What’s Haily watching? Hocus Pocus (revisit)

When I close my eyes and think back to Halloween in the early 2010s, a key memory stands out. Watching Hocus Pocus, I cuddled up on the couch while shoveling handfuls of candy corn into my mouth.

Hocus Pocus will always hold a special place in my heart as one of my favorite Halloween movies. This week, I thought it would be fun to compare how I interpreted Hocus Pocus when I was younger vs how I view it now.

A brief introduction: Hocus Pocus is a classic, family-friendly Halloween movie released in 1993. The story follows the ancient myth of the Sanderson sisters, three witches who ruled over Salem, Massachusetts. The people of Salem executed them brutally; however, the Sanderson sisters swore that one day, they would return. Then, 300 years later, they did precisely that. Brought back by a virgin lighting the black flame

candle on Halloween night, Winifred, Sarah, and Mary set out on a journey to suck the souls of all the children in town to remain youthful forever. Our protagonists, Max, Dani, and Allison, must battle the witches to send them back to hell, where they came from.

Then:

As I stated, when I was a child, I would rewatch Hocus Pocus until my parents went mad. While I didn’t think about anything very intellectually when I was a kid, I can say I loved the wittiness of the children and the clumsiness of the witches. The altercations between the children and the witches provided immaculate entertainment on Halloween night for a young girl like me.

The first time I watched Hocus Pocus, I thought that I had never seen a more perfect film. Nothing could beat Hocus Pocus except *maybe* A Christmas Story. Besides that, Hocus Pocus took the number one spot for years to come.

Another reason I loved Hocus Pocus as a child was the sensational, miraculous cat, Binx. I have always been, and always will be, a cat person, making it easy to understand why my favorite character is a cat. But Binx wasn’t any ordinary cat; he was actually a boy. Cursed by the Sanderson sisters, Thackery Binx was doomed to be an immortal cat, wandering the world endlessly. He helped the children in their journey to defeat the Sanderson sisters and grew especially close to Dani, helping save her in her time of need. A talking immortal cat that helps kids fight evil witches, what more can you ask for?

Little Hailey would, without a doubt, rank Hocus Pocus a 10/10.

Now:

Now that I’m a bit older and have a more abstract view of the world, I can’t say I’d agree with little Hailey so much anymore. While I loved rewatching this movie, I noticed a few plot holes I hadn’t considered before.

The first plot hole concerns Binx, the talking cat. I still loved Binx’s character; however, I found a plot hole, particularly in relation to the talking part. At the beginning of the movie, we see the Sanderson sisters being executed in Salem in 1693.

In the same scene, poor Thackery Binx has already been transformed into a cat by the witches. In an attempt to tell his father who he is, he rubs up against his leg. However, his father dismisses him as just a cat —nothing more to worry about. Fast forward 300 years, and when Binx meets the kids, he can suddenly speak! Could he not have spoken before and developed the ability to communicate throughout his 300 years? Even if this were so, it still wouldn’t make sense because before he was a cat, he was a boy who could talk. I understand the reason: if Binx could speak to his father, his storyline would end quickly.

However, instead of leaving this plot hole in the final draft of the film, I wish script writers would have given Binx an extra storyline. For example, it would have been exciting if Binx could only talk to the person who lit the black flame candle as a part of his curse. Or he could only talk to children. An extra storyline like this would have been an easy fix to a seemingly deep plot hole. Besides Binx’s strange ability to speak, the only other plot holes I noticed were minor and did not affect the integrity of the movie all too much.

The plot holes may have brought Hocus Pocus’s rating down a bit, but the biggest change in the score is due to Dani. Now, this may sound judgmental and maybe a little bit mean, but I could not stand Dani watching Hocus Pocus again. Perhaps I am not the biggest fan of children, but I found her to be incredibly irritating. She was consistently whining at her brother, and her rebelliousness got the three of them into trouble. She was not a bad character by any means, but I was annoyed nonetheless.

Even with the few plot holes and the irritation Dani brought me, I still loved rewatching Hocus Pocus. My new favorite character had to be Ernie, or “Ice” as he insisted on being called. My new rating for Hocus Pocus is a 7.5/10. Whether you watch it to relive childhood nostalgia or just for a little laugh, this is still a fabulously fun Halloween movie.