Halloweentown II: Kalabar’s Revenge is a Perfect Movie for this Halloween Season
Halloweentown 1 and 2 are two Disney Channel Movies actually worth rewatching.
A lot of my fellow millennials have a big nostalgic spot in their hearts for the Halloweentown franchise. They’re comfy, fairy tale type movies themed to all things spooky. It fits excellently in the still surprisingly small catalog of movies that fit the Halloween aesthetic without being a horror movie. It’s pretty much limited to the Halloweentown films, Coraline, The Addams Family, and some Tim Burton movies.
Seeing these films as an adult is a completely different experience than watching it as a kid. You notice a lot of the technical cheapness of the movies. Halloweentown, especially the first, looks like it’s on a shoestring budget (and it’s because it is). The residents of Halloweentown and the monsters look like they were dressed in masks they got at the dollar store, and the town itself looks like any generic Everytown, USA rather than something spooky.
While that sounds like it could be bad, it actually gives the movie a certain charm. It makes the magic come across as that much more real because all the actors do such a good job at selling it. Especially Debbie Reynolds.
The casting of Debbie Reynolds as a magical grandma is a stroke of genius. She taps into her past experience in more Golden Age Hollywood styled musicals like Singin’ in the Rain to give the aura of classic magic. She is equally a Fairy Godmother as she is a classic witch. And she appears to be having so much fun in the role.
But that’s all in relation to the first movie. So where does that leave the second film?
Halloweentown II is probably my favorite out of the franchise. It’s more cinematic than any of the other films. It’s shot like it’s a horror movie when Marnie, the lead character, visits the destroyed Halloweentown that the son of the first film’s villain, Kalabar, literally drained the color and life out of. The son goes by Kal and has succeeded where his father didn’t.
On top of that, Marnie is constantly being watched by Kal. Like literally. His face is shown in the walls around her. And while it’s a cheap effect, it works extremely well. It looks so intimating and creepy and visually shows just how slimy Kal is a villain. He looks like a creep.
Kal brings the stakes of Halloweentown from the more Fairy Tale villain from the first film to someone that feels much more like a real-world villain. He’s basically an incel who realized he had magic. It’s a super-effective style of villain to show that even the characters of the film are starting to grow up and having to deal with more adult issues.
Kal also gracefully combines the issues from the character's normal lives and the lives in Halloweentown. In the first film, the normal lives antagonist was Marnie’s mother, who didn’t want them to be in Halloweentown. The magical antagonist was the warlock Kalabar who wanted to ruin Halloweentown.
In the sequel, now that the mother is much more understanding of her children, they have Kal as the unifying antagonist who wants to turns humans into monsters. And unlike the first movie where most of the monster designs were hampered by a lacking budget, in this one, they were able to actually look scary. I mean, they’re not horrifying but they are perfectly scary for a kids movie, and it scared the crap out of me when I was a kid.
It’s super cool to see a movie about Halloween lean a bit more into the horror even though it’s a kid's movie.
This light horror aspect makes for the amazing tone that is still perfectly suitable for kids if you’re a parent and want to get your kids into horror. It’s a solid introduction to the genre without it being nightmare-inducing. And if you don’t have kids but grew up on these films, or at least have nostalgia for this specific era of TV movies, it’s a completely cozy nostalgic rewatch.
I have fond memories of my older sister and cousins introducing these movies to me when I was young. But unlike the other Disney Channel Original Movies (DCOMs for short) this one still holds up as an adult.
Whenever I got curious and revisited any Disney Channel media, most of them were just cringe-inducing. It made me question why I even liked any of this stuff as a kid because it was all painfully unfunny and forced. But the first two Halloweentown movies didn’t have that effect on me.
They’re charming films, unlike other DCOMs the writing doesn’t talk down to its audience. It’s written like a regular movie instead of just a straight to TV movie for little kids like the other DCOMs. They’re as witty and clever as Debbie Reynolds. This classic vibe really carries a lot of the heavy lifting of the movie and just makes it that much more charming.
I found myself rewatching this movie recently with my cousin. We were trying to find something just kinda light and fun to watch and this one was my suggestion. Afterward, she picked Oh, Hello! for us to watch, which has nothing to do with this article but it made for a very interesting and hilarious double feature.
Anyway, rewatching this film gave us this very cozy feeling of childhood. It reminded us of parts of our lives that didn’t feel overwhelming or depressing.
It put us in such a delightful mood that we reminisced during the film about the other media we were obsessed with when we were about 6 years old and how silly it is to us now. Things that were the coolest things in the world to us that are now hilarious. We talked about how Debbie Reynold’s grandmother's character reminded us of family members who have tragically passed since the last time we saw these movies.
And, of course, we talked about which characters from these DCOMs we had crushes on back in the day. It was a fun watch. I had a crush on the redhead goblin man from this movie and I’m not afraid to admit it.
And that is probably the ideal setting for watching this film, and how I recommend you do so. Grab a family member or an old friend. Turn on this movie. Make some cookies or bring some snacks and candy. Hell, grab some alcohol if you’re into that kinda thing. Preferably some hard cider or apple ale to continue with the Fall vibes.
It’s a perfect movie to relax and unwind with. And it’s a perfect film to watch this Halloween, especially if you need a distraction from the actual horror show that is 2020.
Kevin Tash is a writer who talks a lot about movies most people don’t remember or care about. You can find him on Instagram @KevinExistsHere making food and screaming about cartoons.
