I'll be honest, as a HUGE fan of the original, I was ready to love this one but ended up disappointed. I didn't expect the magic of the original, but this one was more misguided than I had expected.
More than anything, the tone of this movie is just so different - the Sanderson Sisters are up to their old antics again, but so it seems is everyone else. The original is, of course, a comedy, but most of the broad humor was reserved exclusively for the Sandersons, who contrasted against everyone else who was playing it pretty straight. Beyond that most of the humor was situational - crazy things may have been happening, but most of the non-witch performances were grounded in reality, or at least grounded in some truth. Binx may be a cat, but he feels real guilt for the death of his sister, and that gets paid off in the end. There were occasional burts of wackiness from the likes of the Marshalls and the bullies, but even they felt decently believable.That balance of reality and fantasy was so important to making it work.
Reality seems to have gone out the window with this one. It feels as if everyone was directed to be mugging for the camera at all times, asking for laughs instead of playing their character. I think this is mostly a writing/directing issue, since most of the new characters are thinly written and the situations they find themselves in are perpetually silly. The Sisters do what they do well, but they have less to do this time and never get a real chance to bite the way they should. For all their hilarity, the original still made sure they felt dangerous - in this one they feel largely de-fanged. The death of Emily Binx at the beginning of the orignal set the stakes high for the rest of the movie - the Witches could kill, and they'll do it again if they get the chance. In this one there's little that suggests these Witches are much to fear - the bumbling that was originally a counterpoint to their villainy is now instead their main character trait.
And again, they're good enough at it that you could almost live with it, but then you get all these randos you don't care about padding out the movie with lesser attempts at the same shtick. Some of their preoccupations border on fully ridiculous (That bit with Tony Hale and the Candy Apple wore out its welcome before it even started, and then it just kept going. That character wasn't a real person, and hardly anybody in the movie even tries to be. The only characters there are to care about here are the Sandersons and Billy, but that's only because you already cared about them before pressing play.
This movie feels like what people who don't like Hocus Pocus think Hocus Pocus is. The secret sauce of the orignal was never that the chemistry of the Witches was so good, it's that their great chemistry was perfectly counterpointed by real stakes, a sense of danger, and a genuine edge that made you feel like you were watching something that maybe you shouldn't be. Not to mention that the whole thing was just bathed in great special effects, high production value (with some exceptions - looking at you CGI Binx) and a to-die-for aesthetic that felt like a Halloween dream. We knew the special effects would largely be CGI this time around, but they somehow also seem to have skimped on the Halloween Vibes as well. There are points where I almost forgot I was watching a Halloween movie, which is shocking. Many of the fabulous set pieces and actual locations in Salem have given way to locations that only hint at that the richness of the original.
I'm someone who's always thought that more Hocus Pocus is better than less, but this one is missing so much of that Hocus Pocus spirit it almost doesn't feel related. I'm sorry to say, if a third movie would be more like this than like the original then I would rather they not bother.
