“The Brother’s Grimm” takes a multitude of familiar fairy tales and twists them almost beyond recognition.

The tales, credited to the Brothers Grimm, are some of the most familiar, and oddly enough, some of the most disturbing. The new Terry Gilliam film offers a new twist on how these may have started.

The film opens in 1796 with Jacob Grimm enlisted to take the family cow and exchange it for medicine for his dying younger sister. He returns with “magic” beans. His older brother, William, calls him a fool and tosses the beans away. And like so many older brothers before and since, will never let the younger forget the grave mistake made even as decades pass.

Fast forward 15 years and the brothers are traveling around French occupied Germany seemingly to help villages rid themselves of evil spirits and demons. Little do the townsfolk know that the spirits and demons are actually co-conspirators with the brothers. And business is good.

That is, until they get to a village that really has a problem with disappearing little girls, enchanted forests and demonic gingerbread people. Can they really assist these people or will they be exposed for the frauds that they have always been?

Everything from Little Red Riding Hood, to the Princess and the Pea, to Hansel and Gretel, to Rapunzel and to Snow White are all present in forms that are so much more dark and twisted than most could imagine.

Poor editing distinguishes the movie’s first half-hour, but this is an entertaining, and often disturbing, review of well-known fairy tales. Parents of little children should pay attention to the PG-13 rating, because these are tales sure to provide nightmares.