It’s officially the spooky season, you guys! This means you’ve got full permission to binge-watch every movie that’s even remotely Halloween-related. Unless you’re one of those people who thinks it’s cool to hate on Halloween, of course. In which case, you’ll just watch something normal and sulk, I guess.
Everyone else, however, can go ahead and revisit their all-time favourite supernatural flicks. For me, that is Hocus Pocus.
The ‘90s film is set in Salem, Massachusetts and focuses on the resurrection of nasty (but also weirdly relatable) witches – the Sanderson sisters – who suck the life out of children to stay young and immortal. Because what else would a group of old single witches want to do, right?
Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
It stars Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker; it features a Tony-worthy performance of ‘I Put A Spell On You’ (sung by Midler, obv) and it’s loaded with slapstick comedy that works surprisingly well for a film with a fairly dark premise.
It is one of my all-time-favourite films. But it has a huge problem. The plot doesn’t make total sense.
At the very beginning of the movie, we see Sarah Sanderson (Parker) leading a little girl over to the witches’ hut. We quickly find out Sarah has a little gift where she can hypnotise kids with a song and lead them to their deaths.
Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
When the three witches are resurrected 300 years later, they have 24 hours to suck the life force out of a child if they want to live forever. They go on to spend a good chunk of their limited time trying to get their hands on a kid.
Sarah waits until way too late in the night to go all Pied Piper on the kids. Why on Earth wouldn’t she have just sung her song right away?
Sure, they’re not the brightest, these witches, but it seems unlikely they’d just forget they have that asset available to them until the very last minute.