Hocus Pocus 2 (2022)

Ashia R:

Well helloooo, friends, it’s Family Movie Night, and we’re finally watching Hocus Pocus 2!

(we caught the first Hocus Pocus a little while back, if you want to check it out.)

We open on a CGI-enhanced version of Plymouth Plantation, recently renamed to be called ‘Plimoth Patuxet Museums’ or something like that to imply that they are bless racist now.

But based on our disappointing visit last year – it’s the same old white-centered celebration of colonization and early settlers.

If you never attended elementary school south of Boston, FYI this is the go-to field trip for every kid under 12, and I will admit that I *loved* it as a kid. Mostly because we enjoyed trying to get the reenactment actors to break character.

Which is to say – it’s a convenient filming location if you wanna get that early colonizer vibe, but unlike the first film, it’s filmed on the wrong side of the state (the first takes place in Salem, north of Boston) and probably lined the pockets of a museum setup that centers white colonists and treats Wampanoag educators as an tokenized afterthought.

Of course – the first movie did a great job erasing the existence of the Naumkeag – and are doing the same now that they’re filming down south in Wampanoag lands.

Anyhoo – back to the actual movie. We start with a prequel to the original HP – Winnie and her sisters are teenage settlers, bragging about being naughty, getting kicked out of the village for being so sassy. 

Fleeing to the woods, they come upon a grown-up witch who is giving off what I can only describe as Peloton-Neiman-Marcus-Goop vibes, the kind of older white woman who clearly has plenty of time, wealth, and access to botox to keep it unusually tight.

Or…OR she’s been eating children. Like I said, Peloton-Neiman-Marcus-Goop vibes.

Instead of eating them, she’s like “Game recognize game. Here’s a magic book, set the world on fire, little bitches.”

(Not verbatim, but you get the gist.) Our story is off to a strong but super-confusing start.

Fast forward to modern 2022, where we see the casting directors trying to course-correct for white-washing the first movie. 

Our intro scene follows a young Black teen (Becca) and her curvier Chicana friend (Izzy), completing the dynamic of ‘LOOK HOW NOT RACIST WE ARE’ casting tokens. 

It’s giving:white casting directors who know they’re gonna get dragged if they don’t mix up the casting palette.

I have high hopes but something tells me the characters of Becca and Izzy are gonna code super white and ignore any mention of what it means to grow up Black & Brown in 2023 Boston Suburbia.

Seriously – it’s a pattern!

White folks ‘diverse representations’ step 1: replace the white characters with thin, nondisabled Black girls with thin noses and white-approved hair (re: afro-puffs, loose edges, and the kind of style you’d approve on a curly-haired white woman).

Step 2: Ambiguously brown sidekick. Preferably with a quirky sense of style, and some extra meat on her so she’s *very clearly a sidekick* because fat girls can’t lead (/sarcasm). 

Step 3: Make sure to include at least one white girl if there’s a trio, because three BIPOC girls without whiteness to temper them seems tooooo threatening. Also: under no circumstances can there be TWO Black girls in a friendship group!

Step 4: White authors/screenwriters must maintain control of the script throughout production!

Our pretty Black Girl Main Character will portray as few cultural hallmarks of Blackness as possible, and probably has at least one white parent in casting to explain why the casting director prefers a light-skinned actress.

The rest of the casting follows like a parade, making a pre-Halloween Salem festival look way more racially diverse than it is in reality. Seriously like 99% of the extras are POC despite the fact that Salem in reality is at 70%+ white.

Glad to see under-represented extras gettin’ paid. But also whatever the make-pretend brownface of whitewashing is called, this is it. Salem these days, like most suburbs north of Boston, is still vastly overwhelmingly white and it’s not only due to lack of access for BIPOC, but also the white folks here are deeply, deeply racist and completely oblivious about it.

So this is a fantasy Salem, not the real one. That’s okay with me! But also I am uncomfortable because this movie is giving off “We don’t see color” vibes and I don’t see how they will fit in a nod to what it’s *actually like* to be a Black girl and her Chicana friend living in Salem getting non-stop macro- & micro-aggressions tossed at them like dropped ‘R’s at a Pats game (which is to say, a constant flood).

It’s Becca’s 16th birthday, and as a ‘20’s-era modern baby witch, she shops for crystals and slings around words like ‘patriarchy’ in casual conversation. Despite their third friend flaking on them, they’re doing some baby witch spells in the woods, as teenagers do. (This part feels realistic, young me feels seen but also gently mocked).

Becca and Izzy do some magic in the woods and accidentally summon the Sanderson Sisters (again.) I feel like I’ve missed something because…how?

The Sanderson sisters are back! And they have not aged since 1993, thanks to magic aging in the underworld (and modern makeup artists and digital retouching). They immediately launch into a mid-forest musical number because these three know what we are all here for.

The teens convince the Sanderson sisters they’re actually 40 years old (so the Sandersons won’t suck their precious youth) and explain their youthful appearance through modern serums and contouring. So the Sandersons decide to follow them to a Walgreens to check out the beauty aisle.

Let me interject here that the production maintained both the corny 90’s-era special effects and cheap gags about the mundanity of the modern age, and it was a good choice.

Now – what I WANT (in addition to Izzy and her family enjoying a lovely Día de los Muertos right after they work their way out of this) is for the teens to show the Sanderson sisters that there are other ways of following their goals beyond beauty. But I’m not going to begrudge older women for seeking the only power women of their generation were allowed to wield.

Alas, the mirrors at Walgreens are unkind (they really are!) and the Sandersopocn sisters are not content with the results of Nivea cream or the lack of young souls in the ingredient list. So they go hunting for children.

Oh! Oh! It turns out the teens were SABOTAGED by the guy who runs the magic shop, Gilbert, who intended to wake the Sanderson sisters because they were ‘misunderstood.’ Gilbert has been a fanboy of the Sisters since 1993 when he watched them terrorize salem and then turn to dust. He’s giving off affable Christian Nationalist / Conservative Mormon vibes. 

Like he’s super friendly and warm, says shit like “I’m a good person,” and also gives no shits about consent or using underaged teen girls for his own means and is genuinely a dangerous person to be around?

So one thing this movie has is – way less toxic doofy boys. Also way more Sanderson Sister screen-time, which is what we all wanted, and they’re delivering. I appreciate that. 

But also they took out all the zingers? Like the sisters delivered a couple solid lines early on, but since then it’s just exposition and lots of arm twirling. It’s kind of a huge waste of three actresses who know how to land a joke. But if the writers aren’t giving them anything to work with these geniuses can only do so much?

Can’t tell whether Gilbert has changed his mind on the sisters or not, but he’s doing their bidding anyway, digging up Billy, the ex-boyfriend. I think they cursed him or something. Either way it’s… uhhh..

CAN WE FOR A MOMENT address how uncomfortable we all are with this dynamic? Gilbert is a Black man, and Winnie and her sisters are white women. They’re commanding this man around, he’s not… 100% cool with it and he’s trying to quietly escape. And IS THIS MOVIE GONNA ADDRESS THE HOLY SHIT WHAT?! 

I bet you $100 dollars and also one US economy founded and still maintained through the enslavement and exploitation of Black folks that this movie is gonna maintain the ‘we don’t see color’ vibe and just… not address it at all.

It’s almost like a few rich white moderate liberal TERFS from the 90’s decided to make an ‘updated’ movie in the most performative and tokenized way possible and… oh. Right. Yeah this is exactly what this is.

Wow this is disappointing.

Moving on – Billy the zombie explains that he kissed Winnie once and the whole town has slut-shamed him for it ever since. Billy really got a bum deal from these women. The plot point is more of a ‘joke’ than addressing the fact that women can assault and slut-shame men, so I don’t think they meant to do some commentary on how men are impacted by slut-shaming culture, it’s more of an accident.

Oh but this is sweet. There is a little side story with Becca and Izzy and their friend Cassie, who keeps ditching them for her boyfriend. It’s…a completely irrelevant and kind of boring side-plot. But there’s this sweet scene where Becca and Izzy don’t want to hang out with their friend’s doofy boyfriend who calls them weird.

So the doofy football bro has a moment where he’s like “OMG that was me making fun of you? I thought I was making conversation!” And he seems genuinely shaken and points out how he has people to apologize to.

^ This is how we should respond when we realize we’ve hurt someone’s feelings!

That was really sweet. Even though YOU know and I KNOW that in real life Doofy Boyfriend was tossing racial microaggressions at them way beyond weird and WOW what a missed opportunity for a conversation that sounds much more rooted in real life.

So it’s cute. But also – the script writers are cowards and the casting directors want all the buzz and good feels of casting Black & brown actresses without actually depicting them realistically so….

::: deep resigned sigh :::

So now that the three friends are back together, they’re weaponizing the power of their Gen Z baby witch coven to fight the Colonizer/Boomer witches. Presumably the baby witches are gonna have healthy boundaries and not such the souls out of children, so I’m team #GenZBabyWitch.

There’s even a nice little message in here where ‘power is meant to be shared’ and Becca learns not to take on everything on her own just because she’s the only one in the baby coven who has natural witch abilities. Interdependence!

Unlike Winnie who treats her sisters like servant minions and makes a big deal out of being ‘the powerful one.’

Oh ho! The Sanderson sisters succeed! But there’s a catch. Oh I love this. I won’t spoil it for you. But it’s a really nice ending.

Oh no wait. I spoke to soon. The baby witches forgive Gilbert for sabotaging and almost killing them like it’s nothing. Becca even goes on to suggest that things turned out better than if he hadn’t…what?

My dudes, we need to talk about Gilbert being so obsessed with white women he’s sacrificing a young Black girl to be literally eaten by them. And how that’s… just completely glossed over and totally okay with Becca? This is a MESS.

Wow that was a ride. I’m glad they kept the low-budget special effects to retain the goofy tone of the original. I’m delighted that Max and that whole toxic masculinity bullshit from the first movie was replaced with a story about friendship dynamics in a baby witch coven.

I’m less enthused about the whitewashing and tokenism. And actually *pretty angry* about the entire GILBERT issue. But I’m not disappointed because my hopes never got too high up because:

1. Did you SEE the first movie? It was a problematic trash wreck!
2. It’s got Bette Midler, the poster diva for moderate liberal TERFitude who loves the L and the G but the rest of the rainbow mafia can go fuck themselves.
3. It’s got Sarah Jessica Parker who insisted throughout Sex in the City that the show ‘wasn’t racist or classist’ despite… well, just watch the show (no don’t, it’s trash.)
4. It’s filmed in New England, the home of post-racial fallacies fallbacks such as ‘But we had LESS slavery than in the South!’ and ‘We don’t see color’ and ‘Also we’re not racist because we voted for Obama 20 years ago’

But also PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME ANYTHING BAD ABOUT KATHY NAJIMY because my inner 9-year-old who was so excited to see someone plump and funny on screen just couldn’t take it.

I’m assuming (DO NOT CORRECT ME ON THIS) that Kathy is doing this as a nostalgia project. Like when you go to your 30th high school reunion full of your old racist friends and share a pizza with them for old time’s sake and tell stories of your childhood hijinks together – even though you don’t condone their bullshit and would never hang out with them more than once every three decades.