By We’ve reached the time of year where stores have started putting out fake Christmas trees while everyone else dresses their houses with Halloween bauble. Candy corn is making its yearly pilgrimage back to decorative bowls as it waits to be thrown out and picked up only to be handed out again next year. The horror movie countdowns are in full effect, and those looking for a scary movie that bends towards family-friendly will have a new option with The Witches.
In the trailer above, the narrator (Chris Rock) fills us in on the story, which follows a dejected orphaned boy living with his grandmother (Octavia Spencer). Beginning to come out of his shell, he and his grandmother check into a hotel only to surprisingly discover that witches do exist, and boy do they hate children. As the trailer expositions, this coven looks to eradicate the world of little (b)rats as they follow the lead of the Chelsea-grinned Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway), but their plan won’t be as easy as they may have thought.
The newest rendition — written by Robert Zemeckis, Guillermo del Toro, and Kenya Barris — was expecting a theatrical release, but as we’ve seen all too many times this year with movies, plans change. The good news is that instead of pushing back to wait for theaters to reopen and attendance to rise, The Witches will be available to stream through HBO on October 22nd.
