Hexed, Disney’s 65th animated feature film, follows Billie (Hailee Steinfeld), a rebellious teen who escapes into the secret world of Hexe. The realm of witches living in harmony with nature is filled with a distinctly Disney version of magic. Upon stepping through a portal, Billie encounters a door with a mouth-like knob that’s a reference to Alice in Wonderland. Not long after, she meets a talking book and quill reminiscent of the animated houseware in Beauty and the Beast.
“That’s the kind of animation stuff we can do better than anybody, and so we love that, but we love that Billie is not going to treat these things with reverence,” Hexed co-director Jason Hand said during a roundtable interview at Annecy Festival. “She’s going to throw it against the wall and interact by poking it.”
Hand and his co-director Fawn Veerasunthorn grew up watching Disney movies before they went to work for the studio on films including Zootopia and Moana. But while they’re filling their film with nods to the classics, they want to make something that skews a little more weird and punk. Veerasunthorn notes Billie is “the first Disney heroine in combat boots.” She gets in trouble at school, fights with her mom Alice (Rashida Jones), and generally feels trapped by all the rules she has to follow. That’s because Alice has been suppressing Billie’s magical power since she first opened a portal to Hexe when she was just a baby.
“Billie’s powers are wonderful, but they also invite danger that a one-year-old doesn’t quite yet understand,” Hand says. “Seeing her daughter in harm’s way changes the way Alice parents Billie forever, and she gives Billie a special bracelet ensuring Billie will never open another portal and endanger herself again. Now this notion of limitations and the inability to achieve our potential will define their relationship.”
While Hexe is a colorful place filled with strange creatures, Alice and Billie live in what Veerasunthorn calls “the most boring neighborhood in the world.” The divide is visually represented by using boxy frames for every shot in the real world while breaking out of those limits in Hexe. When Billie’s bracelet falls off at school and she starts manifesting powers again, Alice panics and prepares to flee town. But Billie decides to seize her destiny by opening another portal.
“[Hexe] can be wild and unpredictable and sometimes a bit unhinged, and as Billie runs around having the time of her life, she realizes it might be the place that she’s always meant to be, a place where she is free from all limitations,” Veerasunthorn said.
Finding new magic
Billie’s life-changing journey takes a turn when Alice shows up to tell her she has to leave. Before Alice can explain why, she’s captured by the local magical police. In order to save her mom, Billie has to learn about her family history and her own powers.
“The one person she thought couldn’t possibly understand her actually may have far more in common with her than she had ever believed,” Hand said.
Billie quickly acquires a walking cauldron named Bucket that acts like a dumb dog and finds her equivalent of Master Yoda in Beef Roger Crumbchuck (Walton Goggins), a three-eyed cat who lives alone in a swamp. Beef is like a scruffy and surly version of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, but Billie is able to persuade him to help. He prepares to go on a journey with her by packing up his vast collection of potions and magical trinkets into a trailer in a sequence inspired by another classic Disney moment: Merlin’s magical cleanup in The Sword in the Stone.
Together they explore a world that just gets weirder the further they travel. Hand and Veerasunthorn associate magic with their own artistic endeavors, and the pull Billie feels towards the strangest parts of Hexe represents their desire to push boundaries.
“Magic has always been the answer to how you feel,” Veerasunthorn said. “You may feel stuck or feel different in your own life. Everyone wishes for a way to be able to express themselves or have the means to control your situation. That’s what magic means to us.”
Hexed premieres in theaters on Nov. 25.