Traces of real grief tinge lighthearted fantasy The Huntsman: Winter's War

Viewers who expect nothing more of The Huntsman: Winter’s War than a middling adventure-fantasy film won’t be disappointed. The sequel to the 2012 box office hit, Snow White and the Huntsman, misfires many of its cylinders but chugs forward with some entertainment energy. Interesting for a major Hollywood production, though, are hints of grief over the loss of children—even preborn babies.

Sisters Ravenna (Charlize Theron), a sorceress, and Freya (a spectacular Emily Blunt) share the rule of their kingdom. Freya’s newborn baby, conceived with a lover, is murdered under mysterious circumstances. The unsettling tragedy releases Freya’s previously unexpressed magical power, a Frozen-like ability to generate streams and walls of ice. Consumed with grief and anger, Freya flees the realm and establishes her own country in the north. She forcibly conscripts children into military service, training them to be her army of huntsmen. To shield her warriors from the sorrow she experienced, Freya forbids romantic relationships between the sexes, teaching them that love leads only to betrayal and pain.

Eric (Chris Hemsworth) and Sara (Jessica Chastain) number among Freya’s hunstmen. As young adults, they fail to hide their homespun marriage from Freya, who’s initially successful at separating the two. Seven years later, Eric must find the good queen Snow White’s missing magic mirror, an instrument of evil should it fall into Ravenna’s or Freya’s hands. Four kooky dwarves—the film’s hit-and-miss comic relief—join Eric and Sara in their quest to retrieve the gong-sized brass mirror and take it to the “Sanctuary.”

After a long set-up, The Huntsman settles into a dumbed-down Lord of the Rings. Still, the film’s handful of interesting twists, abundant swordplay, and creative special effects won’t disappoint everybody. By today’s standards, the PG-13 film even plays fairly clean: bloodless violence, only two or three scenes of somewhat-bared flesh, and no language.

Viewers might roll their eyes at the film’s gooey theme, an oft-repeated “love conquers all.” But a fascinating subtext runs through The Huntsman. Infanticide (the director’s euphemism for abortion?), Freya’s misguided attempts to compensate for the loss of her child, and elements near the film’s conclusion (strikingly, the location of Freya’s bloody injury) all point to a singular anguish. In the end, the character who condoned freedom and power at the expense of a child’s life earns the ultimate punishment.

Like The Huntsman, with no apparent pro-life agenda, several Hollywood productions (The Room, Grandma, The Island, and Knocked Up, just to name a few) seem forthrightly or inadvertently to express dismay over the treatment of preborn children. If Abel’s blood cried out from the ground, surely the voices of millions of aborted babies will echo from places one doesn’t expect to hear them—even Hollywood.