Blame the mushrooming dominance of the Halloween concept and a strange dearth of accompanying tween horror, blame the glory of Bette Midler at full tilt, blame a black cat crossing your path. However you explain it, the original Hocus Pocus became a cult favourite. 29 years later, a belated sequel recreates exactly the same beats in ways that will delight fans but seem unlikely to win over anyone else.
Things look promising in an opening prologue when Hannah Waddingham turns up as a sort of grand high witch, in flawless eye makeup and entirely in the campy spirit of the thing. She explains the rules of magic to the young Sanderson sisters. Alas, she disappears in a puff of smoke and after that, it’s business as usual. In the present day, wannabe witch Becca (Whitney Peak) is celebrating her 16th birthday with her friend Izzy (Belissa Escobedo) when she lights the wrong candle and resurrects the Sandersons: Winifred (Bette Midler), Mary (Kathy Najimy) and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker). The plucky youngsters must find a way to stop the sisters taking power as the witches struggle, again, to process this new world.
Director Anne Fletcher (The Proposal) at least keeps things moving along, but it could and should be both funnier and scarier. That’s no fault of the supporting cast: Sam Richardson, as a magic shop with expert knowledge, brings an understated edge of sarkiness, and Tony Hale is fun as the town’s mayor. Froy Gutierrez, as Cassie’s well-meaning but witness jock boyfriend, is a scene stealer when given the chance – but the film mostly splits its time between the high camp of the three sisters and the high stakes adventure for the young heroes, and that’s precisely what we’ve seen before. There’s nothing fresh here.
What’s more, between its prologue and post-credit sting, this manages to suffer from both prequelitis and sequelitis: introducing an unnecessary semi-sympathetic backstory to the Sandersons and hinting that the ending is really nothing of the sort. Both are increasingly tired tactics: not everything needs to be a franchise, and half the joy of the Sandersons is their unrepentant awfulness. They eat children! Do we really care that someone was once mean to them as teenagers? Let pantomime villains be pantomime villains. Still, fans will enjoy all the campy threats and over the top poses. Certainly Midler, Najimy and Parker are having an infectiously good time, while Peak and Escobedo make for likeable heroines. But this relies too heavily on nostalgia to really land in its own right.
