Halloween - Practical Magic

It’s October, which can only means one thing: the supermarkets are acting rather schizophrenic right now. Half of the shops shelving is being taken up by Christmas tat (despite the fact that it is about three months away); the other half is still clinging onto a sense of everyday life. The untouched part is worryingly eyeing up what happened to a large portion of the floorplan, dreading when its tinsel-time will come too. Christmas aisles are like a virus, one that we have no hope of stopping before it spreads. Then there is one lonely aisle, perhaps one and a half if its lucky, dedicated to an event that is actually coming rather soon: Halloween.

This yearly cycle always frustrates me, not because of ridiculously early preparation which angers most people. But because of the way Halloween gets overshadowed. Last year, for instance, some shops were pulling down their Halloween stock the week before the 31st of October. In its place stood more Christmas stock, seemingly five other shelves just wasn’t enough.

I love Halloween, perhaps more so than Christmas. There is less pressure to be happy, to see people and generally less expensive; it makes the experience overall more fun. Christmas becomes so hyped with expectations that it can never live up to it. After eagerly opening my advent calendar last year I spent the actual day watching TV like a zombie. I didn’t even like the programmes that were on, nor do I watch TV regularily (for some reason becoming a student actually made me more proactive, clearly an oddity).

Halloween on the over hand, is barely celebrated in the UK and what is celebrated isn’t my take on it. I don’t trick or treat (often), I don’t have a séances board (the Milton Bradley board game that’s fun for the whole family, even great, great, great grandpa Joe) and I am not part of a cult. What I actually do is bake, carve pumpkins, dress up with friends and watch a scary film.

My personal belief of Halloween is similar to the older Pagan views and other festivals like Obon (Japan) and Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Basically I believe if anything does happen on Halloween it is that the spirits come back to our world once again. Not to spook us out of spite, I can’t imagine the dead would make the effort just to troll the living, but to revisit their ancestors. Having said that I am a realist at heart and don’t hold much belief in ghosts anyway.

Last year for my first blog SaxonDaze, I reviewed a ghoulish confectionery item each day for October. For this blog I plan to celebrate by charting the best and worst examples of horror related games, films and books.  The first of this could have begun with a review of PracticalMagic, which Amy (from the Willow Web) and I watched recently. It won’t however, partly because it would be a rant rather than a review. But mostly because it is one of Amy’s favourite films and I really don’t want to be slapped.

I will briefly discuss some of my VALID reasons for disliking the film and I will try to back them up. Firstly I felt it have a few pacing problems. There were moments in the film were time will have moved on in the story with little indication as to how long has passed. It left me rather confused on more than one occasion.

Scenes seem to change at whim, sometimes I thought it changed without fully completing its purpose. Scenes like one where one of the sister visits to comfort the other. One moment they are talking in bed and raising each other’s morale, the next they are back to everyday life. They had about two or three lines of comforting each other, acting rather sombre, before skipping to the next moment where they are laughing and joking. It is a technique that, if handled properly, could be effective. If we know the characters well enough we can assume what may have occurred between them.But I didn't really connect enough with them, I didn't feel like I had time to. Any poignant or character building moments flashed to the next. In my opinion the scenes change a lot without indication of time, purpose or place and felt rather jarring.

I think the main issue is the source material. It is based on a moderately long book and a film with a running time of around 90 minutes can’t hope to do justice. It does devote a lot of time to other scenes, usually ones featuring cheesy nineties pop and cringe worthy family fun. I understand the need for this as the relationship is the films focus and in films it is better to show and not tell. I am not asking for dialogue where characters just say 'Oh what fun we had earlier'. However, had they made it a bit longer they could have avoided the many times in which scenes change without much explanation. It made it seem rather erratic and flighty to me.

Here looking like Mary Poppins with magical powers

My second issue is the male characters, who really lack any personality of their own. They are pretty much stock characters; you have the perfect husband who tragically dies, the dream guy and then the abusive one. None of them say very much and what they do say is rather cliché. Again, I think this comes down to time: the men aren’t really the story and therefore don’t get the screen time to be fleshed .

Also the treatment of the men in the film is rather worrying. Both the perfect husband and dream guy fall in love due to spells cast upon them. They have no choice but to fall in love and possibly die if the sister's curse is to be believed. The main character doesn’t even warn her husband of the curse that befalls men who marry into her family. The other sister isn’t much better and often drugs her partner each night after sex; I’m pretty sure that is illegal in most states. You could say it is refreshing that it is men who are finally getting these poor character profiles, but really that is a poor excuse.

Overall you could say that I wasn’t very taken with Practical Magic. I know the film doesn’t really target me as its audience, but that’s a flimsy excuse. Many may argue that technically it isn’t a horror film and shouldn’t be the beginning of my horror themed posts. On the other hand, from a male perspective, it is a rather chilling tale of men being controlled by the magic surrounding two sisters.

I will now pass over to Amy at the Willow Web, if she would like to respond to my criticism.




Halloween Image from Pics Hunger, Practical Magic image from Daniella's Bureau, Film still from Spooky Things Online