The good news is that Nicolas Roeg’s adaptation of Roald Dahl’s vicious (and very funny) novel gets away with a lot of nightmarish moments in its story of a boy and his grandmother’s run-in with witches who live to murder children in magical and imaginative ways. Also, Anjelica Huston hams it up right as the witch leader who wears slinky black dresses and speaks in a ridiculous Euro-hybrid evil accent. The bad news is that the film streamlines out much of Dahl’s dry humor and the saccharin ending here will make admirers of the book want to kick the screen (Dahl famously hated it). What’s left is a film that makes bold gestures toward being a dark classic—a rare children’s film that isn’t shy about death or laughing about it—only to bail out at the end. It’s a flavorful black forest cake topped with cheap aerosol whipped cream. Huston’s fiery performance and Dahl deserve better.