Review: ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ lets the witches run amok, amok, amok along with its plot

I smell… a sequel that should have never made it past the gates of Walt Disney Studios.

Yes, yes, Hocus Pocus 2 is here, and the Sanderson sisters are back to exact revenge on Salem. But while the witches do manage to put a spell on us, their bewitching skills have taken a serious hit courtesy of a plot that doesn’t even try to find its footing.

Mired in a storyline that waters down what made the original flick a Halloween classic, Hocus Pocus 2 takes place in current day Salem, almost three decades after we last visited the stereotypically-witchy city. Once again, we have a bunch of teenagers — this time three adolescent girls, Becca (Whitney Peak), Izzy (Belissa Escobedo), and Cassie (Lilia Buckingham) — and the need for a virgin to light the Black Flame Candle still persists, though thankfully, the sequel has ditched the original’s obsession with virginity, and refrains from making it a running gag. 

We also get to meet the Sanderson sisters as children before they became the famous witches. But this sneak peek into their history does little to help the overarching plot of the film — apart from building the foundation for another sequel, it only serves to take away from the glory of the witches. But more on that later. Acting wonders Hannah Waddingham and Tony Hale are thrown into the mix and while they do shine whenever they grace the screen, their presence does little to uplift the unimaginative plot. 

So, back to the teen girl trio, or rather, Becca and Izzy, since we are still trying to figure out what even remotely sensible reason Disney had for including the third teen, Cassie, and her dumb jock boyfriend. Those well-versed in the (admittedly thin) Hocus Pocus lore already know how things play out, plot device-wise — Becca and Izzy end up accidentally lighting the Black Flame Candle, and thereby resurrect Winifred (Bette Midler), Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker), and Mary (Kathy Najimy) from the dead. 

After celebrating their rebirth, the witches get down to business, which is to overrun Salem with their thirst for revenge. However, the Sandersons face unforeseen obstacles, namely technology — a rather obedient flying Roomba notwithstanding — and the particularities of the teenagers of today, and these cannot be solved by sticking to their old ways. 

These problems aren’t solved by reenacting bits and pieces from the original, either, but apparently, who cares! The writers certainly didn’t. 

While we agree that Hocus Pocus 2 deserves a fair chance, and should not be asked to meet the merits of the first film, this sequel isn’t just a continuation of the original story, but relies so heavily on invoking its nostalgia that comparison becomes unavoidable. 

Whether it is Winifred and her sisters bewitching a crowd, the unnecessary presence of a black cat, or dialogue either dimmed by blandness or fueled by a forced repackaging of pieces from the original, Hocus Pocus 2 falls on its face when it comes to originality. But even setting aside the attempts to rekindle the first film’s magic by re-using its bag of tricks, the sequel’s storytelling is sorely lacking.

In 1993, the sisters turned the children’s potential rescuers, including Dani and Max’s parents, into puppets doomed to dance until they died. This left the children without any source of rescue and depicted the witches as the delightfully-deranged villains they are. The scene is repeated here, and while we are ready to stop questioning how on Earth Winifred knows a Blondie song, what we can’t gulp down is how utterly anticlimatic the scene is. Sure, there are a lot more people getting bewitched this time, and as they look for the witches’ target, they run a zombified flash mob of sorts through the streets of Salem. But the second the townsfolk touch their mark, they revert back to normal. 

Even the Toy Story films have higher stakes.  

The primary grievance audiences had with the first Hocus Pocus was that the various plotlines took us away from the Sanderson sisters’ enticing presence. HP2’s filmmakers seem to have forgotten why viewers, even those who don’t fall into the film’s target demographic, have been eager for this sequel in the first place; to spend more time with the witches themselves. The rest of the movie doesn’t even manage to cinch the second position — without a doubt, the cackling madness of Winifred, Sarah, and Mary Sanderson is the bewitching magic spell both films should have focused on. 

Hocus Pocus 2 works best when its three leading ladies take up the screen. Midler, Parker, and Najimy’s delightfully unhinged campiness, musical performances, and overall eccentric vibes manage to shine even amidst a plot that fails to engage. Doug Jones reprising his role as the good zombie, Billy Butcherson, is another significant addition to the film. But between Becca’s teenage woes, her friendship drama, and the disappointingly unimaginative development of her wafer-thin story that feels forced to start with, there isn’t much the sisters, or our beloved zombie, can do to save the day. 

What further bogs down the plot is the disappointing reboot of the Sandersons’ enjoyable wickedness; they’re now presented as merely misunderstood softies who only needed a kind act to set them on the straight path. Where did those witches go who took unapologetic delight in power-hungry villainy? This is a cop-out on the order of Voldemort giving up his Horcruxes just because Harry Potter gave him a hug, or the Dark Lord Sauron destroying the rings of power because Gandalf scratched his nose.

Then again, Hocus Pocus 2 is primarily geared towards two relatively stickler-free audiences; those 12 and under, who don’t give two hoots about how out-of-place the sappy angle feels, or chafe at the grating, ever-present layer of nostalgia, and those who made the original a cult classic despite the many, many ways it has aged poorly. So while we’ll probably daydream of tearing a literal page out of Winifred’s Book and casting a spell on Disney to prevent them from resuscitating the Sanderson sisters in vain, a future in which the studio weaves together another listless sequel feels inevitable. 

Hocus Pocus 2 is streaming on Disney Plus.