I saw Snow White and the Huntsman, so I should have known the sequel would be terrible. But honestly, I'm not sure anything other than 24 hours of tickle torture with demon-possessed muppets could have girded me for The Huntsman: Winter's War. It was like watching somebody make a cinematic suicide soda out of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Frozen, Planet of the Apes, and (just for that extra wrong flavor) Ted Danson in Cheers. And the worst part? It wasn't made for the love of so-bad-it's-good things, the way a real suicide soda is. Nothing in this incoherent, bumbling movie feels genuine—except for that one part where a saucy lady dwarf hits on Eric the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth).

For those who missed the first film, the Huntsman series is a retelling of the Snow White story done in the "hard fantasy" style popularized by Game of Thrones. What that means is the characters are more emo. The evil Queen Ravenna eats virgins procured by her creepy incest brother, and there's a class of characters called "Huntsmen" who are like fairy tale ninjas with axes. In the first film, Snow White defeated Ravenna (or DID she?). The new film is a kind of origin story about the Huntsmen, minus Snow White, plus a bunch of other things that don't add up.

So what makes The Huntsman so much more awful than other awful sequels made in a crass bid for cash? Somehow, this film manages to exhibit every single cliché of fantasy and science fiction sequels—then goes one step further into raw narrative incoherence. The movie begins with Liam Neeson doing a voiceover about how "you know the story of Snow White, but there's another story that happened long before." OK, fine, we're doing a prequel. We see the rise of the evil witch Ravenna (Charlize Theron, chewing the scenery so hard she's channeling William Shatner). There's also the en-evilling of her gentle sister Freya (Emily Blunt, looking puzzled that she's in this movie) when her boyfriend betrays her and murders their baby.

Freya goes all Elsa from Frozen and starts shooting ice out of every pore, then she heads up north to kill off a bunch of kings so that people can say "king of the north" a lot and make you wonder whether there will be some kind of musical number with flayings. This movie is based on the same source material that Frozen was, so maybe it was necessary to spice things up by ripping off the whole "winter's war" thing from Game of Thrones. We finally meet Eric and Sara (Jessica Chastain, really REALLY acting, but why), who are the most skilled members in Freya's army—an elite band called Huntsmen, who are brainwashed from childhood to be emotionless killers.

Of course, Eric and Sara fall in love even though Freya forbids love, and one assumes this conflict will be the dramatic arc of the film. But no! Just when we're nearing the end of the first act... BOOM! more voiceover from Neeson and suddenly WE'RE IN A SEQUEL. That's right, this movie goes from prequel to sequel in one confusing voiceover. It's like Director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan couldn't decide which trope would be most trope-y, so he went with both.













Now the plot has completely changed course, and suddenly our ultra-emo characters are on a different quest and making lady dwarf jokes. Eric is trying to win back Sara's heart by acting like Ted Danson in Cheers. Meanwhile, Snow White has "taken ill" and an evil force worse than death is bearing down on all the land. A horrific magical weapon of mass destruction is on the loose, and there's an attack from trolls who were built using VFX software developed for Planet of the Apes (seriously, they move exactly like the chimps in that flick and it's distractingly unoriginal). With all this horror, the romcom tone of Eric and Sara's relationship is mind-bogglingly random. "You know you like me because I'm great," Eric says to the grumpy Sara multiple times, using several variations on his signature "I'm adorable" smile. I'd buy their cuteypants shenanigans in a light fantasy, but this movie is about witches who literally eat the hearts of children and use their powers to cause a new ice age. The "I was brainwashed into becoming a murderer by an evil queen but I'm a fun, goofy guy" schtick just does not work.

Honestly, the one good thing about this movie is the fact that Ravenna gets to wear a lot of evil queen outfits.







Confession time: I actually liked Snow White and the Huntsman. Yes, it was cheesy and had treacly CGI faeries and dwarf singing, and Kristen Stewart delivers the most incoherent "rousing speech" I've ever heard. But everyone involved looked like they were having fun. It was a solid B-movie with swords and magic and Charlize Theron camping it up as one of the greatest evil witches of all time. The Huntsman: Winter's War feels like somebody at the studio handed out suitcases full of cash to get Theron back, along with amazing actors like Chastain and Blunt, but then didn't bother to check whether the movie had a plot beyond "smush together every other fantasy movie and TV series." Even Hemsworth's Thorish charms can't make this movie fun.

There is something fascinating, in a purely sociological sense, about watching a movie like this. Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones may have reinvigorated epic fantasy filmmaking, but they are also inspiring their fair share of stinky knockoffs. Some of those knockoffs are silly fun, like the first Huntsman film. But this prequel-sequel abomination is barely good enough for hate-watching unless you want to see the purest expression of paint-by-dollars filmmaking to come out this year.