the queen's crown, her throne, and a book of spells that shows the blood moon with twelve
crypts, which makes Jake realize eleven girls have disappeared so far.
Meanwhile, Will is starting to hear weird noises around him, so he picks up Grandma
Toad and licks her, asking her to guide him to Angelika's house.
His plans change however, when he suddenly sees Sasha appear in a small lake near the
tower and the wolf walks in as well, transforming into the Huntsman.
Will hides and watches the Huntsman pick up Sasha to put her inside the last crypt, saying
it's for his queen.
As soon as he leaves, Will rushes to take Sasha out, but the Huntsman quickly appears
again and begins attacking Will with his ax.
Things are getting creepy for Jake too, because he's found the queen's bed and on it her rotting
body.
When she suddenly moves, he tries to run away and bumps into a huge mirror where the queen,
looking young and healthy, calls his name.
In the reflection, she appears behind Jake and embraces him, promising to make his dreams
come true.
It almost works, Jake is about to fall for her spell when the mirror suddenly breaks
after Will, who is running from the Huntsman, throws a rock through the window.
Jake uses the queen's extremely long hair to jump out and safely land on top of the
Huntsman, knocking him out right before he hurts Will.
After picking up the Huntsman's ax and Sasha, the brothers run away following the toad's
directions.
The tree branches try to stop them, but the Huntsman's ax works like a charm that keeps
them away while Jake explains the queen's spell: she had granted herself eternal life
but not eternal youth, so she needs one extra spell to have both.
The Grimms return to town and try to warn everyone of the incoming dangers: that night
there will be an eclipse and the queen needs a twelfth girl for her spell, so they should
all leave and hide their kids in the city.
Before they can do any progress though, Delatombe shows up with his troops and the bodies of
Hidlick and Bunst.
Keeping his word, he proceeds to arrest the Grimms for lying and thievery, so they drop
the ax on the ground before they're taken away to the forest.
There, they're tied up as the soldiers light the trees up together with Jake's notebook
of stories, and Delatombe watches the fire spread, thinking he has won.
However, Angelika has recovered the ax from the ground, using it to escape from the soldiers
and rescue the brothers.
The three of them run deeper into the forest and come across the wolf, who transforms into
the Hunstman and Angelika recognizes him as her father.
All this time, he's been under the queen's spell, and that's why he's been kidnapping
girls for her.
The Huntsman takes his ax back, intending to hurt his daughter, but the Grimms jump
in to help.
Will tries to distract him with fire while Jake grabs Angelika, but she slips from his
grasp and falls into a lake that the Huntsman immediately freezes.
Then he transforms into the wolf again and runs towards the tower while Jake breaks the
ice, but it's too late: Angelika is now the twelfth girl.
The queen wakes up and uses her magic to put out the fire, causing such a strong wind that
scares off the townspeople and most of the troops.
Delatombe shoots those that run away for being cowards, but stops when the smoke clears out
and sees the Grimms' bodies aren't there, which Cavaldi calls a miracle.
In the meantime, the brothers run towards the tower and watch the Huntsman put Angelika
in the last crypt before a group of crows take him to the queen.
Once he's gone, Will and Jake try to open the crypt again, but neither pushing nor the
ax work.
They're about to try their own tools when
Delatombe shows up with Cavaldi and his manservant,
ready to get rid of the Grimms.
Delatombe orders Cavaldi to shoot them but he refuses, so the general shoots him instead.
When he turns to shoot the siblings next, a branch grabs his feet, and Jake takes the
opportunity to push him off before running away.
The manservant goes after him and dodges the ax when Jake throws it at him, but when the
man is about to strike, he dies thanks to the spell on the ax that makes it come back
like a boomerang.
Afterward, Jake begins preparing the catapult while Will fights Delatombe.
After many failed attacks, it seems the general has the upper hand, but Will finds one of
his trick crosses and presses a button to light it on fire.
After making Delatombe step back with the flame, Will kills him with his own flagpole,
tossing him off the rock stairs they're standing on.
The movement causes those stairs to crumble and hit the catapult, sending Jake through
the window to find the Huntsman getting the queen ready for the final spell.
Jake tries to stop them, but the queen uses magic to push the ax away, and she does the
same thing with Jake himself when he grabs a sword he finds in the room.
Now he's stuck against the wall, but the queen's hair is tangled around his body and falling
off the window, allowing Will to climb in as well.
Grabbing a dagger, Will tries to attack the queen too, but she uses her magic again to
make the brothers fight each other, causing Jake to accidentally stab Will.
Then, the queen frees Jake from the spell but continues to control Will to make him
his servant.
She takes the stake that has been in the chest of the Huntsman all along and stabs Will with
it instead, asking him to complete the spell.
Now that she's distracted, Jake recovers the ax and destroys the mirror, which in turn
causes the queen to break into pieces as well.
Now that he isn't under her control anymore, the Huntsman wants to avenge his daughters,
so he sacrifices himself by jumping out of the window with the mirror's final shard,
and Will jumps after him to try to save his master.
As the queen finally dies, the tower crumbles down.
Jake survives thanks to the queen's many mattresses
while Will's unconscious body is taken out
of the way by Cavaldi, who has survived the general's shot because he's been wearing the
Grimms' armor under his clothes.
The eclipse isn't over yet, so Cavaldi reminds Jake of how the story ends: with a kiss of
true love.
Jake rushes to Angelika's crypt and kisses her, successfully waking her up and all the
other eleven girls as well.
Will is next, but when Jake is about to kiss him, he whispers it's not him that should
do it, so Angelika comes and gives him the kiss instead.
It's already morning by the time the group returns to town with all the girls.
The townspeople don't hesitate to throw a party to celebrate that trouble is over, and
Cavaldi gives Jake back his notebook which he saved from the fire.
The brothers apologize for not believing in each other and begin discussing new job ideas
as they join the celebration while a crow flies by carrying a mirror shard with the
queen's eyes in its beak.