Film / The Witches (2020)

"A note about witches... they're REAL... and they hate children."

The Witches is a 2020 fantasy horror comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis, Guillermo del Toro & Kenya Barris, based on Roald Dahl's 1983 novel of the same name. It is the second film adaptation of the novel, following Nicolas Roeg's 1990 version.

In 1960s Alabama, an orphaned young boy named Charlie Hansen (Jahzir Bruno) stumbles across a conference of witches, while staying with his grandmother Agatha (Octavia Spencer) at a hotel, and gets turned into a mouse by the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway). Chris Rock narrates the story as an older Charlie, telling the firsthand account of his experience as a child. Stanley Tucci also stars as Mr. Stringer the hotel manager.

The film was originally intended for a domestic theatrical release, but instead premiered on HBO Max on October 22, 2020 (later being pulled from the platform in 2022). It was released in theaters internationally on October 28.

Previews: HBO Max trailer, International trailer.

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The Witches provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abled in the Adaptation: In the book, Grandmama had a missing thumb (the result of a past encounter with a witch). Here, both of her thumbs are still intact. That's because she didn't meet the witch; her friend Alice Blue did. Grandmamma had the sense to run away when she saw a strange lady offering Alice candy.
• Actor Allusion:
  • Chris Rock narrates much of the story as the grown up protagonist. Doesn't that sound familiar?
  • This is not the only film Octavia Spencer interacts with animals.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Zigzagged. The boy smiles a little when Grandmamma makes a quip about sea snakes eating Daisy, but he decides to stay inside, just in case something would hurt his mouse on the beach. This little decision leads to him observing the witches' meeting.
• Adaptational Attractiveness: In previous versions of the story, the Grand High Witch's "human" face was merely a Latex Perfection mask that hid an extremely aged, putrefied face. Here, she looks like a beautiful woman throughout the film, though she still has quite the Nightmare Face whenever her huge, snake-like mouth is exposed. It is implied that she's much uglier than she appears, but we only get a glimpse of this other form and it's never brought up again otherwise.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • The Grand High Witch explicitly has Super-Strength and levitational powers in this adaptation. On top of that, she has the ability to grotesquely extend her arms to unbelievable lengths, which allows her to nearly catch the mice children with her own two claws.
  • In this version of the dinner transformation scene, many of the mouse witches attempt to fight back against the humans trying to kill them, unlike the book and first film, where they merely scampered around helplessly while they were exterminated one-by-one.
  • Bruno was The Load in the book, and poor Mary the mouse suffered a punt-kicking, which caused her to run. Movie Bruno is still not the fastest kid, but he does help in stopping GHW from killing Grandmamma. Mary in the meantime is revealed to be the most adept of the trio, having been a mouse for four months.
• Adaptational Comic Relief: The Grand High Witch, of all characters. She gets subjected to a number of slapstick Amusing Injuries not in prior versions, (crushing her hand with a mallet, getting her toes caught in mouse traps, etc.)
• Adaptational Context Change: In the scene where Grandmamma tries to show Bruno is a mouse to his parents, he bluntly says in the book that he doesn't talk when his mouth is full. She calls him disagreeable. In the movie, he explains, "Father hates it when I talk with my mouth full" and Grandmamma gives him a look of utter sympathy, since she heard he didn't want his parents to see him like this.
• Adaptational Explanation: In the book, Grandmamma claims that in Norway people know about witches and are used to them cursing their children. Not so much in the movie; in deep south Alabama, no one knows that witches exist and they fail to see the magic that ensues. Grandmamma wouldn't have known about them if she hadn't seen one curse her friend Alice, run away in time before GHW could get her, and watch Alice change in front of her. Thus, she can't convince her parents or the townsfolk about curses and decides to teach herself how to counterattack with folk magic. Mary mentions that Grandmamma is the first adult who knows about these curses.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Grand High Witch in the book assumed the boy and Bruno were dead after they turned into mice. The trailers show her visibly confronting the boy in mouse guise with a Slasher Smile. Additionally, she doesn't drink the soup as she recognizes the Grandma as a little girl that managed to escape her and manages to not have the soup that turns the others into mice like the others as a result of this earlier epiphany. This forces the boy and the others into use more complex tactics in order to turn her into a mouse.
• Adaptational Name Change:
  • The boy's mice in the books were named William and Mary. Here, the boy's female mouse is named Daisy. She does reveal her real name is Mary, when she was a little girl.
  • The Grand High Witch's pet cat is named Hades here; in the first film adaptation (in which he originated from), his name is Liebchen.
  • To coincide with her Adaptational Nationality, Birgit Svenson (AKA the little girl who turns into a chicken) is renamed Alice Blue.
• Adaptational Nationality: Rather than being Norwegian, the boy and his grandmother are African American, the latter being a native of Alabama. The English Mr. Stringer is also portrayed as an Alabaman, and speaks with a distinct Southern Gentleman twang.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • The hotel concierge in the book threatens to drown the boy's mice if they are caught outside their cage. Here, while he doesn't know about Daisy the mouse, he is kinder when telling Grand High Witch that the hotel has a "no pets" policy in general.
  • Bruno is much friendlier to the boy, offering him a handshake and telling Mrs. Jenkins he made a new friend. This makes the witch calling him a "greedy brat" much worse, since he was stupid, not mean.
• Adaptational Species Change: In the original story, Mary was merely the Boy's pet mouse and nothing more. Here, she's a human being who was turned into a mouse by a witch.
• Adaptational Ugliness: The rat-witches are considerably more grotesque-looking than in prior versions.
• Adapted Out:
  • The boy’s second pet mouse, William, is notably absent from this version.
  • Like the 1990 film, this adaptation removes the three frog children the Boy meets in the Grand High Witch's room.
  • Grandmama's cigar smoking habits are omitted from this adaptation.
  • Two key traits of a witch are notably removed from this iteration: the blue saliva and the oddly-colored pupils. Both of these were replaced with two new distinctive traits: wide, gaping mouths with razor sharp teeth, and one ugly claw-toe on each foot.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Subverted. The boy and Bruno do become brown mice like in the original novel, but their fur is different shades of brown to better tell them apart (this is similar to the first film adaptation).
  • Played straight with the Grand High Witch, who sports a blonde wig instead of a black one like in the book and first film.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • Unique to this version, the entire film is framed as a story that the protagonist (as an adult) tells to a classroom full of children. It's revealed at the end of the film that he was sharing his tale as a way of preparing the children for their grand mission to hunt down the witches of the world.
  • A new scene is added in which Grandmama attempts to create an antidote for Formula 86; the attempt is sadly unsuccessful, meaning her grandson is fated to remain a mouse forever (though he doesn't seem to mind).
  • Unlike previous versions, the Grand High Witch narrowly avoids eating the formula-laden soup, allowing her to face Grandma and the mice in her hotel room for one final confrontation.
  • The book ends with Grandmama and her mouse grandson planning out their attack on the rest of the world's witches. The film expands on this by showing the pair grow older and, as mentioned above, training a brand new generation of witch hunters.
• The Ageless: It's implied that witches don't actually age since they aren't human beings. Note that when we're properly introduced to the Grand High Witch, she looks exactly how she did back when Grandmama was a child.
• Age Lift: Octavia Spencer is visibly younger than 89, the age of book Grandmamma.
• Agony of the Feet: Weaponized. Before the Grand High Witch gets the chance to kill Grandmama, Bruno and Mary snap her toes with mouse traps, which both distracts her and leaves her open enough for the Boy to feed her a bottle of Mouse Maker.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Grand High Witch, once Grandmama releases Hades from his cage, tries to beg her pet not to eat her. Being an animal who's been abused and starving, it fails.
• Alien Blood: Witch blood is black and steaming, as if it were fresh tar, even congealing into jagged lumps like it.
• All There in the Manual: According to supplementary materials, the young boy's name is Charlie Hansen and his grandmother is named Agatha.
• Apathetic Citizens: While the people in the dining room flee from the onslaught of witch-mice, no one apparently hears either the GHW screaming at Grandmamma for trying to steal from her, and her threats to rip out the lady's heart, nor the subsequent melee when the mouse-kids successfully forcefeed GHW the formula and then have to outrun her mouse guise. Justified in the latter case, because all the hotel staff and guests attention would have been focused on the dining room at the time.
• Ascended Extra:
  • In the book, the Boy's pet mice William and Mary merely run off following their owner's transformation, and they're never seen again afterwards. Here, not only does Mary (who serves as the only pet mouse this time) accompany her owner and Bruno on their adventure, she's revealed to be a fellow human being who had also been transformed into a mouse.
  • The movie takes a page from its 1990 predecessor by giving more focus to the Snake Witch, who in this continuity actually hexes Grandmama with a nasty cough.
• Bait-and-Switch: The ending teases that it'll wimp out on the book's notorious Bittersweet Ending just like the 1990 film, but then ends up just splitting the difference. The kids are stuck as mice, but they at least retain their human lifespans.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: This is part of the reason why Mary rescues the boy and Bruno from the witches, getting them to the safety of a distant air vent. She says she understood how the boy felt about losing his parents, as an orphan herself, and he was always nice to "Daisy".
• Bittersweet Ending: Grandmamma doesn't have the means to change the children back from mouse-children, and their lifespans are severely shortened by this. She takes them in, however, and makes her home friendly and fun for them. A decade later, Bruno and Mary are implied to be gone, but the boy and Grandmamma are still around, continuing to raise new generations of witch hunters so they can protect children and stop witches.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: The inversion is Played for Drama; Grandmamma recounts that she ran from a witch who cursed Alice Blue. GHW then sees Grandmamma when the latter dropped her knitting onto GHW's balcony and asks if they know each other. Grandmamma goes Oh, Crap! and says no. Much later at the dinner, GHW has her "Eureka!" Moment and goes to confront Grandmamma; she says Grandmamma as a girl had pigtails. It's only because the Mouse Maker potion kicks in that GHW doesn't go beyond taunting her about what happened to Alice Blue.
• Canon Immigrant: Liebchen, the Grand High Witch's black cat who appeared exclusively in the 1990 film, also appears in this film under the name "Hades".
• Cassandra Truth: Grandmamma told Alice's family that the chicken on their porch was their daughter. They didn't believe her, and she gave up trying to explain.
• Casting Gag: The Latin American Spanish dub brings back two of the 1990 film's original voice actors, albeit in different roles:
  • Rebeca Patiño, one of the 1990 film's additional voices, dubs Grandmamma in this version.
  • Queta Calderón dubbed Miss Irvine and the female chef in the 1990 film. Here, she's one of the additional voices.
• Catchphrase Insult: "Stupid", for the Grand High Witch. She uses it very frequently.
• Child Hater: In true Roald Dahl tradition, witches are said to despise children due to their rancid, "poopy" odor (at least according to the way the witches' noses perceive smell).
• Comfort Food: Grandmamma starts cooking up a storm when her grandson is grieving. She makes him hot chocolate, chicken wings, and cake. Even though the boy isn't hungry at first and was having a trauma response to being in a car crash that killed his parents (which downplays his response to grandmother's kind gestures of food and dancing), and it takes talking it out with Grandmamma for him to start recovering, he starts cheering up over time.
• Cool Old Lady: Grandmamma asks her grandson to dance with her, on seeing how sad he is about losing his parents. She doesn't give up on him when the boy is still grieving, buying him a mouse as a present. When the boy says he wants nails to build a house for Daisy, Grandmamma says get galvanized nails because they're rustproof.
• Composite Character: Daisy/Mary is the protagonist's only pet mouse in this version. In the book, he had two mice: Mary and William.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Grandmamma asks Daisy/Mary why she didn't tell them she was a mouse-child during the months that the boy was caring for her. From her tone, it's obvious Grandmamma would have treated her like one of her kids and not a pet. Mary points out that talking mice freak people out and she didn't know who she could trust.
• Cowardly Lion: Justified; Grandmamma is Properly Paranoid about witches, refusing to let one grab her grandson right under her nose. You can't do anything to stop a witch's magic, only to avoid it. She tells the boy that the best solution for dealing with a witch is run and don't let them catch you. Yet, in the climax, she stands her ground mouthing off to GHW, to prove she's not a scared little girl anymore and to buy her grandson, Bruno and Mary time to set traps on the Grand High Witch to force-feed her Delayed Mouse Maker. This is while GHW is threatening to rip her heart out of its chest and squeeze her to death.
• Death by Genre Savviness: Grandmamma and the boy both suffer from this; the former has them go to a rich white people hotel to hide until the witch in their town disappears, reasoning that her grandson should be safe in a place among white people. The boy also starts to train Daisy in the grand ballroom where the Society For the Prevention Of Cruelty to Children is having their meeting, pointing out that by that logic they should like kids. Unfortunately for both of them, witches were in the hotel, masquerading as the Society. The silver lining is that death doesn't ensue.
• De-power: While the Grand High Witch is shown to have Super-Strength, Levitation & Telekinesis, these don't carry over to her rat form as she's restrained under a clear ice-bucket and can then only pound on it and make toothless threats. She's left to her fate at the paws of her pet cat Hades, as the heroes take all of her fortune, potion bottles and contact information for all the other witches.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In the original, the Grand High Witch is exterminated alongside her fellow witches after they turn into mice. She still transforms into a mouse here, but this time she ends up getting devoured by her own pet cat.
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • The boy, Bruno and Mary were turned into mice. All three of them are instrumental in not only stopping the witches but also making sure GHW doesn't kill Grandmamma.
  • Hades, the poor dear, gets locked in a cat carrier for the crime of liking it. The Grand High Witch then keeps him locked there all night. After GHW is turned into a mouse, and trapped, Grandmamma coolly unlocks Hades's carrier and lets the cat act on natural instincts. Soon, GHW is begging for her life from her former pet.
• Early-Bird Cameo: The Grand High Witch briefly appears in Grandma's flashback as the witch who hexes her neighbor Alice. This comes into play later in the film, when the Witch recognizes Grandma as Alice's friend.
• Everyone Has Standards: The hotel manager is disturbed when he hears GHW saying they'll get rid of "brats" and tells them they must mean "rats". She gives him a withering Death Glare in response.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Mouse in this case; the boy's white mouse Daisy starts sniffing frantically when she and the boy witness the Grand High Witch starting the meeting. It's because she was a child cursed by witches.
• Evil Gloating: The Grand High Witch does this to Grandma, remarking about the Forced Transformation she inflicted onto her friend into a chicken.
• Evil Is Hammy: The Grand High Witch talks with much bombast and loudly discusses her Evil Plan during the meeting. For an extra layer of theatricality, she gracefully floats around the room like it's nobody's business.
• Extendable Arms: The Grand High Witch can extend her arms in a grotesque manner to catch her prey.
• Faux Affably Evil: The Grand High Witch has a saccharine smile as she talks about how the hotel will get rid of "brats".
• Fear Is the Appropriate Response: Grandmamma starts packing the minute she realizes a witch is targeting her grandson. She tells the boy that the best thing you can do if a witch wants to make you disappear is run for it, and accept nothing from strangers.
• Finagle's Law: Grandmamma has an Oh, Crap! expression when she realizes there are witches at the hotel, and her grandson had the bad luck to run into them. A lot of bad circumstances had to happen for the boy to be trapped.
• Fingore: In an attempt to reach for the three mice in the vents, the Grand High Witch ends up butchering her claws on a fan, and has to bandage them up later. It's a pretty grisly moment, though for the sake of the PG rating, her blood is pitch black.
• Forced Transformation:
  • Grandmamma's best friend Alice was turned into a chicken. She also retained her human mind, even if she couldn't talk, and met with Grandmamma every day.
  • As per usual, both the boy and Bruno are turned into mice by the witches. Daisy (real name Mary) is also revealed to be a former human child.
• Framing Device: The movie ostensibly shows the plot as a presentation being given to a room of students.
• Glasgow Grin: The witches in this version have serpentine mouths that open from ear-to-ear, leaving noticeable slits across their cheeks that they try to cover up with makeup.
• Glass Cannon: The Grand High Witch herself falls under this. While she's undeniably the most powerful of the witches, honing several otherworldly abilities and blatant Super-Strength, made of diamonds she is not, as shown when she expresses immense pain after shredding her own claws in the vents. To quote Anne Hathaway, "she is one of those people who can't take any pain, but loves inflicting it".
  • It's noteworthy however, that when the GHW is bloodlusted and chasing after the children as a mouse herself, while she might not be invulnerable to the numerous mousetraps she's set, she's certainly not afraid of the risk they pose to her, either. They get set off and fly snapping shut around the scene like debris from explosions in a warzone as she fearlessly charges through them.
• Good Shapeshifting, Evil Shapeshifting: Luke, Bruno, and Mary all appear distinctly cute as mice. By contrast, witches who are given the Grand High Witch's formula become ferocious rats instead. In the finale, the Grand High Witch gets her own dose of the formula catapulted into her mouth: not only does she become a rat instead of a mouse, she's also bald-headed, covered in patchy black fur, and looks nothing short of monstrous.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The last time we see the mouse-ified Grand High Witch, she's shown getting pounced upon by her cat Hades. The offscreen sounds of vicious meowing and distressed squeaking is enough to tell you she's doomed.
• Hammerspace: Another of the witches' magic powers, as shown when one of them pulls a long, bone-like length of wood out of her small purse to bar the doors of the meeting room shut.
• "Harmful to Pets" Reminder: Bruno, who was turned into a mouse, tries to eat a grape but Daisy tells them that grapes are poisonous to mice. ^note There's actually some dispute over this. Grapes and raisins are extremely poisonous to dogs and cats, less definitively so to mice, and some mouse owners avoid them just to be safe.
• Humanoid Abomination: The witches only look like human women, but are actually demonic beings that possess devastating magical powers, and it is also briefly implied their human looks conceal a far more frightening and unnatural true form. The Grand High Witch, in particular, as she boasts superhuman strength, can levitate and is able to extend her arms to unholy lengths to capture her prey.
• In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It: The posters and trailer title cards have Roald Dahl's name above the title.
• I Want My Mommy!: The boy says "Mommy!" when trapped in the wrecked car, and his parents don't respond.
• Karmic Death:
  • As in the book, all the witches fall victim to the same mouse potion they intended to use on children, and end up getting wiped out en masse by the hotel staff.
  • Doubly so for the Grand High Witch, who's not only given a taste (or rather, an entire bottle) of her own medicine, she's ultimately done in by her own cat, Hades, whom she cruelly caged up and abandoned earlier in the day. Which in Grandmamma's case is payback for Alice.
• Large Ham:
  • Chris Rock is having fun as the boy all grown up, narrating the beginning of the movie.
  • The Grand High Witch is very bombastic as Evil Is Hammy notes.
• Life Isn't Fair: Grandmamma admits this when she talks to the boy about losing her daughter and son-in-law.
• Logo Joke: The film features a new cinematic Roald Dahl logo midway through the credits; the letters of Dahl's first name are formed from various elements of other stories he wrote (those which, coincidentally, were adapted into films before), whilst his last name is a Wonka bar, complete with a golden ticket.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The witches have this reaction during the dinner scene when one of them turns into a rat, making them realize all too late just what is in their soup.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: Exploited by the witches as part of the Setting Update. The witches specifically target poor black children, as targeting rich white children would draw much more attention. Grand High Witch shocks the witches at the convention by saying she wants to go after all the kids, regardless of if they will be missed.
• Monkey Morality Pose: The boy, Bruno, and Daisy do this when Mr. Stringer gets bitten in the crotch by the newly mouse-ified Snake Witch. They're also shown doing the poses on the poster.
• Monster Mouth: The witches all have these, but when posing as human women, they have what looks like a Glasgow Grin.
• Moody Trailer Cover Song: The trailer remixes "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" by the Four Tops into a haunting overture to evoke the witches' evil natures.
• Moral Pragmatist: When they're raiding GHW's room, the mouse-kids point out that Hades is locked in a cage. Grandmamma looks sympathetic. Then she says she can't risk the mouse-kids' lives; they'll free Hades before they leave. Though when GHW is trapped, Grandmamma opens the cat carrier and tells Hades that he is a free cat.
• Mythology Gag:
  • In the poster shown above, the Grand High Witch raises her arms in a way that mirrors her pose from the original book's cover◊.
  • In the book's ending, the Boy and Grandmama plan to turn the remaining witches of the world into mice and then wipe them out with cats. This is alluded to in the film's climax when the rat-ified Grand High Witch is eaten alive by Hades.
• No Name Given: The Boy and Grandmamma are never addressed by name at any point in the film; after all, how often do grandparents/grandchildren call each other by name, rather than using an endearment?
• Number of the Beast: Unsurprisingly, the Grand High Witch's hotel room is number 666. The Boy and Grandma live directly above her in room 766, which Grandma takes as an omen that "a big test is coming".
• Obviously Evil: The first witch that the boy meets can't even pretend to be charming. He has a Deer in the Headlights reaction to her suddenly appearing with a snake wrapped around her wrist.
• Oh, Crap!: Grandmamma has this reaction when she sees a mouse calling her with her grandson's voice.
• Oireland: The witches include an Irishwoman named Saoirse who dresses all in green, has red hair, and speaks in an exaggerated accent.
• The One That Got Away: Grandmamma's friend Alice Blue was cursed by the Grand High Witch, but Grandmamma herself escaped the witch. Years later, GHW seems to find Grandmamma familiar when she first sees her, and then later fully realizes that Grandmamma was the girl with the pigtails who got away from her when she had cursed Alice Blue. GHW was not happy that Grandmamma got away from her and is quite happy to have the chance to finish what she started.
• Our Witches Are Different: Grandmamma specifically calls them demons that only look like humans.
  • Their main distinctive feature here is the fact that they are bald and wear wigs to blend into human society.
  • While the other witches still have square, toe-less feet, the Grand High Witch bears a long, single toe on each of hers.
  • The film demonstrates two aspects that are unique to this adaptation - they only have two Creepy Long Fingers and a thumb per hand, and "elongated mouths that stretch to their ears", complete with Scary Teeth and a forked tongue - the mouth resembles a Glasgow Grin when the witches are passing themselves off as human women.
  • Additionally, whenever they sustain an injury or die, they turn into metallic dust shards, further demonstrating they're not human.
• Parrot Pet Position: The boy (in mouse form) climbs on his grandmother's shoulders this way.
• Pass the Popcorn: As the witches turn into rats in the dining room, most of the patrons flee in a panic while the hotel staff bravely confront the rodents. All except Grandmamma, who sits up straighter and watches the antics with quiet amusement and satisfaction. She just needs a cup of tea to complete the image.
• Perplexing Plurals: We get this little exchange when the three mice escape the Grand High Witch.
  Bruno: Why are we mouses?!
  The Boy and Daisy: Mice.
  Bruno: Whatever!
• Pets as a Present: Grandmamma gives the boy a white mouse as a present. The boy starts training Daisy to do tricks, planning to start a whole mouse circus.
• Please Wake Up: The boy calls out for his parents while hanging upside down from the car wreck. He starts freaking out when they don't respond, more so when the cops pull only him out and not his mom and dad.
• Police Are Useless: Subverted. Two cops safely get the boy out of the car wreck, while comforting him. They also call Grandmamma to pick him up.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • The boy's opening narration compresses the book's first chapter into a slide presentation he's giving to students.
  • The movie removes the lengthy scene where the GHW instructs her followers to seek out the ingredients and brew Formula 86 themselves. Now, the Witch simply has a stock of bottles prepared for them from the get go (note that in the book, she only did this for the ancient witches who were too frail to find the ingredients on their own).
• Pragmatic Villainy: Grandmamma says that witches only make "poor" children disappear. If a rich white kid disappears, it will cause an uproar. But no one cares about the poor, especially if they are black. Unfortunately, the ladies may still meet at a fancy hotel and we find out GHW isn't as pragmatic.
  Grandmama: Witches only prey on the poor, the overlooked; the kids they think nobody's gonna make a fuss about if they go missing.
• Race Lift:
  • The boy and his grandmother are Norwegian-English in the book. Here, they're African-American.
  • Likewise, the witch who tries to first curse the boy with a snake was English-white in the book; here she's black.
  • Birgit Svenson is portrayed here as an African-American child named Alice.
  • The Grand High Witch is portrayed as more explicitly Norwegian compared to the previous film that had a more German accent.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Mr. Stringer is one; he's very kind to the guests, and gently warns them about having no pets. When GHW insists on bringing her cat to tea, he puts his foot down but offers a cat carrier as a compromise. He also apologizes for asking Grandmamma if she had mice in her purse — which she did but still— and offers her the best seat in the dining room as an apology and to buy her silence about a potential infestation.
  • The exterminator who sets traps in Grandmamma's room. He jokes with her that the maid who saw a "swarm of rats" is a bit high-strung and he's just erring on the side of caution. The exterminator also shows her where the traps are, so she won't be snapped in turn.
• Resourceful Rodent: The main characters are turned into mice by witches and they have to outsmart them so they turn back into humans.
• Setting Update: Inverted; while both the book and first film took place during the decades they were released in (The '80s and 90's, respectively), this adaptation goes backward in time, instead placing the story in the 1960's. It also shifts the location from England to Alabama.
• Shout-Out: The GHW poisons the boy "the Shakespeare way" by pouring poison in his ear. Hamlet's father was killed that way. (Bonus points for the GHW's actress sharing the name of Shakespeare's wife.)
• Silence of Sadness: After the protagonist's parents are killed in a car accident, he is relatively quiet and doesn't say a lot besides turning down his grandmother's meals. He snaps out of it once Grandma cheers him up.
• Skewed Priorities: Bruno stopping to eat a piece of cheese in a mousetrap while he's being chased by the transformed GHW.
• Snakes Are Sinister: The Grand High Witch wears a snake-shaped ornament around her neck, which actually comes alive during the witches' meeting. And as in the book, the protagonist has an encounter with a witch who tries to entice him with a snake.
• Suddenly Voiced: Justified with Mary who, unlike her book counterpart, is actually a human-turned-mouse like the other boys, and is thus fully capable of speaking.
• Tampering with Food and Drink:
  • Grandmamma remembers that the witch who cursed Alice gave her a caramel. The witch with the snake tries to offer one to the boy, but he has the sense to not take it. That, and he's frozen in fear.
  • Downplayed with the Witches’ plan of spiking chocolate and candy with Formula 86, as it only turns the consumer into a mouse. Daisy lampshades it after the three mice escape the Grand High Witch.
    Daisy: They always spike the chocolate! It’s standard evil witch procedure.
• Tempting Fate: Grandmamma reassures the boy that since they left in a hurry and went to a white people's hotel, the witches have no idea where they are. Cue GHW's cat Hades leaving the hotel window, where he overheard the whole thing and reports it to the Grand High Witch.
• There Is No Cure: Agatha tries and fails to synthesize a cure to the witches' Mouse Maker potion which has transformed her grandson and other children into mice, meaning the mice children are stuck that way for the remainder of their lives.
• Too Smart for Strangers: Zigzagged. Grandmamma says you never accept candy from a stranger because it may be a witch using the candy to curse you. On the other hand, they may find ways to curse you anyway if you can't run away fast enough.
• Transformation Horror: The boy's body breaks out into purple pustules as he transforms into a mouse.
• Truer to the Text: This adaptation remains faithful to the original book's ending by having the characters who got turned into mice remain mice at the end of the film, unlike the 1990 film which had the characters get turned back into humans.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The boy, Bruno and Mary become this after all three of them have been turned into mice.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Something Mary points out when Grandmamma asks why she didn't tell them she was a talking mouse-child; people freak out about talking mice. Mary worried she would freak out the boy and Grandmamma. Their reaction is to reassure her no, not at all, and she becomes an honorary grandchild along with Bruno.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: The Grand High Witch keeps a bottle of Formula 86 in the metal bustier she wears beneath her dresses.
• Wham Line: "I'll fetch him!" said by Daisy before going to rescue Bruno. The boy has the appropriate response: "Did you just talk?!"
• What You Are in the Dark: In the end, Grandmamma has a trunk full of money and addresses for all the witches in the world. She spends a portion of the cash to tip the staff in the hotel, as partly an apology for turning the ladies into mice and causing a ruckus in the dining room.
• You Dirty Rat!: When the witches are fed their own potion, their rodent forms look like large, scabby rats rather than the cute mice the children turn into.

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