The Salem witches returned in an all-new spooktacular adventure Hocus Pocus 2, the sequel to the hit 1993 classic family Halloween film, Hocus Pocus.
The movie, clocking in around an hour and forty minutes, follows a teenage girl named Becca, played by Whitney Peak, trying to stop the Salem witches from wreaking havoc over Salem once again.
When I first heard about this film, I was ecstatic and couldn’t wait for its release, but after watching it, I have mixed opinions.
Let’s start with the positives. The movie has a fantastic score. The music is phenomenal, with many new songs and covers performed by the Salem Witches. The acting is everything you’d expect from a Disney film. The movie is sometimes a little corny but makes up for it with subtle references to the first film. However, that’s where the good just about ends.
The movie needs to learn the direction it is trying to go in. The movie also needs to work on knowing the audience. The main characters are bland and nowhere near as iconic as the original cast. This film is meant for little kids, but it is also meant to be a love letter to the original film’s fans, which it is definitely not.
Like many movies, the writers try to appear cool to the younger audience by using slang and pop culture, which they seem to know little about. I wish they would write the story and use the lingo they know or at least a nice mix. This movie does not have that balance. It is embarrassing the way they portrayed everything.
The main gripe with the movie is the characters. I’m not going to spoil anything; however, I wish the reveal about the main character wasn’t used as a cheap excuse to finish the plot. It ruined the entire film for me—making it another one of those movies where the main chara

cter is this underdog that is supposed to win. What happened to just Two teenagers and a kid outsmarting witches? I’ll tell you that I don’t know because they don’t appear in this film which is just a bug F U to the fans.
The supporting cast is relatively weak. They serve little to no purpose until the final scene of the movie. Disney could have cut them and the film would be the same. The only parts of this movie I genuinely enjoyed were seeing one particular character and the music. Everything else feels like a cash grab. Mainly because this movie was sponsored and featured Walgreens many times, but also because the magic in Disney and most other companies are gone. All they want is money.
I give it two out of three pumpkins for the boring premise, unlikeable characters and forgetting why we loved the original and its impact on generations.