Hansel & Gretel Get Baked (2013)

(On Cable TV, June 2021) As someone with no association or affinity whatsoever with stoner culture, there’s always an additional layer of craziness in films addressed at that particular market segment. They’re not always duds—I have my favourites—but when they don’t work, they look particularly stupid. Low-budget comedy/horror Hansel & Gretel Get Baked does have a promising start, adapting the Hansel & Gretel fairytale away from the Black Forest of Germany to the suburbs of Pasadena, where a witch attracts young delicious teens through a potent strain of cannabis rather than old-fashioned candy. Alas, the high-concept comedy of the first few minutes soon ends in cannibalism and bargain-basement horror. I did like Molly Quinn quite a bit as Gretel, and the casting of Lara Flynn Boyle as the witch is much appreciated, but the longer Hansel & Gretel Get Baked goes on, the less interesting it becomes, as it goes through the usual house-of-horror shenanigans without much more than drug jokes as punctuation. At the end, it looks as if the film made a miscalculation halfway through — the shift to horror is definitely not feel-good, and the low-end production values can’t sustain what the film is going for. Reportedly stuck without a distributor for years after completion, Hansel & Gretel Get Baked gives off the impression of a creative team running amuck without having anyone telling them that they were heading in the wrong direction. Too bad — the first few minutes had potential.