The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend Hocus Pocus 2
REPOST Halloween 2023:
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I was going to be doing a review or at the very least a First Impressions of Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher. For the first fifteen minutes, it was absolutely fantastic. This show wasn’t just doing Usher, it was bringing all of the Edgar Allen Poe.
Five minutes in and there had been references to The Raven, Tell-Tale Heart, Cask of Amontillado, and the lead prosecutor pursuing Roderick Usher was named Auguste Dupin. I was totally in. I did get a few early warnings but I dismissed these as unwelcome (but I guess to be expected) Stephen King referents. Roderick’s mother was a fanatical Christian and his father was a totally evil and hypocritical pharmaceutical executive. Fine, whatever. The macabre imagery of the mother’s Premature Burial made up for everything. Then one of the all-time great glowdowns began. How do you have an entire family of eight have the Ghey? Plus, Auguste Dupin. Thirty minutes in and I told the Mother of the Dark Spawn, “I’m done if you are.” She flipped over to watch the OG Hocus Pocus. It’s still a treat for her and the Dark Spawn.
The sequel was not.
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The original Hocus Pocus honestly wasn’t something I cared about. But I can understand why people liked it.
It started life as a Disney Channel Halloween movie and it kind of shows. But Disney thought they had something, so they bumped up the budget and gave it a theatrical release. It didn’t do much at the box office, so Disney shrugged and put Hocus Pocus in rotation alongside Halloween Town every October. It quickly became a Halloween favorite in an age that wasn’t making those anymore.
The plot is that on a dare, a dumbass kid lights a candle and performs a ritual that resurrects three pretty goofy and harmless witches. The Sanderson Sisters. The thing is, they weren’t all that harmless. In the first five minutes of the film, they kidnap a little girl and kill her (bloodlessly, it was still 1990s Disney) to make themselves younger. Now that was pretty edgy stuff and I suspect the only reason it didn’t get cut in pre-production was that Jeffery Katzenberg was still at Disney and he was constantly saying, “make it more edgy.”
In this case it gave the movie some impact. Sure, the Sanderson Sisters were stupid and silly, but they meant business. If they said they were going to kill you, it was promise, not a threat. When they kidnapped the little girl there were stakes because her life was on the line.
It served to elevate what would have been a very forgettable movie. The lead teenage actress was cute, the little redhead was the best child actress of her generation, the boy was appropriately heroic, his kid-sister was a nuisance but by the end of the story he was ready to lay down his life for her. There were both real laughs and a couple of real scares.
There was even a little bit of braininess to it. The Sandersons sort of conformed to the Hecate concept of the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone.
Except now they are all crones.
I was wondering why it went straight-to-Disney+. You’d think a Hocus Pocus sequel would be money in the bank. And it kind of is, but it’s like money in a bank in Somalia.
You have to remember, it didn’t become a classic immediately. It took fifteen years before it was clear that this thing wasn’t a flash in the pan. And that is a problem when you are talking sequels. You needed all three Sandersons and Parker wasn’t interested in playing a brainless sexpot once Carrie Bradshaw entered her life. Honestly, she had a point, it would have annoyed her new fans. Since Disney was just testing the waters anyway, the matter was dropped.
In any event, the original had ludicrous legs, and late Xers (mostly girls), Millennials, and Zoomer kids loved it. However, drag queens really loved it and all three of the Sanderson actresses have strong connections to Broadway. They live in a world where the only fans that really count are the gay ones. Within minutes of their resurrection the Sandersons are singing “The Witch is Back,” a slightly altered version of the Drag Queen national anthem and Elton John standby, The Bitch is Back.
The movie is Woke. Of course.
Turns out the Sandersons were driven into witchcraft by the patriarchy. They also forgot all about selling their souls to Satan in this version. If that was a sticking point for you, then I guess it’s an improvement but if you think that’s a reason to see it then you are god’s perfect retard. Every male in this show is a cowardly dumbass and a misogynist. They brought back Billy Butcherson (the Zombie) but they didn’t bring back anyone else from the original cast so there is no real sense of continuity at all. The stunning and brave teenage girl whose name I can’t remember is on the Feminist Heroine’s Journey.
Bottomline, there is no reason to see this thing, so don’t.
The Dark Herald Does Not Recommend.
