Halloween Ends | Halloween 2022

October 15, 2022 Cassandra Morgan

We come to the end of the recent Halloween trilogy with Halloween Ends. Who will be victorious -former babysitter Laurie Strode or evil Michael Myers? Or is there someone new?

Halloween - 2019: Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is filling in last minute as a babysitter for Jeremy (Jaxon Goldenberg). When Jeremy locks Corey in the attic as a prank, Corey accidentally kills Jeremy by kicking open the door, sending Jeremy careening over the third floor balcony. Despite being cleared of manslaughter, Corey is still being bullied by the townsfolk in 2022. During one such fight, Corey cuts his hand open on a smashed glass bottle. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) saves Corey from the bullies and takes him to the hospital, where her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) works as a nurse. Allyson quickly falls in love with Corey, even though Laurie can sense evil in the young man. After another fight with high school bullies, Corey is thrown off a bridge, only to be rescued by Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney). This only brings out more evil in Corey. Can Allyson see the evil before it is too late?

There are thirteen films in the Halloween franchise. I am only familiar with the three in this trilogy: Halloween, Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends. With that said, I thought that Ends was the weakest of the three films. A majority of this film focuses on Corey’s plight in town and his budding relationship with Allyson. It takes something like 45 minutes before we see the first hint of Michael’s existence and the first murder (excluding Jeremy’s accidental death). Considering the movie is just under 2 hours long, that is almost the halfway point. That is a long time to wait for a death in a slasher movie.

Sadly, instead of murders, the movie is filled with Corey being bullied by teenagers, Corey being screamed at by his mother, Corey at work, Allyson at work, and Laurie writing a book about Michael Meyers. It is all very boring. I understand wanting to giving Laurie and Allyson a bit more of a normal life but it feels very out of character after the events of Halloween Kills. Even though Ends takes place three years after Kills, the sheer body count and terror Michael wreaked should have kept Laurie and Allyson on edge for much longer. I’m not sure there’s enough therapy in the world to cure what they went through.

If you watched the other two movies, you might as well finish off the trilogy. It does give a decent ending to the Laurie/Michael story. But is that the end of the Halloween franchise? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Hersheypark Halloween | Things To Do

September 21, 2022 Cassandra Morgan

This year, my husband and I decided to get season passes for Hersheypark. The amusement park is in Hershey, PA, home of Hershey’s Chocolate, which is about an hour from our house. While we love roller coasters and rides, we love Halloween even more. With Hersheypark Halloween opening on September 17 this year, there are two additional weekends to the Halloween celebration at the park. My husband and I visited on Sunday to check out the scares.

As usual, Hersheypark Halloween has 13 coasters open, as well as many of the less scary family rides. Not all rides are open so be sure to check the website to see if your favorite rides are open before heading to the park. Before hitting up any of the rides, we walked through ZooAmerica, which is included in your Hersheypark admission. It is one of our favorite things to do in Hershey. Then we rode on our favorite coaster - Great Bear - and one of our least favorite coasters - Storm Runner. Great Bear was amazing, as always. Storm Runner was surprisingly a much better ride for us than it has been in the past. I’m not sure if it’s because we were in a different section of the train but we actually enjoyed the ride this time.

For dinner, we elected to eat at the Spring Creek Smokehouse. During the Halloween event, many of the food vendors have Halloween-themed food available. The Smokhouse has a Coal Dusted Half Chicken (which has some charcoal covering to turn the chicken black), a black brioche bun (made with cuttlefish ink so it is not good for anyone with shellfish allergies) for their pulled pork and brisket sandwiches, and two desserts: Sinful Cinnamon Bread Instestines (cinnamon bread with a red coating on top) and Evil Eye Cherry Pie (a cherry pie with an evil eye on top). We had the Coal Miners Platter, which lets you pick two meats and two sides plus a cornbread muffin. The meats were not the sandwiches so we didn’t get to try the black brioche bun but we did try to cinnamon bread and it was absolutely delicious. It may have been my favorite part of the meal.

Afterwards, we hit up two of the tamer rides (Dry Gulch Railroad and The Kissing Tower) before heading into the Dark Nights haunted houses. There are four haunted houses, which are not included with your park ticket. You do need to purchase an add-on in order to go into the houses. If you don’t want to spend the extra dough, there are three scare zones around the park with roaming actors. My husband and I didn’t find the actors particularly scary but we did enjoy watching them.

As for the haunted houses, we managed to get through three of the four houses before the night ended. Haunted Coal Mine, The Descent, and Twisted Darkness were the three we walked through. (We’re planning on visiting Creature Chaos on our next visit.) These are much like any other haunted house Halloween attraction - costumed actors try to jump scare you as you walk through decorated rooms with various special effects. Again, my husband and I don’t get scared by actors. However, we found the decorations and the special effects awesome. This was the first weekend of the houses so maybe the scares will get bigger as Halloween looms closer. But for now, we didn’t find any of these houses particularly scary. Enjoyable, yes. Scary, no. With that said, our favorite house was Twisted Darkness. The interaction with the actors and the effects made it a wonderfully spooky haunted house.

If you aren’t into the scares, you can easily skip the haunted houses and most of the scare zones. Unfortunately, if you want to ride the rides at the back of the park (in particular, Lightning Racer, and the Ferris Wheel ), you will need to go through the Midway to Misery, which is listed as “spine-tingling” on the scare meter. All of the other scare zones can be avoided with a slightly longer walk around it.

Considering how close we live to Hersheypark, the Halloween event is a no-brainer for us. But if you are looking for a super scary, thrilling Halloween experience, this isn’t for you. This is an event for people who love riding rides and maybe get a thrill out of some jump scares. Or if you want to check some of the Halloween-themed food vendors. I’m hoping to get a bite of Dark Moon Orange Sorbet at Milton’s Ice Cream Parlor or Brain Freeze Sundae at the Turkey Hill Ice SCREAM Parlor. Yeah, the ice cream at Hersheypark is good. You can never go wrong with a good ice cream sundae.

Hersheypark Halloween runs from September 17 through October 30. They are only open on Saturdays and Sundays from about 2PM until 10PM. Check the website for the hours before you visit the park. I hope to see you there!

Halloween Kills | 2021 Halloween Movies

October 18, 2021 Cassandra Morgan

Guess who’s back. Back again. Michael’s back. Don’t tell anyone because he will probably murder you and your family and your friends and your little dog too.

Halloween Kills is a direct sequel to the 2018 Halloween movie. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) believe they have finally killed Michael (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle). They are wrong. Michael escape from Laurie’s burning house and goes on another killing spree. This time the townspeople, led by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), have gathered together to hunt down Michael and kill him themselves.

While I am familiar with the Halloween franchise, I’ve never actually watched any of the movies. Well, until I watched the 2018 movie the other night in order to prepare to watch this one. But this does mean that I’m not particularly knowledgeable about the specifics of the Michael character. It did lead to a little bit of confusion on my part during the last third or so of Halloween Kills.

In comparison to the 2018 movie, this one is bloodier. The killing starts almost immediately and the body count is immense. There are also a few instances where Michael uses weird (to me, anyway) objects for the murder and he moves the bodies afterward. My husband claims Michael has done that in past movies so it is not out of character for him. However, we didn’t see any of that in the previous movie so it is weird to me.

Overall, it wasn’t a bad movie. Considering it is the middle of a trilogy, it fulfills all of the requirements to bring the story back together, keep it going, and add new dimensions to the plot. It will be interesting to see if they do wrap up everything with next year’s Halloween Ends or if they will continue to make Halloween movies forever.

If you do decide to watch this, and I think you should, you will need to watch the 2018 movie first. This movie begins immediately after that one and you will definitely be lost without knowing those events. However, it is not the best Halloween movie out there this year. It is probably the best slasher movie, if you are into that, but there are better spooky movies that came out if you’d rather spend your time not bathed in gushing blood.

Muppets Haunted Mansion | 2021 Halloween Movies

October 15, 2021 Cassandra Morgan

The Muppets have had a long career. Yet they have never released a Halloween special. I suppose the past year and a half has been scary for everyone because here is their very first Halloween special!

Loosely based on the Haunted Mansion ride at the Disney parks, the story begins with Gonzo going to a party in honor of his favorite magician, the Great MacGuffin. Pepe the King Prawn goes along anxious to meet some ladies. When they arrive at the mansion, they are told that the mansion is haunted and no one ever leaves. However, if they can survive one night, they will be able to leave. Otherwise, they will be trapped there forever.

As a fan of the Haunted Mansion ride, it was fun to see all of the parts of the attraction interact with each other. Granted, this isn’t the exact ride. Miss Piggy portrays the fortune teller head in the crystal ball, Will Arnett plays the Host, Taraji P. Henson plays The Bride, etc. But I enjoyed the interpretations of the animatronics. I had a lot of fun trying to figure out where in the ride each character “lived.”

There, honestly, isn’t a whole lot to say about the special. It’s pretty typical Muppets fare, except this time it’s centered around Gonzo instead of Kermit and Piggy. The human actors were good. Darren Criss was very funny as The Caretaker. Will Arnett is always funny. I think the only thing I didn’t like about the show was that the credits went by way too fast for me to see who all was in it. There are some quick scenes - the Singing Busts, for example - that went by too fast for me to identify everyone and then the credits went by too fast as well. But that is what they make the internet for. I can look that up easily.

This is an easy special to recommend. If you like the Muppets or the Haunted Mansion ride, you are likely to love the special. If you are an old fuddy duddy stick in the mud, there are plenty of other things for you to watch. The Muppets are awesome.

I write about more than just Christmas movies. Seriously.

September 13, 2021 Cassandra Morgan

For the past three years, I have reviewed Christmas movies. I tend to get so burned out on them that I don’t know what to write about the rest of the year.

In an attempt to fix my Big Time Writer’s Block, I am going to expand the holiday movie reviews this year. Yes, I will still do the Christmas movies. But this time I am going to add Halloween to the schedule. I am going to review Halloween-related movies released in 2021.

Now - the Christmas movies usually have to follow some rules. The big rule is they have to be first released in the year they are being reviewed (no reviewing 2012 movies in 2021). The Halloween movies will follow that same rule. In 2018 and 2019, I only reviewed movies released in December. In 2020, I moved that to every movie released for the Christmas season, which started in November. While I would like to stick to movies released in October, I might not have enough movies to fill the entire month. There are some scary movies that either have already been released or will be released in the next few weeks. So don’t be surprised if you see some September releases in the October reviews.

Another addition is series. There are a few series that have popped up on the Halloween release schedule for 2021. I don’t normally review series as it can take me awhile to power through them. But I think there are a couple of 8-episode series that I could kick out pretty quickly. I haven’t committed myself to watching the series yet. We’ll see how that goes when they actually come out.

I am interested to see how the Halloween movies match up to the Christmas movies. I don’t particularly like slasher films but, then again, I don’t like cheesy love movies either. I really am a glutton for punishment, aren’t I?