There, they soon find themselves facing down a coven of witches stirring up trouble. Amid intimations of doom, Grandma and the Boy decamp to a resort hotel, a nonsensical turn that’s effectively a narrative contrivance. One materializes in a once-upon-a-time tale another pops up in the present.
The witches sidle in, disguised and cunning.
Within minutes, Zemeckis has created a vibrantly inhabited world, even if the golden oldies on the soundtrack are overly familiar, as is his habit, and Grandma’s caky cornbread looks more Northern than Southern. Zemeckis, working from a script written with Kenya Barris and Guillermo del Toro, handles this setup effortlessly, with his two cozily inviting leads, low-key visual panache and customary restive camerawork. He moves into the Alabama home of his Grandma, whose warm embrace eases his pain. Narrated by a distracting Chris Rock, the story primarily takes place in flashback, in 1967, starting with an accident that kills the Boy’s parents. Chief among these are an unnamed orphan, call him the Boy (Jahzir Bruno, sweetly sensitive), and his loving grandmother (Octavia Spencer), who form a wee bulwark against witches who appear fair but are most foul. There are people, too some buzz around in the background while others push the story forward. There’s no eye of newt or toe of frog in “ Roald Dahl’s The Witches,” Robert Zemeckis’s take on the 1983 book - just a mischief of mice, a cantankerous cat and an occasional s-s-snake.
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