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Snakes in Movies
 
The Witches (2020)
 
Spoiler Alert !

Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.
 
This is an Americanized version of the 1983 Roal Dahl novel that was previously made into a movie in 1990. It takes place in Alabama in 1960 instead of England. The movie has a couple scenes with snakes so I had to watch it. Besides, who doesn't enjoy weird, dark children's movies?

The 1990 movie had a scene with a snake that was used by a witch to try to abduct a young boy and this version has a similar scene. (This makes me assume the snake was also in the novel, which I haven't read.) Bruno (Jahzir Kadeen) is the young boy protagonist whose Grandmother (Octavia Spencer) warns about witches - they hate children and lure them with candy to turn them into animals. When she was a girl she saw a friend of hers turned into a chicken. Witches are demons, not women, who always wear gloves to hide their clawed hands and they always wear a hat and a wig to hide their bald head. Witches also have a leader known as the Grand High Witch.

The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot
The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot

When Bruno is in a small store, a woman (Josette Simon) wearing a turban and gloves approaches him with a piece of candy. When a blue snake crawls out of her sleeve and wraps around her arm she tells him the snake is tame and very sweet, then she tells him to give it a kiss. He knows not to take candy from strangers with snakes so he runs away. When he tells her about it later, she tells him the woman was a witch and they leave town for the large hotel at the seashore to get away from the threat.

The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot
The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot The Witches Screenshot

What a coincidence - a group of witches are having a convention at the same seaside hotel where Bruno and his Grandmother are staying. The witches disguise themselves as an organization called The International Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Bruno is accidentally locked into their meeting hall and hides where he has a good view of everything.

The Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) steps up to the podium where we see her whisper to a snake draped around her neck and then her entire dress, telling it to wake up. It hisses and wakes up. (I don't know why she wanted it to be awake since it never does anything except act as a decoration.) She tells all the witches to remove their gloves, hats, and wigs. We see the snake wrapped around her dress as she flies around the hall, explaining her plot to open candy stores and use a magic potion put in the candy that will turn all children into mice. Apparently she doesn't know that adults eat candy, also.

The original movie used mostly live animals, including the snake, but this one is heavily dependent on CGI for all of the animals and the magic effects, which are very good for the most part. For anyone who has ever seen a real snake, the computer animated snakes don't look at all realistic, but since they are the property of witches, that doesn't really matter. It's a world full of fantasy, including blue fantasy snakes.