At first, it feels like there’s hope for the sequel everyone gave up on coming to fruition long ago. During the almost twelve and a half minutes of backstory the viewer gets about the Sanderson sisters as mischief-making youths, we’re almost led to believe that the latest installment is going to give a fresh perspective on how unfairly maligned the sisters actually were as a result of the time period they were saddled with. That they were treated like witches figuratively and literally merely because they were women who expressed themselves in an epoch when that was forbidden (to a far greater and more punishable extent than it is now). After all, such a “slant” would be in keeping with the present climate’s obsession with political posturing. And what with Sarah Jessica Parker determined to both build upon and rewrite certain key moments of her career, as And Just Like That… has indicated, Hocus Pocus seemed like the next “logical” step for her on a personal level as well (even if, at her age, she can no longer be deemed the “pretty one”).
As is, one supposes, commencing the sequel in 1653, back when Winifred (Taylor Paige) was first accused of something like “witchery” by refusing to marry a local Salem boy named John Pritchett (Thomas Fitzgerald). Running back to the house to complain to her sisters that Reverend Traske (Tony Hale) has tried to arrange the nuptials in the absence of their own patriarch, she informs them, “I’ve been told I’ve been getting…old.” This being her sixteenth birthday—the age when witches are supposed to get their powers (as Sabrina, the Teenage Witch corroborates). But simply saying “hell no” to the proposal can’t get Winifred out of it, with the Reverend-led townspeople soon beating down their door and banishing the Sanderson sisters into the Forbidden Wood, where they encounter a Mother Witch (Hannah Waddingham) initially determined to eat them before she realizes, “You’re not like other children I’ve eat—met.”
She suddenly comprehends of their retreat into the woods, “They feared thou wouldst corrupt them.” And that can only mean, of course, that they were born to be witches. It is then that “Book” is passed down to them, and they seek revenge on the Reverend by setting the village ablaze with their magic. A cut to present day finds us focused on the new “subplot stars” of the outfit, Becca (Whitney Peak), Izzy (Belissa Escobedo) and Cassie (Lilia Buckingham). It is the latter of the friend group trio who has pulled something of an Angela Chase (Claire Danes) by breaking with her old friends in favor of a new group. Specifically, the more popular one, mostly thanks to dating the requisite meathead of Salem High School, Mike (Froy Gutierrez, of Cruel Summer repute). This being just one of many tired tropes wielded by screenwriter Jen D’Angelo (whose most major writing credits thus far have been for some episodes of Workaholics).
Not to mention having the same person (Hale) play a “descendant” of the Reverend. In this century, the Reverend’s power over Salem has transferred to the position of mayor thanks to his kin, Jefry Traske. Who also happens to be Cassie’s conservative, “gently” oppressive father. The type who would never want her to throw a party. And yet, with her “new personality” molded on peer pressure, her boyfriend talks her into having one while Traske is away at the Halloween carnival, waiting in line to consume his beloved caramel apple.
Becca and Izzy, meanwhile, have been tricked into lighting the black flame candle thanks to Gilbert (Senior Year’s Sam Richardson), the magic-dabbling shopkeeper at the Sanderson house-turned-occult store. Adding to yet another “grasping at straws” plot point, Gilbert reveals to the sisters that he’s been trying to resurrect them ever since he saw them burst into dust that night he was bullied (meaning his candy was nabbed) on Halloween 1993, chasing after them into the cemetery. Obviously, Gilbert has to be gay to be this obsessed with three “bad witches”—but that goes without saying as far as Disney is concerned. Despite all his hard work to find some virgins in this day and age (though, at the same time, Gen Z doesn’t really fuck), Gilbert soon starts to regret what he’s done as the sisters turn them into their own personal errand boy with an hourglass goading him to complete his ingredient-finding tasks so that they can finally recite the spell they once promised they never would: Magicae Maxima.
As the spell that’s meant to imbue its caster with unlimited power, Mother Witch warned Winnie never to use it. Nonetheless, she feels three hundred years is long enough to have rendered that promise null. Unconcerned with reading the warning as Book continues to try to shut itself so she can’t do the spell, Winnie tells Gilbert what they need to proceed. This after locking Becca and Izzy in the basement with a spell that makes it impossible to find a way out. Even with a phone call (to account for the evolution of technology in 2022 entailing that people have their phones on them all the time).
Clearly, we’re meant, thanks to all this heavy-handedness (including the frequently arbitrary callbacks to Binx with a black cat named Cobweb), to understand that the casting of this spell is going to cause some major trouble. But not before another overwrought form of “winkingness” at the original is employed by D’Angelo vis-à-vis how the sisters just love to sing. Which they annoyingly do when they first appear in the woods to Becca and Izzy, gleefully singing some tripe about, “We’re back.” No shit. And while this is exactly what many a millennial thought they wanted, some pieces of pop culture are better left banished. The memory untarnished by feeble attempts at appealing to nostalgia through a “modern” lens.
Case in point, as though to achieve what they never would have been able to among the narrow minds of 1993, Disney allows for the movie to include a “drag show” a.k.a. costume competition impersonating the Sanderson sisters at the Halloween carnival, complete with cameos by Drag Racers Ginger Minj, Kornbread Jeté, and Kahmora Hall (for something like a brief Halloween-ified version of The Bitch Who Stole Christmas). To further dismay discerning audiences, the sisters opt to tritely sing Blondie’s “One Way or Another” as a means to enchant the townspeople into leading them to the Reverend’s kin (for they need a drop of their enemy’s blood for the spell). Needless to say, it’s no “I Put A Spell On You” performance.
Throughout all the schmaltz and lazy reliance on the original’s cachet with audiences (enter Billy Butcherson [Doug Jones]), director Anne Fletcher (known for rom-coms like 27 Dresses and The Proposal) does the best she can with the script, trying to work with the “comedy” of vexingly stupid rather than “hilarious” gags. Like the sisters believing it’s magic that causes a pair of automatic doors to open. And yes, it’s unclear why Walgreens needs to play such a pivotal role in the movie (apart from financial incentives and showing that you can get Swiffers and Roombas there [more product placement, naturally]), or why any of the sisters act as though automatic sliding doors didn’t also exist in 1993.
Indeed, one of the many missed opportunities is playing up the sisters’ reactions to twenty-first century accoutrements, with nothing more than an Alexa encounter and, prior to that, a selfie demand as the trio is approached by some worshipful emulators dressed in the same costumers (yet another way to reveal that, in the present, being an “evil” woman is far chicer than it used to be). This lack being in addition to further developing the tension that briefly brews between Sarah and Winnie when the former discovers she has some “fire power” of her own while they start to cast the spell in the Forbidden Wood during the third act.
Ultimately positioned as a “sisterly bond” movie, a greater sense of adversarial drama among the sisters before coming together again in unity would have better suited the story structure. Then again, there was to be no saving it anyway, with the only truly “moving” moment being when Book sheds a single tear over the supposed demise of the trio yet again. However, if nothing else, as least the use of special effects in this edition of the story are markedly more advanced than they could have been in the early 90s.
Despite the overt thud Hocus Pocus 2 has landed with, there’s all these “forgivenesses” for the sequel’s badness as a result of how beloved the first one is, therefore people seeing what they want to see about the second one. How “wonderfully meta” it is, with moments like yet another person wearing Madonna’s cone bra costume (even though today’s ilk truly don’t comprehend what Madonna meant in the early 90s) or Mary peering through the window to actually see someone watching the Garry/Penny Marshall scene from the original Hocus Pocus (much too meta, to be sure), the movie that will remain the yearly staple for generics far above and beyond its sequel.
Reviews that are deliberately neither glowing (“Don’t Question the Magic of Hocus Pocus”) nor fully maligning (“Hocus Pocus 2: Still Spelling Trouble”) only further prove that no one wants to speak the truth about this glaring disappointment. One that can best be summed up solely in one seasonally-appropriate word: boo. Unfortunately, the tag at the end of the credits would seem to indicate that Disney, Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy and SJP would all like to leave the cottage door open to yet another installment, beating a dead witch whenever possible.
