The premise from Bradford Thomason & Brett Whitcomb's The Spirit of Halloweentown is what dragged me in. And these two figures, known for their doc, Jasper Mall, about a dying mall have some recognition or at least recognition from podcasters I listen too. What if a town based its identity partially on a Disney Channel movie? Filmed in St. Helens, Oregon in the 90's, Halloweentown is known to many as campy made-for-TV-movie, an annual tradition probably shown to kids who have their own kids now. Every Halloween month the town transforms back into looking like it did when the movie was filmed there.
What started as a small little pumpkin lighting has become a full on festival lasting multiple weekends.
So, the premise, is great. What's it like to live there and deal with your town turning all kinds of super into Halloween? We meet an odd bunch of locals who all have something riding with it. And, I'd tell you their names if the directors put them in the documentary. Also, we ditch them in such an order that I'm not sure why they were put in or whose story was meant to be told.
So, first problem, I'm not sure who anyone is, their was no title or name given to them on screen. These characters are memorable, but you still need those little words clarifying their names and what they do. If their name is spoken or said, it goes by too fast to remember.
Second problem, we ditch a lot of them for unequal amounts of time, one man who runs or owns haunted houses throughout the town is dropped by the end. I'm not sure he's name or what is he's actual profession. We have a woman who is against the town having Halloween whose very Christian, but she's barely in the film. Thought she was going to be an antagonist, but not really. The only real conflict is an amazing problem on Yelp fit for a sitcom. It's like Office, Park & Rec level petty.
The funniest bit is how the new owner of a local restaurant/bar gets angry over someone who privately emailed him that a burger was under cooked. He emails the customer back very rudely. This becomes town news. This story goes on for so long and it's so dumb, but might have been my favorite part of a movie about the people who live in this town. I'm not giving it justice here, the movie should have chosen to maybe just focus on that at a certain point.
Also, this new owner is gay and brings a drag show to the small town, to which the movie posits no one has a problem with. The only problem, he acted slightly rude to a customer.
There's a former cheerleader who has a squad of high schoolers doing a zombie performance who had daddy issues and a Queen of Halloweentown who host contests and a ghost hunter team, but all of them fall short in having a conflict or fascinating story to the doc crew. Or better yet, the doc crew making fascinating.
It's weird there's no real meet-up of the main characters, even if it were to be spurred by the doc directors in the end as they all live in a small town and that might of be a fun ending. Like, where's everyone on Halloween Night or during the main event.
It's hard to pull what the two directors wanted a viewer to get out of this if anything and makes it seem unfinished.
There's a scene where the "ghost hunters" go to the hotel above the bar/restaurant, but the owner who we've met before in the doc doesn't interact with them at all?
One of the ghost hunters is married or a friend to the Queen of Halloweentown hostess, possibly? I'm just unsure, because the movie is bad at informing you of people's names and relations.
I could only recommend if the movie actually chose one person to follow and did actually try to tie the others to that person in some way.
Great premise, bad for Halloween viewing or even accompanying after watching the original movie. More on the broomstick factory though, please.
