We have to suspend disbelief when we say it, but fairy tales used to be scary.

According to nineteenth century Danish lore, royalty killed in battle were buried, lest they were eaten by ravens. The birds, upon eating a fallen king’s heart from his chest, became valravns: devilishly smart, with superhuman powers, capable of seizing a man’s will and guiding his hand. Other incarnations of the valravn — as expressed in the 1985 film Ladyhawke — found that these birds were prisons for human souls, bound to flying only at night, locked away in the forms of animals until they drank the blood of a child.

The new Rupert Sanders film Snow White And The Huntsman won’t exactly scar filmgoers for life. But it sheds most of the characteristic mirror, mirror on the wall silliness, casting wild-eyed Charlize Theron as Ravenna (get it?), and goth-swan Kristen Stewart as the title character. Ravenna can discorporate into a flock of birds, and under her reign, thickets transform into vipers. At the center of it is Stewart, the royalty who intends to keep her heart, the child who refuses the imprisoned soul its freedom through blood.

James Newton Howard — who scored the OST, but not the trailer — really delivers:

There’s no shame in preferring the trailer music. Composer, Danny Cocke:

While tooling around the innertubes for information on valravns, we found this:

And no, we haven’t forgotten Florence. This is, you might say, Florence Country: