19th-century "folklore collectors" Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm are con artists. They perform exorcisms of "evil enchantments" (for a healthy fee) while wandering about in French-occupied Germany during the Napoleonic wars. Wilhelm is a swashbuckling cad with an answer for everything, while Jacob is a dreamer who looks at life through fairytale-tinted spectacles. When French Gen. Delatombe gets wise to the schemes of Team Grimm, he presents them with a real-life mystery to solve or face the executioner's ax: children in a village have been disappearing--now the brothers' lives depend on finding out why. The charlatans must accept the burden of vanquishing what they claim as real, and find themselves ensnared in a genuinely supernatural crisis in a dark forest, amid fantastical marvels and truly enchanted flora and fauna.