Retro Review: Hocus Pocus (1993)

Ever since I made the decision to do my Halloween reviews, the movie "Hocus Pocus" is a movie that I wanted to cover on this blog. I almost did it last year, but ran out of time. Lucky for me, when I asked for requests on Facebook for Halloween movies to review, both this year and last year I had at least one person ask me to review "Hocus Pocus." So, by popular demand, as well as the desire of my own heart, here we are reviewing "Hocus Pocus." However, unlucky for people who actually wanted me to review this, my reasons for reviewing it are most likely the exact opposite. Because as fun as it is to discuss Halloween classics that I love, it's also fun to go on rants about certain "classics" that I don't think deserve that label. So be careful what you wish for, I suppose. If you ask me to review a movie, I'm going to be obligated to give my personal opinion on it, which might be the exact opposite of yours. But that's OK, right? If we all had the same opinion on everything, life would be really boring. Shall we now proceed and talk about the critically panned, box office failure that is "Hocus Pocus" that I personally think should've never been given a second life, but somehow gained the status of a cult classic for reasons that I will never understand?

I could dive into the plot of "Hocus Pocus" if I wanted to. And usually this is where I do that. But you all know what happens. Three children-killing witches get resurrected in 1993 after having been dead for 300 years and wander around town on Halloween night making a fool out of themselves before getting stopped by three young kids because said witches are the most gullible beings to ever walk the face of the Earth. That's your movie in a nutshell. But before we explore why this is in fact a bad movie, let's discuss the history behind this because I find said history a bit fascinating. This is a movie that was released during the summer of 1993. Not Halloween season. The summer. It was released on the same weekend as "Free Willy," making $8.1 million that weekend, which was good enough for fourth place. Also in theaters at that time was "The Firm," "In the Line of Fire," "Jurassic Park," "Sleepless in Seattle" and "Rookie of the Year." For 1993 standards, the movie didn't hold on that well as it was deterred by mostly negative reviews. "Free Willy," which opened with less money at just $7.8 million, went on to make $77 million while "Hocus Pocus" could only manage $39 million, which was only good enough to be the 39th highest grossing movie that year.

For context and comparison, the 39th highest grossing movie of 2017 was "The Post" was $81 million. The highest grossing movie of 1993 was "Jurassic Park" with $357 million, followed by "Mrs. Doubtfire," "The Fugitive," "The Firm" and "Sleepless in Seattle." So no, this wasn't a win for Disney right off the bat. With a $28 million budget, a $39 million total wasn't a huge loss, but I'm sure they were hoping for a lot more right off the bat. As far as the negative reviews go, I don't know what the Rotten Tomatoes score would've been had Rotten Tomatoes existed back then, but the current score as of October 2018 is a mere 30 percent, and that's with old and new reviews combined. But as I'm sure you all know, the story doesn't end there. The movie gained a new life when it was released on VHS the next year. It consistently saw strong sales every single year, which I believe continues till today, and has been rebroadcast on ABC or Disney Channel every year since the mid-90's, with impressive view counts each time. That's what's made this movie such a classic. That's a lesson that, even if a movie fails in its initial theatrical run, the story is not necessarily over. The movie even got its own thing at Magic Kingdom in Disney World as a part of Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.

For me all of this is a strange case of holiday nostalgia. Normal nostalgia is a very powerful thing sometimes, causes people to forgive or even praise bad movies because they enjoyed it when they were younger. Add in the holiday theme and that's a double whammy. Not only does it have the nostalgic vibes, but there's a holiday to propel it forward, which gives people a reason to consistently watch it or for television stations to consistently broadcast it when otherwise they might not have. This is also how "A Christmas Story" became so popular. Holiday nostalgia despite failing in its initial box office run. Also, sometimes movies with holiday themes are easy for people to forgive. A Halloween movie with enough scares or a Christmas movie with a nice message can help people overlook what can often be poor plot devices, underdeveloped characters and especially bad acting. Throw in some time to the equation, and heaven forbid anyone say anything bad about an older movie. I mean, trash newer movies like "Goosebumps" or "The House with a Clock in its Walls" all you want with all your nitpick complaints. That's easy. But don't you dare say anything bad about the 25-year-old "Hocus Pocus." That's the power of holiday nostalgia.

Perhaps a big reason why I'm not a fan of "Hocus Pocus" is because I don't have the advantage of nostalgia with this one. My parents never showed it to us and after watching the movie, I totally understand why. When did I first watch it? Well, that's a funny question. I have no idea. Maybe I saw it at a friend's house when I was a kid. Maybe I watched it at a Halloween party in High School. Maybe I wasn't exposed to it until college. The memory of my first "Hocus Pocus" viewing is simply not there and I think the reason for this is that every viewing that has happened has left me silently confused. I've never had fun with this movie. I've never been entertained or hardly even amused. But yet I've never been brave enough to say anything because everyone around me is having the time of their lives, so I just silently pretend that I'm enjoying myself along with them as to not ruin or spoil their Halloween celebrations. But now that I've been doing this movie critic thing on this blog since 2012, I've become increasingly more courageous is sharing my opinions of movies without really caring if said opinion upsets people or not. Granted, if a "Hocus Pocus" movie night is declared, I'll still do my best to not ruin people's celebrations, but now you'll know the truth.

So let's dive into specifics shall we? I'm not going to dissect every element of the movie, but I do want to start with the introduction. We're in 1693, during the height of the Salem Witch Trials, an extremely popular theme among Halloween movies. We are immediately introduced to three overly exaggerated witches, Winifred, Sarah and Mary Sanderson, who have the goal to achieve eternal youth. They want to stay young and beautiful forever. In order to do this, they have to suck the soul out of a young child. And poor little Emily happens to wander into their cabin in the woods and gets captured by these witches. They cast a spell on her, absorb her youth, and kill her. Immediately I'm like, wait what? Who made this movie and who is the target audience. Yes, Disney made this movie and they made it for kids as a "fun, family-friendly Halloween movie." And we start this by killing a young girl. But not just that, the three witches place a guilt trip on the girl's brother, blaming him for not saving his sister, and then transform him into an immortal cat so that he can live forever with his guilt. Then the three witches are captured by the townspeople and hanged, a fairly disturbing scene, but not before they cast a chant which gives them the opportunity to be resurrected.

I personally don't inherently have a problem with a somewhat disturbing horror movie set in the 1600's around the time of the Salem Witch Trials. One of my favorite horror movies is "The Witch," which is exactly that. And I also don't have an inherent problem with cheesy kids movies. If the movie is targeted at kids and they love it, then my opinion doesn't really matter and I can accept that, especially when said cheesy kids movie is a 90's movie. That's my wheelhouse. My problem is when you try to combine the two by making a cheesy kids movie that doubles as a disturbing horror film that ends up in an awkward position in that it is neither all that scary nor really appropriate for kids or fun for adults. I mean, the opening sequence is almost all I need to critique this movie. We kill a young girl. We turn a young boy into a cat for 300 years after sending him on a horrible guilt trip. Then we hang three witches. That's not really what I would qualify as "harmless, family-friendly entertaining." It's not harmless, nor is it family-friendly. It's a tonal mismatch coming from an era where Disney was trying to be more edgy with their films, earning them the conspiracy theory that Disney is secret trying to destroy kids with the films that they make.

After we make our way through this disturbing introduction, we have to wade through the often cringe-worthy main portion of the film. This has stereotypical bad 90's film written all over it, starting with a whole cast of characters who are poorly written and under-developed. Our main character is an annoying teenage boy that bounces back and forth between loving life and hating life, depending on what the script needed him to do in that scene. We have said boy's love interest in an attractive teenage girl, who does a great job in the movie, but I have a hard time believing that she would realistically associate with this boy with his sudden and awkward advances. Yet we have a horribly forced teenage love arc that makes no sense, but exists because the movie needed it. And is nothing but awkward and laughable every single step of the way. As side characters, we have parents of this boy who should win the award for worst and most negligent parents. And we have what I would be willing to declare the worst bullies ever portrayed in cinema with two teenage boys who can't act to save their life, yet somehow manage to be in half the movie anyways. And finally, we have our young girl, who out-performs and out-acts EVERY adult in the film.

The fact that I can only come up with one good character and good actor in this whole movie is rather embarrassing, especially since this character is played by the then 11-year-old Thora Birch. Bless her heart, she is so adorable and amazing, but she's dropped into a movie where nothing around her works. Thus despite her efforts, everything around her in this movie is miserable and frustrating. The plot is awful. The character progression isn't there. Most of the acting is atrocious. And the main three witches are pain-induces. Yes, I said it. They're awful. I will give credit to Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Majimy as the Sanderson sisters in the fact that they look like they are having the time of their lives in this role. But all three of them are over-acting to the extreme and while some might find it funny and amusing, I find it extremely annoying. And while we're at it, Sarah Jessica Parker's character has extremely revealing cleavage for the entire movie. Normally I don't bother to point that out. But it's genuinely distracting. And this is a kid's movie, meaning her outfit is totally inappropriate. And speaking of inappropriate, this movie is extremely sexually promiscuous, loaded with dirty jokes not-so-subtly scattered throughout.

Yes, this is what I see every time I watch "Hocus Pocus." A disturbing introduction that I don't think is appropriate for kids. A cringe-worthy second act riddled with awful characters, horrible writing, terrible acting and lots of dirty humor because Disney was trying to be super edgy. I think this movie deserves a PG-13 rating, but somehow got away with PG because it's a family-targeted kids film from Disney. And the ending? Well, spoiler alert, our trio of kids, along with the 300-year-old boy turned into a cat and a zombie thing played by Doug Jones, stop the Sanderson sisters. But they do so mainly because our trio of witches is extremely gullible and keep falling for our main kid's tricks, which include spraying water that he says is deadly or shining the headlights of car into the window and saying it's daylight. As Deadpool would say, that's just bad writing. But are they dead for good? Because the book opens its eyes at the end right after it's revealed that no one bothered to free the two bullies. Sequel? I hope not, even though it's been rumored for a long time. How about we instead do a remake because this idea could work, but the execution is awful. Yet millions give it a pass because of holiday nostalgia. Well I'm not. I think this is a bad movie and I'm giving it a 4/10.