Witch Hunters international spots sling the chain-blade

Paramount Pictures has released a new pair of international clips for its upcoming film.

Years after their encounter in the candy house, Hansel and Gretel are still killing witches in retribution for the murder of their parents. When they come upon a town from which children are going missing, they think they know what they’re getting into.

These new TV spots from Russia may be incomprehensible if you don’t know Russian, but they do showcase quite a lot of the film’s special effects that we haven’t seen in any of the North American promotional material. Particularly, we get to see a bit more of the witches, and how they will be represented.

Interestingly, it seems like each witch they fight will have a slightly different set of special effects, reflecting her own personality and powers. That’s a novel idea, and wil serve to keep the effects and fights interesting, since we won’t be seeing the characters kill essentially the same creature over and over again. The production values here are outstanding.

The red band trailer we saw earlier contains some of the same footage, but focuses on making it clear that the film will not be pulling any punches when it comes to gore. This one is not appropriate for all audiences and venues:

The film will also feature lots of complex melee and gunplay choreography with cool pseudo-medieval weapons in the hands of our two fresh but talented stars.We’ve already seen what Renner can do, so I’m really looking forward to seeing Gemma Arterton’s performance. She did well in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (as the romantic lead), but that role didn’t really require the choreographic skill that this one does. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s gorgeous.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which also stars Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare, Derek Mears, and Thomas Mann, hits theaters on January 25th, 2013 (pushed back recently from its original release date on the 11th).