I’m always up for an evil adaptation, and this trio of selections from my Tubi watchlist went from not so great to a total winner. Luckily, that’s the exact order in which I watched them, unintentionally saving the best for last.
RUMPELSTILTSKIN (2025)
I’ll say it right up front; just stick with the 1995 Rumpelstiltskin. Almost nothing works in this odd little movie, which runs 77 minutes long.
We meet a straight couple that doesn’t seem very much in love. They just moved into a new house. The wife is pregnant. The husband finds a basket of yarn by an old sewing machine. There’s a mask inside.
He puts it on and gets Rump’s face (I don’t feel like spelling it out every time). We never see the husband take off the mask, but in between his fixes of putting it on, he’s just back to living his normal life with his normal face.
Eventually, he begins to kill a few people each time he has Rump face.
A guy who has been creeping around the house eventually warns the wife of the tale of Rump and how he steals unborn babies.
The wife at last confronts the husband, assuming he killed everyone, and he admits he did and intends to take her child. He gets Rump face, she tries to kill him, he runs off, he peeks at her from around a tree…the end. WTF? No ripping a fetus from mom’s body at least? And the body count is way low, which is a shame, because Rump is absolutely giddy and a lot of fun when he’s killing people.
THE WIZARD OF OZ: THE DEAD WALK (2025)
I’m always up for indie director Louisa Warren turning the joys of children’s imaginations into the stuff of their nightmares. Her timing on this one coincides with both the Oz resurgence thanks to Wicked, and the new Wizard of Oz horror movie Gale.
The original L. Frank Baum novels, like most classic children’s literature, were not all rainbows and sparking shoes, so I like the dark place the script takes us to. Namely, a rehab center where Dorothy is being treated for drug addiction. I mean, why wouldn’t she become a hot mess that needs drugs to escape reality after returning from a place no one believes she visited? Perhaps this is a nod to the 1985 Oz sequel Return to Oz?
Naturally, no one in the facility is normal or nice. The staff is sinister and psychotic, and the other patients are not mentally well, including a hot hunk who wears only short shorts and dies way too soon for my tastes. Why introduce such a strong, almost naked presence and then remove him from the equation so fast?
Dorothy is having nightmares about the witch enslaving her friends the Tinman and the Scarecrow. She believes she must do something to save them after leaving them behind. Sadly, the Cowardly Lion is only vaguely referenced later in the movie, but I imagine that’s because of what happens next.
Dorothy tracks down Glinda’s book of spells and reads a passage from it. Quicker than a twister can pick up her house, the Scarecrow and Tinman show up in the rehab center, and they’re like the Silent Hill version of the beloved characters.
They start a killing spree immediately. Scarecrow kills and steals brains. Tinman kills and steals hearts. Brilliant. Obviously, this is why the Cowardly Lion would have been a tough sell for a slasher. How exactly would he steal bravery?
The kills are violent and gory, although there is one poorly planned kill scene in which the Scarecrow is supposed to be cutting a victim’s scalp off with a meat cleaver, yet no blood or open wounds appear.
The witch also shows up to cause trouble, plus Aunt Em comes to visit Dorothy. While I love the idea of how Dorothy’s PTSD after escaping Oz has created real-life horror for her, this pretty much becomes a basic slasher with not much resolution or closure for our heroine.
THE DEATH OF SNOW WHITE (2025)
Eureka! A streaming marathon that ended with a winner. Despite being 111 minutes long, this reimagining of the tale of Snow White is fast-paced fun for the whole family. And by whole family, I mean me and the hubby. It’s definitely not for kiddies. It’s funny, it’s action-packed, it’s dark, it’s twisted, and it’s gory as hell, with practical effects.
The opener totally sets the tone, with a witch raising hell as she tries to infiltrate the castle while Snow White is being born. There’s violence, there’s magic, there’s murder. It’s awesome.
We then flash ahead in time. Snow White is now grown, her mother died in birth, her father has died, and her wicked stepmother is a psycho bitch from hell. We’re talking Elizabeth Bathory level bloodlust.
And her magic mirror is the stuff of nightmares, with a trio of naked, demonic women in its reflection taunting the wicked stepmother constantly and pushing her to do more extreme things to chase youth.
We meet Snow White, her female friends, the prince, his two comic relief friends, and the huntsman (played by the director Jason Brooks, a horror veteran actor himself).
Inevitably, Snow White is forced to flee. In the dark forest, she encounters freaky tree monsters and is saved by the dwarfs. It’s amazing to see a load of little people getting lead roles in one movie. Snow White’s initial interaction with them is cute and campy, and light banter and humor are sprinkled throughout the movie perfectly.
That also creates a nice balance with how fricking gruesome and grisly this movie is. The wicked stepmother is absolutely sadistic, and the torture she inflicts on innocent people is nasty as fuck! She makes Sigourney Weaver’s take on the wicked stepmother look like the fairy godmother.
Sticking to the main points of the story as we know it, the wicked stepmother eventually transforms into a witch to go find Snow White herself. The one interesting thing here is that the wicked stepmother has some major magical powers, which begs the question—why can’t she just use a spell or potion to make herself young forever?
Anyway, it all leads to a major battle for Snow White’s body between the wicked stepmother’s henchmen and the dwarfs. By the time people start dying left and right, you feel invested in these characters. You’re also cheering on the heinous revenge they enact on the wicked stepmother. Eek!
This one was an absolute blast with high production value, and it never slowed down despite the near 2-hour runtime. There’s even a super clever nod to the Brothers Grimm, the originators of the tale.
