One of the things that seems to happen each year is I stumble upon a time when necessity meets an obstacle. I’ve selected my total catalog based on a thorough scroll through all the streaming services I currently subscribe to. I went title by title to build up a backlog so when it came time to start picking out flicks to watch for Halloween I was prepped. I’ll take responsibility that I probably should have already had a few movies on the side for the eventuality that I might have to entertain the spooky cinema of the underaged crowd. Thankfully, my boys are old enough now that I don’t have to be relegated to the squeaky cleanest of titles. However, I probably would have easily settled for a Winnie the Pooh animated classic over this steaming pile of crap.
First thing, I am going to openly acknowledge that this movie truly isn’t made for me. At best, I’m at least one standard deviation away from the intended audience, but potentially further out even. So I won’t be the kind of guy that I rail against most of the time. What I will say, though, is that even for my kids, 11 and 13, this movie did not hit well. So I’m not sure that even within the target demographic that this movie really does much in the way of really finding any kind of audience. It’s not goofy enough to be that Disney Channel kind of kids programming that’s so over the top that 8 year old’s crack up at the wacky antics. But it’s also not serious enough to really hit that tween audience as a real kind of anything. It’s not funny. It’s not dramatic. It’s just kind of watching three kids you aren’t ever going to like. There’s legitimately nothing about any of the characters that ever finds it’s way close to being likable. I never got past calling the main kid a wiener to ever feel a measure of compulsion to learn his name. I know it. I know all their names in this one. But I’m not using any of them in protest. It’s wiener kid and his crappy friends.
This is a movie I want to make people sit through when they come out of an MCU movie and call it the worst thing they’ve ever watched. I get it if you didn’t like the newest installment of this franchise or that reboot. I understand we’ve been inundated with so many films that we’ve blurred that line between films and “content” that it’s hard to differentiate between them anymore. It’s unfortunate but I kind of see that as the goal of the streaming platforms. If nothing theatrical “feels” like it warrants a trip to the theater anymore, then why go? Just stay home and watch “Spirit Halloween”. Or punch yourself in the face until you don’t remember numbers.
To me, the path to make this movie a lot more enjoyable would be if they had leaned way more into the meme of Spirit Halloween than simply setting the terrible movie in one. That’s honestly all the connection this movie has to “source material” of any kind. Three kids find a Spirit Halloween out in the middle of nowhere and sneak in to stay there overnight on Halloween. I think if you apply a similar formula for how Goosebumps came to life in the Jack Black spooky comedy from a few years back would be a much better recipe for success. The back story doesn’t make any sense. Honestly none of the movie makes any sense. I don’t even really know why I’m even attempting to figure out how to take the movie and make it better. It’s not going to be better. It sucks and that’s just it.
The angriest I got at this movie was when the ghost of Christopher Lloyd’s evil land baron from the beginning of the movie is revived because of Halloween rules or some garbage like that and he begins to possess Spirit Halloween decorations. He decides to take over an oversized teddy bear and chase the kids into a back office room. They appear to be trapped in there as the specter laden plush persists in breaking into said office. In an attempt to come up with a “plan”, one of the little turd kids posits that maybe they should look for blueprints. Blueprints. An adult human person wrote that down on a piece of paper as part of the script for this movie. Other adult human persons read that and said yes, that’s a fantastic idea. Let us make the children look for blueprints. First, who has the blueprints for their big box store rolled up in a milk crate in the office at the back of the store? Ever? That’s not a thing. I think if you asked me, a fully grown adult person of reasonable competency, where to get blueprints for anything I’d have to google it because I’m not sure I know what governing body owns the rights or responsibility of storing those. I certainly don’t know what store manager would keep the blueprints for their store rolled up in a stack of other tubes in a crate in the office. That’s really just never going to be a thing. But you know what happens? They’re rolled up in a tube in a crate in the office. One kid looks behind a paper pinned to a bulletin board for them. Too bad they didn’t find that crate. But they get the blueprints out and proceed to interpret them and find a secret trap door in the floor covered up by a rug. Look, I know this is a kids movie. I get what they’re going for here. But I feel like the trap door should have lead to quicksand that would have magically transported the kids to the Bermuda Triangle. I almost had to leave the room when this blueprints business happened. That’s how bad it was for me.
Ultimately, don’t watch this movie. The worst thing that will happen is that you’ll find out one of your kids accidentally liked it and then you have to know that for the rest of your life. Just think of that level of disappointment coursing through your veins for the rest of your life. That’s devastating. At best, you turn it on right before you start a colonoscopy and they knock you out and you don’t have to watch it. Why this movie would be playing in a room right before you have an invasive gastrointestinal procedure is beyond me. But you’ll miss a good portion of the movie because of the anesthesia and that’s probably the best way to actually sit through this garbage. The next time I hear someone on social media crap all over an MCU movie or some other big budget Hollywood flick that they simply didn’t care for, I’m going to invite them to watch “Spirit Halloween” and let me know if Antman: Quantummania is still the worst movie they’ve ever seen. Something tells me that might not be the tune they sing anymore.
So where to rank this movie. I don’t know. I’ll give it a 2. I can’t give it a 0. There are technically much worse movies than even this one. They do exist. But you get quite a bit lower budget and the acting is lesser by adults. So there is actually an ability for a movie to be less enjoyable than this weird 90 minute commercial for a store that pops up for 2 months out of the year. But not much. It’s not an easy feat to make something worse than this movie. So just don’t even watch this movie. I’m angry at myself for even letting you know it exists because I should have just kept quiet and pretended like I watched something else. If I told you I watched Children of the Corn 4, you’d never know if I was telling the truth. And you’re certainly not going to go watch it on your own to find out if anything I said about it was accurate. I could have just made up a review of a movie and called it a day but I did you the incredible disservice of bringing this movie to your front door, just to tell you not to let your children near it. This movie is the film equivalent of a razorblade in your snickers. It should have never happened and hopefully overtime it will just be anecdotal that it even existed. That’s my hope. I’m sure I’ll end up watching another kid friendly scary movie over the course of this month. I’m just hoping that it’s far better than this advertisement from hell. After this nightmare, I will most definitely catch you on the flip side.
