Octoberfest, Pt. 11: Mischief Night (2014) / Hellions (2015)

When I started Octoberfest, I had one main goal- to watch as many horror films set on or around Halloween as I could that I had never seen, or, in the case of a couple of films (Transylvania 6-5000 & American Nightmare), ones I hadn't seen in many a blood moon. The idea was to find some additional go-to horror films for the season besides the old familiar favorites, a la the Halloween series or the Night of the Demons series, among others.

Alas, I've come up short for the most part, only reconfirming that I basically still enjoyed the films I'd already seen, but not finding any new ones that seemed likely to make the grade for future re-watchings. Until now, that is. It may have taken the bulk of the month, but I finally found not one, but two films I legitimately enjoyed and can absolutely see myself watching around Halloween time moving forward, if not annually (Carpenter's Halloween may be the only one that truly makes that grade, not counting some TV faves, like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and The Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror), then certainly semi-annually.  

As time is of the essence, what with Halloween just a day away, I had to forgo doing separate reviews for the two films, in favor of going the double-feature route. Also, I wanted to do a brief look at some of the other stuff I've been watching on TV and via streaming services, and tomorrow's kind of the last day I can do that while still technically falling under the October and/or Halloween banner, so keep an eye out for that tomorrow.

That said, I'm mulling over doing a Halloween post-mortem, as I'll be watching the 2018 version of the film for the first time since I saw it in theatres last year, and was interested in talking about whether it still holds up or not, so we'll see. I'll also be watching the Blu-Ray bonuses for the first time, and I gather there's some deleted scenes and possibly an alternate ending that may be of interest, so I wanted to talk about that stuff as well. I also kind of like the idea of bringing my Octoberfest series to a close on the number 13, which seems about right.

We begin with, appropriately enough, Mischief Night, which, in reality is, of course, the night before Halloween, known for being the night that kids go out and prank people by throwing eggs at them or their houses, or smashing their jack-o-lanterns, or spray-painting their garages or what have you, or just generally committing mayhem wherever they go. (I should also mention that this film is the one from 2014, being as how there are multiple films with that same title.)

This serves as the backdrop to this film, in which a literal babysitter- as in she's looking after an actual infant- runs afoul of both pranksters and a potential serial killer, and has to sort out which is which and react accordingly. The less you know about this one going in, the better, so I'll just say this: while it's standard operating procedure for a killer in a slasher film to eventually come up against a formidable opponent in the form of the so-called "Final Girl," this may be the first such film in which the girl in question might be as troubled as the killer himself!

The excellent Brooke Anne Smith (TV's Too Close to Home, Awkward.) plays said girl, Kaylie, a social outcast-type that is subbing as a babysitter for her more popular friend Daphne (Nikki Limo, Smiley), who is claiming to be sick, but really just wants to go out and party- and maybe play a few pranks of her own.

Kaylie has an unrequited crush on Graham (Matt Angel, the My Super Psycho Sweet 16 series and another Halloween-themed slasher, The Funhouse Massacre), who Daphne encourages to go after- but might there already be something going on between Daphne and Graham? As it turns out, yes and no- but not in the way you might think.

Meanwhile, Kaylie is doing her best to hold down the fort, in spite of the best efforts of some local teen hooligans, as well as worrying about a creeper Neighborhood Watch guy, Mr. Smiles (a game Malcolm McDowell, who ad-libbed most of his lines, as seen in the outtakes shown in the credits). As if that weren't bad enough, there's also a masked man skulking around the property, who may have something more legitimately scary in mind for the evening's festivities. But, like I said, he might just be in for the shock of his life when he gets a hold of something he can't handle as well as he might have thought.

Mischief Night tonally reminds me a bit of another recent holiday slasher, You Better Watch Out (the one from 2016, with The Visit star Olivia DeJonge), in that it starts out as one thing before turning into something else you weren't at all suspecting. How you feel about the movie may hinge dramatically on the big twist that occurs about mid-way through the film, in which things take a decided turn which may turn off some viewers. However, those who stick with it will be rewarded with another twist later on in the film that puts the film firmly back in slasher movie territory.

That said, the movie does drag a bit in places, and at one point, even inches into more of a character study than a proper horror film. But, like I said, it works its way back to horror if you just hang in there. The end result is quite unlike any horror film I've seen, which is saying something, though I'll allow that the radical tonal shifts can be a bit hard to swallow at times. Still, points for at least trying to do something different with the slasher subgenre, which isn't the easiest thing to do, given how set in stone most of the formats of those films are under normal circumstances.

I, for one, really appreciated the attempt to do something different with the slasher film, and if the results are occasionally haphazard, at least it's going for something truly original, which is more than I can say for most such films. It certainly helps that Kaylie is not your typical slasher heroine- to say the absolute very least- and that the killer, known only as "The Man" (Marc Valera, Shooting LA), is not your typical bad guy. I can definitely see myself watching this one again, especially knowing what I now know about what ends up happening. Rewatchability is always a good thing in my book, and Mischief Night definitely has that in spades. 

Kudos to first-time director Travis Baker, of the internet movie review series Cinema Cool semi-fame, who also wrote the film. Baker also worked on Hostel as a "research assistant" (that must have been fun!) and as a production assistant on Oliver Stone's underrated Savages. Baker is an acclaimed film historian in his spare time, who wrote critical essays for Warner Brothers and Fox for many of their classic DVD re-releases, so it's always nice to see a fellow critic make something worthwhile himself. By all means, check this one out, especially if you're looking for something different.

If Mischief Night is hard to describe without giving anything away, then Hellions is just plain hard to describe, period. A summary of the plot isn't going to do it justice, but here goes: a teen girl, Dora Vogel (Chloe Rose, Degrassi: The Next Generation), discovers on Halloween that she's pregnant. Because she's underaged, her doctor (Rossif Sutherland, son of Donald, of TV's ER and Reign) informs her that he's going to have to tell her mother (Rachel Wilson, Saw: The Final Chapter, In the Tall Grass), but gives her a little time to do it herself out of kindness.

After mulling over staying home and brooding, with her mother's encouragement, she finally decides to go out with her boyfriend, Jace (Luke Bilyk, also of Degrassi, where he and Rose played a couple as well), and postpone the inevitable, giving herself one last night out of fun before she has to face the music. Unfortunately, Jace never shows up and Dora begins to get worried. Not helping matters are the efforts of local kids to terrorize her by creeping around her house and throwing things at the windows and the like. 

After a certain point, things escalate dramatically, and Dora calls the cops, who send along Officer Corman (Robert Patrick, Terminator 2, The Faculty), who seems to know more than he lets on about what these wily hellions are really up to- and it involves Dora's unborn child. Things go from there, and only get stranger and stranger, to say the absolute least. Let's just say you may never look at trick or treaters in quite the same way again after watching this one.

The end results aren't quite Lynchian, but they're definitely in the same neighborhood. Hellions is kind of like what might happen if Books of Blood-era Clive Barker ate a bunch of bad clams and binge-watched David Cronenberg's The Brood for ten hours straight and decided to write his own version while still under the throes of food poisoning. It's sort of like a weird mix of The Strangers, Trick 'R Treat and Eraserhead. 

After a certain point, things become downright hallucinatory, to the point where a lot of viewers won't have a clue what is going on, but if you stick with it, things eventually make a sort of sense. Kind of. Like I said, it's hard to explain. It's definitely the sort of film where you'll wonder if what you're seeing is real or imagined, or if the heroine has completely gone off the deep end, possibly the result of (literally) eating some bad pickles covered in honey and salt, which is just gross, so it probably serves her right, lol.

The way the film is shot doesn't exactly help, as things are often covered in a pinkish, lavender hue that makes it seem like Dora stepped off the planet and entered Hell's version of Oz- as in the Wizard of Oz, not Australia. At times, it sort of reminded me of Inside, the 2007 French New Wave horror flick, at least plot-wise, with a little High Tension (or maybe even Repulsion) thrown in for good measure, but it's way weirder than any of those films. It's more like those films on LSD or some particularly strong mushrooms.   

By the end of it, you may wonder what actually happened and what was just imagined by Dora, but I think that's sort of the point. It's the sort of film that keeps you guessing and absolutely welcomes various theories as to what went on and offers up little in the way of confirmation one way or another. So, in that sense, it really is like a David Lynch film, in that he prefers to let viewers make up their own minds about what really happened.

As such, some may not care for this approach, especially if you like your movies wrapped up in a neat little box at the end. This is definitely not that kind of film. It's more the type of film that inspires a billion wild theories on Reddit or YouTube. I love that sort of thing- you may not. I would say that, if this all sounds intriguing to you, it probably will be, but if you like to be fed your horror with a spoonful of sugar (or honey, as it were), this is not the film for you. 

As with Mischief Night, Hellions is gifted with a particularly talented leading lady in Chloe Rose, who is sympathetic, likable and seems like one of those girls in high school that could just as easily be a social outcast as the most popular girl in school. It's fitting that she wears an angel costume for most of the film, especially since that outfit ends up bloody, battered and torn- not unlike Dora herself.

Just as Dora straddles the line between popularity and being scorned by her social circle when word gets out about her situation, so, too, does her outfit symbolize how precarious that line is between the two. All angels are this close to being devils, in other words- just ask Lucifer. (Or better yet, maybe don't.) This is a film rife with symbolism and hidden meaning, much of it firmly on the dark side of life, particularly as it relates to impending motherhood and fear of pregnancy itself. Not everyone is cut out to be a mother. 

This is material inherently ripe for horror, and was used as precisely that in most of the films I mentioned, as well as many others where that came from, from Village of the Damned to The Omen to The Children. Let's face it: kids can be scary, and so can pregnancy on the whole. Obviously, those fears are taken to the extreme in horror films, but even without the actual horror element present, such things can still be pretty damn scary, especially if you're little more than a kid yourself, as is the case in this film.

The kids here certainly make a solid case for the value of abortion in society, that's for sure. More than living up to their name as little hellions, it's as if Sam, from the underrated Halloween anthology Trick 'R Treat, brought a bunch of his friends along to freak out and terrorize ya'lls' neighborhood. These little buggers are freaky personified and excellent advertisements as to why kids may not be for everyone. Yep, them kids is scary. 👦👧😈😨

As you might have guessed, this is not your average horror flick, and, as such, may not be everyone's cup of tea. It had its premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival, and also screened at the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, it being a Canadian flick, just like back in the good old days of early Cronenberg and wonderfully twisted Canadian slasher flicks like Black Christmas, Happy Birthday to Me and My Bloody Valentine. (Note also that all of those also have holiday themes.)

I was somewhat surprised to see that the film was met by mixed reviews- not so much by mainstream critics, which is to be expected, but also from the horror press, though Bloody Disgusting and Shock Till You Drop both had positive things to say about it, as did, astonishingly enough, RobertEbert.com. Normally, I wouldn't read anyone else's reviews before writing my own, but was curious to see what other people thought about this one, especially in terms of their interpretation of it. It seems like people are really divided by it- they either love it or absolutely hate it. I suppose that seems about right. 

The film was written by Pascal Trottier, best-known for The Colony and for writing one of the A Christmas Horror Story segments, and directed by Bruce McDonald, of Hard Core Logo and Pontypool fame. He also directs a lot of TV, including the horror anthology series Creeped Out, Dark Matter and the TV-movie My Babysitter's a Vampire, which spawned a series, which he also directed episodes of as well. He's also directed several episodes of Degrassi, which explains the casting of Rose and Bilyk.

I just loved it, and I can absolutely see it becoming a go-to Halloween favorite in the years to come. Hell, I'm tempted to see it again right away, now that I've read/watched some of the online theories about it, but that will likely have to wait, as I have more traditional Halloween watching to do and little time to do it. 

Still, the fact that I want to rewatch it at all is a good sign, not the least given all the crap I had to wade through to get to a bona fide modern Halloween classic-in-the-making, IMHO. Ditto Mischief Night. It may have taken most of the month, but I finally came up a winner- and twice at that. By all means, check both of these films out, which are readily available on DVD and Blu-Ray. Maybe they will become part of your annual Halloween viewing, too. 🎃

Octoberfest, Pt. 10: The Coven (2015)

If you just looked at the above poster and did a double take, you're not alone. It's clearly a threadbare rip-off of the poster for 1994's The Craft, one of my personal faves from that decade and easily one of my favorite witchcraft-themed horror movies ever. When I ordered this film, I hadn't seen said cover, but I needn't have bothered- 2015's The Coven is nothing whatsoever like that film, making one wonder why they went there in the first place.

I can only guess that it had something to do with duping unsuspecting viewers into thinking it would be along the same lines as that classic flick. But, if anything, that's only going to piss them off more, because it's nothing like it, which I imagine is just going to make viewers that much more upset by what they do get when they pop this one in their DVD/Blu-Ray players. 

        The witches of The Craft are unamused 

I mean, it's one thing to rip off a classic horror movie- plenty of movies have done that, and not just in the horror genre. And Lord knows, many a horror fan has gone to see, rented, bought and/or streamed a movie knowing good and well it was likely going to be a lesser version of something they did like- we just can't seem to help ourselves. But this one is so not what I was expecting that I wanted my money back even though I didn't spend any, lol - I checked it out of the local library. 

 Got woods?

For starters, the very title is misleading- it's not even about a coven of witches. Rather, the title refers to a ring of trees in the woods where Wiccans were rumored to have met, and where seven of them apparently disappeared in the 60's after going there with leader Uri Clef (see what they did there?), who himself also disappeared. The film is somewhat inspired by the real-life witch Robert Cochrane, whose particular strain of Wicca, Cochranianism, was the one Clef's followers practiced, reportedly in the same area as the film itself was shot in, Queen's Wood in Highgate, London. 

After hearing all this, five schoolgirls decide it would be a kick to camp out in the same area on Halloween- the same night the aforementioned Wiccans went missing. Bad move. Mind you, the girls don't have any intentions of doing anything witchy- they, once again, are not the "coven" of the title, they're just ordinary girls looking to drink booze, get high on weed and goof off and try and scare each other. Needless to say, this being a horror movie, it isn't long before someone else does it for them. 

Actually, I take that back- it IS a long time before anything happens in the film. Before the last thirty minutes or so, all we get is the girls goofing off and being silly. The only suspense comes from an ominous biker (!) that remains unseen throughout the entirety of the film- all we see is his bike headlight and his front wheel. I presume he's meant to be Clef's ghost stalking the girls, and anyone else who has the misfortune to be in the woods that night, but it's never really spelled out as such, so who knows? 

   Sorry, there was only room for four girls on the poster- all the better to rip off The Craft!

What is spelled out is that Uri Clef, in case you didn't figure it out, is (spoiler, I guess) an anagram for Lucifer, and the girls concerned- and one unlucky boy who wanders into their midst- all have names that correspond to each of the letters in his name: Louie (Billy Red Mackie), Ulrika (Fiona Maeve O'Brien)- not a real name, lol- Cara (Cloe Mackie, The St. Trinian's films), Izzy (Madeleine Rose Witney), Fran (Maya Charlery), Eve (Rachel Summers, Calloused Hands) and Ruby (Holly Mackie, also of the St. Trinian's films, and Cloe and Billy's real-life sister).

There's also Eddy (Kazim Benson), who checks out early on when he climbs up a tree, is scared by a bat (!) and spends most of the film passed out. Lucky him. Anyway, because of this, he evades most of the "action" of the film, such as it is, as his friend Louie subsequently goes to get help and promptly gets lost, then caught up in the same drama as the girls. 

Likewise, Eve isn't even part of the girls' group of friends, and only shows up when one of the girls sends her an ominous text that reads: "Help us!" Given that she wasn't even invited to the shindig in the first place, and was bullied by the girls earlier in the film- to say nothing of well-informed about what sort of nefarious stuff had gone on in said woods, thanks to her research- she should have just stayed home and left them to their own devices, but oh well- gotta get that "E" taken care of, I guess. Also, she defaced library property- a big no-no in my book- so she kind of deserved it. 

Also cropping up is Dexter Fletcher, of Gothic, Jude, Lock Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels, Band of Brothers, The Virgin Queen, Layer Cake, Doom, Kick-Ass and Terminal. If his name sounds familiar for other reasons, that's because he's also a director, best-known for Eddie the Eagle and the critically-acclaimed Elton John biopic Rocketman. He's also the director that stepped in and finished Bohemian Rhapsody when original director Bryan Singer was fired for being outed as a perv.  

Fletcher plays teacher Mr. Sheers, who is the one that begins educating the class on Wicca before the mysterious babe Mrs. Belial (Magda Rodriguez, The Witches' Hammer- another mistitled film- it's actually about vampires!) steps in to tell him the Headmaster wishes to speak to him immediately. One problem- the Headmaster isn't even in his office at the time, and Sheers later discovers Belial- note the name- doesn't even work there.

She's there instead to plant the seed of camping in the woods to the girls by telling the aforementioned tale of Uri Clef. As we see later on, it turns out that Belial is Clef's former- perhaps current- apprentice and her job is to lure people to the titular coven, so that the biker can stalk them and, one presumes, sacrifice them to Satan. I say presumably because we never see what happens to any of the seven people I mentioned. Hell, we only see one of them physically grabbed by anyone- the rest simply disappear into thin air and drop out of the film altogether, never to be seen again. 

So, yeah, those looking for anything resembling gore are out of luck, save one admittedly effective nightmare sequence involving the girls holding one of their own down and jamming a metal prong into one of her eyes. It's more implied than really shown, but it is nonetheless cringe-worthy. Alas, that's about it for anything remotely resembling violence in the film.

Not that, mind you, a horror film need have extreme violence to be effective, but this one barely even has any suspense. Basically, there's just several scenes of the motorcyclist chasing down several of the characters in the woods, and a few Blair Woods Project-esque bits of the girls being freaked out in the woods alone, but that's about it. Honestly, I was just bored senseless most of the time. And, no there's no nudity, either, in case you were wondering, so no cheap thrills to be had, either.

I did enjoy the historical bits, and I'll allow the creepy nursery rhyme was suitably spooky, especially as delivered by kids in unison, and that one nightmare sequence was good, but yeah, most of this is a snooze. And, as you probably gathered by now, the main girls are not at all witches, don't aspire to be witches and the closest they come to doing anything ritualistic is playing a dice-like game where the die have letters instead of numbers, which naturally spell out Lucifer over and over. (Technically, "Ucife," with the "L" and "R" filled in by a magazine cover- so, even that is pretty half-assed.)

Given that the film was filmed in a location frequented by actual witches over the years, there was a creepy film to be made here, as the location is suitably spooky. Maybe they didn't want to press their luck, or maybe they didn't have the courage of their convictions, but I'm afraid this isn't that film. It certainly isn't helped by the mostly terrible cast, either, save Fletcher and Rodriguez- but they only have bit parts, as the main focus of the film is obviously the girls. 

   Sorry, I didn't get me knickers off- my dad's the director and me mum wrote the script and their last name isn't Argento.

You might have noticed that three of said cast members share the same last name: Mackie. That's no coincidence- the director is John Mackie and the writer is Jayney Mackie. Guess who their kids are? For good measure, there's another Mackie, Rory, working in the Camera and Electrical Department. Nepotism is alive and well, and not just in Washington DC, folks. I wouldn't mind it so much if it were a good movie, but yeah- it isn't. 

To be fair, some of the cinematography is pretty solid, with Franz Pagot doing the honors there. Pagot worked on the classic Full Metal Jacket, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow and the Bond flick Tomorrow Never Knows, but has mostly gone the independent film route since turning professional cinematographer. Nothing wrong with that, certainly, but I'd be lying if I said I'd heard of any of his subsequent films since that time, circa the early 2000's, though Shark Rampage sounds like something I'd watch on the Syfy channel, lol.

So, yeah, sorry to say, nothing much to see here. This is no The Craft, much less any given witch-themed movie you could name. Hell, it's not even Halloweentown-level good, lol. In fact, I'd rather watch that entire series than this film again, if I'm being honest. It's just plain bad, and shame on the marketing team for so blatantly misleading people. I know it's their job to get people to watch something, but there's enticing, and there's just lying, and the cover here is a flat-out lie. Clearly, the marketers chose to go the "trick" instead of "treat" route. 

   In America, there's a hidden cache of E.T. video-game cartridges buried in the desert- but in the UK, they buried all the unsold copies of The Coven on DVD in the woods.
  

Sorry to say, you should avoid this one at all costs. Hell, even the Halloween factor is minor, with only a lone jack-o-lantern and a very brief visit to a Halloween party the only real holiday elements at play here, and that only comprises minutes of the film at best. Otherwise, we only know it's Halloween because it's mentioned a few times. So, if you're looking for a Halloween film you haven't seen, keep looking, as it's barely a factor here. 😠

In short, don't say you weren't warned- this is one woods that you don't want to spend the night in. Much less your Halloween. Skip it. 😝

   



 

Octoberfest, Pt. 9: Goosebumps 2 - Haunted Halloween (2018)

For a lot of horror fans of a certain age, the Goosebumps books were sort of a gateway drug to the hard stuff, aka horror written by adults for adults, a la Stephen King, Clive Barker, Peter Straub and plenty more where that came from. For those who didn't care much for reading, there was also a TV series based on the books in the mid-90's that was a lot of fun as well.

I got started on the more adult stuff before I was even into my double digits, but I still got a kick out of the series- horror fans aren't that discerning when it comes to content. For all the bitching some do about PG/PG-13 horror, they keep watching it, nevertheless. That's because horror fans are die-hards, and will watch anything within the genre, even if they know better, and know good and well they'll end up disappointed. 

By the time the first Goosebumps film hit theatres in 2015, I was a grown-ass man, and yet, nostalgia took hold and I found myself buying a ticket, anyway. Lo and behold, it actually wasn't that bad- in fact, it was a lot of fun. The film's coup de grace was that, instead of adapting a specific book- after all, the Goosebumps books were written for kids, so they were all pretty short- it opted to present a movie in which a group of kids accidentally set free some of the characters from the books in question, which, in turn, leads to all of them getting free.

As such, the film was loaded with in-joke references for die-hard fans, and appearances from lots of fan favorites, even if you had to look hard for some of them. Front and center among them was the ever-popular Slappy, the wise-cracking ventriloquist's dummy given to committing evil acts however he could. The sinister garden gnomes, Abominable Snowman, haunted car, vampire poodle, body squeezers, giant praying mantis, ghouls, killer bees, the Blob and the Invisible Boy all also made appearances, among many others. 

In a nifty bit of casting, Jack Black played author R.L. Stine himself, as a cantankerous shut-in that kept his books under lock and key, lest they be unleashed upon the world, leaving him to resent their very existence. The author himself ironically played Mr. Black, the drama teacher, in another in-joke. Black also voiced Slappy and the Invisible Boy for good measure.

The movie was a financial and critical success, and genuinely entertaining, so a sequel was perhaps inevitable. Unfortunately, the likable cast from the first film has been jettisoned for the follow-up, save for Black, who is featured in a much more diminished capacity, and, TBH, doesn't contribute that much to the proceedings beyond showing up towards the end of the film, largely when the main events are over. He doesn't even voice Slappy this time around, leading one to wonder if maybe Black had prior commitments and they had to shoe-horn him in, which would explain why he misses out on a lot of the stuff that goes down. Or maybe he just smelled a stinker.

The plot is basically a retread of the first film. This time around, two teens, Sonny (Jeremy Ray Taylor, IT) and his friend Sam (Caleel Harris, Castle Rock) get a call to pick up some junk at an abandoned house- which turns out to be Stine's former residence- with the caveat that they can keep whatever they find if they dispose of the rest. When Sonny stumbles upon a hidden storage room, the boys discover a box containing a book which they open, setting free the nefarious Slappy once again.

It isn't long before he's up to his old tricks, and try as they might to get rid of him, he just keeps coming back to commit more mayhem, causing disaster wherever he goes. Eventually, he has the bright idea to use his powers to start up the abandoned factory that Tesla himself used to experiment within, and use the tower to magnify his powers and electrify the town and bring Halloween to life, as it were. Everything from decorations and trick-or-treat bags to jack-o-lanterns and even a ginormous spider made of balloons comes to life and goes on a rampage throughout the town, terrorizing the citizens left and right. 

Eventually, the boys enlist Sonny's sister, Sarah to help, played by cutie Madison Iseman, of Annabelle Comes Home and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the latter also with Black, which is probably how she got the role here, being as Black played her "avatar" in that film. Sarah eventually discovers the Stine connection and tries to contact him to no avail, but he later gets the message and rushes to save the day, but, as I mentioned, he misses most of the action. 

Other new recruits to the sequel include Wendi McLendon-Covey (Reno 911, The Goldbergs) as Sonny and Sarah's mother; Ken Jeong (The Hangover, Community) as the holiday-happy next door neighbor, who goes a bit crazy with the home decorating, which given what happens, comes back to bite him- and the rest of the neighborhood- in the ass when everything starts coming to life; and Chris Parnell (SNL, 30 Rock) as a drug store manager who ends up being transformed into a troll who serves as one of Slappy's henchman- sort of like an Igor to his Dr. Frankenstein.

While everyone seems to be having fun, more or less, the film itself is kind of going through the motions, which may be why a lot of the original cast opted not to return, to say nothing of the original director, Rob Letterman, and writer, Darren Lemke, who are replaced here by, respectively, Ari Sandel (The DUFF) and Rob Lieber (Peter Rabbit).

The new cast is likeable enough, and Lieber's direction is fine, but the film lacks the verve of the original- or the originality, for that matter, as it basically functions as a variation of the plot of the first film. Still, it is fun playing spot- the-book-characters, and I did enjoy the bit with the Gummi Bears come to life, which gave me pause as I next entertained one of my favorite candy snacks, lol. 🐻😨

That basically leaves the visuals to carry the film, and they, at least, are pretty impressive- you can definitely tell what the budget (around $35 million) went towards. Ultimately, it basically paid off, as the film grossed some $93 million at the box office, though it's worth noting that the first film made over $150 million on at least twice the budget. Sometimes the extra effort- and budget- actually does make the difference. As it stands, this plays more like a made-for-TV or direct-to-video sequel than a feature film. A high-end one, but a lesser one than its predecessor, nonetheless.

I didn't hate it, and I can see myself watching it on TV if it crops up on down the line, but I certainly don't see it becoming a go-to around Halloween time. The first one, on the other hand, I can see myself watching on the semi-regular over the years to come. That's why I bought the first one, and only rented this one, honestly. 

This one isn't a total fail- I liked the idea of Halloween coming to life, even if it was a bit ripped off from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the main cast isn't bad- but it just lacks the inventiveness and attention to detail of the original. To say nothing of the underlying melancholic tone to the proceedings that gave the first film an unexpected emotional punch. The first one is a modern-day classic, this one is just okay. 

Still, if you're looking for something more family friendly and you haven't yet seen it, you could do a lot worse. But you could do a damn sight better, too. As such, I can only give this one the mildest of recommendations, I'm afraid. 😐