Meta: Contrasting/Comparing Three Halloween Films

I realize Halloween was a few weeks ago now, but it was as good a reason as any to watch three of my favourite spooky movies and contrast/compare them. Because why not?

It's actually rather fascinating to see how scary movies for young audiences have deeply rooted similarities in their structure, characterization and moral framework. The earliest, Hocus Pocus, came out in 1994, followed by Monster House in 2004 and Coraline in 2009, giving us a trio of horror stories aimed at children in which young protagonists battle malevolent forces that are rooted in folklore and legend (urban or otherwise): one in live-action, one in CG animation, and one in stop-motion animation.

Although Coraline is not strictly speaking a Halloween movie (it's the only one of the three not set on October 31st) all of them feature young people on the verge of adolescence in considerable danger from the supernatural.

Hocus Pocus centres on its villains: the sisters Winifred, Mary and Sarah Sanderson, who maintain their youth by luring children into their house on the edge of the forest and draining them of their life's energy. The opening act takes place in 1693 Salem, in which the sisters are caught and sentenced to death by the villagers, though not before they kill a little girl, turn her older brother into a cat, and cast a spell so that they might return to life for a single night if a virgin lights the black flame candle on Halloween.

Why the spell is quite that specific is anyone's guess, but three hundred years later this is precisely what happens. Max Dennison is a newcomer to Salem, and in trying to impress his little sister Dani and classmate Allison, comes up with the idea to break into the old Sanderson place on Halloween.

One lit candle later, and the witches are back, hopelessly out of touch with the modern world, but still determined to prey on the children of Salem, leaving it up to Max, Allison and Dani to stop them.

Hocus Pocus wasn't a box office success at the time of its release, but has since become a cult classic and holiday favourite. This is not surprising: it looks like a television movie as opposed to a blockbuster (many of the sets are obviously sets) but the plot is sound, the characters engaging, and the balance between horror and humour nicely struck. Well, most of the time.

The child/teenage actors play things extremely straight, acting with the fear and urgency that any life-or-death situation would require, while Bette Midler (who incidentally calls this her favourite role), Kathy Najimy and Sarah Jessica Parker are busy chomping down on the scenery. It can be a bit jarring at times, but the whole thing captures a particularly appealing atmosphere: autumn leaves, gabled houses, oversized pumpkins... it's straight out of Sleepy Hollow or an Old World fairy tale. 

Back in the day I had a crush on Omri Katz (I was a fan of Eerie Indiana too) but was also very taken with Allison (Vinessa Shaw) given how poised and self-assured she was. Dani (Thora Birch) was an epic brat of nightmarish proportions, but the three of them made an effective team in fighting and eventually defeating the witches. Doug Jones had one of his signature prosthetic-covered roles, and it's only the presence of the two inevitable neighbourhood bullies, as stupid as they are thuggish, that strikes a sour note.

But one detail I've always loved is the portrayal of Salem itself, from the enthusiastic schoolteacher, to the guy dressed as a police officer, to the restaurant worker who picks out an unlucky lobster: "alright, who's for the Jacuzzi?" None of them play any hugely important role in the story, but they add a real sense of character to the township.

***

Despite its subject matter, Monster House owes quite a debt to The Polar Express and Forrest Gump, the former for its animation and the latter for its motifs, which is unsurprising given the executive producers were Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. Though the large bobble heads and ungainly movements of the CGI has dated in over ten years, images such as the falling autumn leaf that opens the film (just as Forrest Gump had a feather) remain fresh.

It also reminds me of Stranger Things, particularly in the dynamic between J.D. and Chowder (they're essentially Mike and Dustin) and in the emphasis on pre-teen minutia: code-names, meeting places, dialogue which is mainly comprised of silly insults but occasionally manages something truly witty, and the poignancy of two friends of a certain age, in which one is clearly maturing faster than the other.  

It has the twistiest plot of all three films discussed here, though it's grounded in the urban myth prevalent in every neighbourhood: that one creepy house with its equally creepy owner. For J.D., said house is directly across the street from him, where for some time he's been monitoring the activities of Mr Nebbercracker, the crotchety old man who goes berserk whenever anyone steps on his lawn and confiscates anything – bikes, balls, kites – that lands on his property.

But when an unexpected turn of events sees the apparent demise of Nebbercracker, more overt supernatural activities follow. J.D. draws the logical conclusion: Nebbercracker's ghost is out for revenge.

Now J.D., his best friend Chowder, and Jenny Bennett, a school girl who was selling cookies in the neighbourhood before getting attacked by the house, team up in order to stop the malevolent force from preying on trick-or-treaters. The movie's big twist is that the ghost isn't Nebbercracker at all – in fact, he's alive and (mostly) well, and it is his deceased wife who has possessed the house. All this time, Nebbercracker's "get off my lawn" shtick has been to protect the children of the neighbourhood from her wrath.

It's possibly the darkest of the three movies, with an icy streak in how it depicts its characters: Chowder bails on J.D. when things get difficult, Elizabeth the babysitter quickly sheds her warm exterior to reveal a Goth bully, and even Jenny isn't quite as sweet as she first appears. It's in J.D. and (later) Nebbercracker that we find our moral compass, as both willing to sacrifice themselves to protect others.

It all hangs together well, with only a few lingering questions and loose ends – like how did no one else in the neighbourhood see a rampaging house or the explosion in the quarry? And I was little disappointed in the film's treatment of Elizabeth (or "Z"). Though her boyfriend is awful, there are a couple of hints here and there that suggest she's not all bad, and she could have come through for the trio of protagonists at a critical moment. Instead she disappears halfway through the story and ultimately serves no real purpose (ages ago I added her as in entry on TV Tropes' They Wasted A Perfectly Good Character page).

***

Finally we have Coraline. The best stories are the ones that feel deeply familiar, but also fresh and innovative. They resonate on a bone-deep level, but also conjure up new ideas and possibilities in your heart and mind. Old and new, fresh and familiar – I could use these adjectives to describe most of my favourite stories: The Darkangel by Meredith Anne Pierce, Pan's Labyrinth by Guillermo del Toro, and this, Coraline by Neil Gaiman.

Coraline Jones has moved with her parents into a converted old house known as the Pink Palace Apartments, where she's almost immediately bored to tears. Her parents are busy with work and so she's left to her own devices, though there are plenty of clues to suggest an adventure is on the way: a neighbouring boy tells her his grandmother usually doesn't rent out rooms to families with children, a black cat seems to follow Coraline wherever she goes, and a strange little doll is given to her: one that looks and is dressed exactly like her, with two buttons for eyes.

But most intriguing of all is a tiny locked door in a downstairs room, which one night opens into a strange, glowing tunnel. Waiting at the other end is a duplicate of the house she's just left – but not as she knows it. This version of her house is filled with light and colour, delicious food and marvellous treats, presided over by a facsimile of her mother. Cheerful and attentive, she introduces herself as Coraline's Other Mother, one who lives to entertain her daughter.

Why wouldn't Coraline be entranced? Though the situation has "trap" written all over it, you can see why she would fall for it, as between the magical gardens and the dancing mice, we're just as enchanted as she is. Soon she's sneaking back there every night, basking in the attention bestowed upon her.

But although Coraline doesn't realize it, the real world is just as fascinating as the dream one, full of kindly, colourful characters such as Mr Bobinsky, the Russian acrobat who trains mice, and Mrs Spink and Forcible, two retired stage performers who read tea leaves and care for a host of Scotty dogs. 

And like Pleasure Island in Pinocchio, when things seem too good to be true, it's because they usually are. Such things come at a hefty price, and soon Coraline is caught in a game of wits with her Other Mother (actually called the Beldame) in order to save herself, her parents, and the spirits of the children she's already ensnared.

It's a straightforward story, but the way in which it's told is where its beauty lies. It's a story that's tailor-made for stop-motion animation, as this is an art form that can really capture the inherent eeriness of the tale. There's just something about dolls, isn't there. The film is filled with images that straddle the line between whimsical and creepy: dolls flying through open windows, a needle and thread worked by spindly fingers, a dowsing rod, a ring of toadstools, yellow slugs in the mist, even a soundtrack that's comprised of children chanting nonsense words.

Whole sequences are also intriguing: like when Mr Bobinsky, another resident of the Pink Palace who claims to be training a collection of mice, passes on a message to Coraline – that the mice have told him to tell her: "do not go through the little door." How the mice know this and how they communicate it to Mr Bobinsky is never explained.

Likewise, the movie begins with a ragdoll flying through an open window and into the spindly metal fingers of an unseen craftsman, who unstitches the doll and changes its appearance before sending it soaring back out the window. It's inexplicable out of context, though we're fed more information later on: the doll originally resembles the little girl who disappeared in the Pink Palaces before Coraline (Wybie shows her a picture of his grandmother and her twin sister), Wybie gives it to Coraline after finding it in his grandmother's trunk (noticing its resemblance to Coraline), and it's used as the Beldame's spy, eventually drawing her attention to the little door.

And of course, there's the black cat, who lives entirely by his own rules and seems to have some strange powers of his own (as in the very last scene of the film).

It's not a perfect story. I always felt the story would have benefited by softening up Coraline's real mother a little, making their reconciliation more powerful and justifying Coraline's unhesitating determination to rescue her parents after they've been kidnapped.

Then there's the controversial ending, in which the Beldame's clawed hand manages to escape her world and seek revenge on Coraline. In Gaiman's book, Coraline is well-aware of the hand's presence and deliberately sets a trap for it. In the film, Coraline is oblivious to the danger, and it's Wybie (who isn't in the book) who must save her. It's a false note in a story that pits a girl against a woman and has allowed her hold her own up until this point.

***

All the stories can be summed up in the same way: a malevolent entity that is overtly feminine in nature poses a threat to children, requiring the intended victims to take on the mantle of heroism by drawing on their imaginations, wits and courage in order to save their peers and defeat their foe.

This naturally leads to coming-of-age narratives, as in all these cases the children get no help at all from their parents or other authority figures, and so must rely on themselves. As such, Coraline (eleven years old) grows from a distinctively bratty little girl in the first half of the movie to one willing to extend the hand of friendship to other people, moderate the demands she makes on her parents, and put her own life on the line in order to bring an end to the Beldame.

Hocus Pocus is built around the emotional bond between brothers and sisters, specifically teenage Max learning to take responsibility for his eight year old's sister's safety, even at the cost of his own life. Finally, J.D. and Chowder (both twelve years old) in Monster House are the most obvious representations of the movement between childhood and adolescence; they're young enough for Chowder to wear a cape and J.D. to refer to his stuffed rabbit as "she", but old enough to show mutual interest in a pretty girl and doubt whether they're still young enough to be trick-or-treating.

(It's worth adding that boy/girl attraction is a minor note in these films: there's none whatsoever between Coraline and Wybie, and though both J.D. and Chowder show interest in Jenny, her last minute kiss for good luck to J.D. feels obligatory. The most overt romantic subplot is between Max and Allison, though they don't get to share any on-screen kiss – only an interrupted one).

A crucial part of this growing up process is that (as mentioned) they cannot rely on any help from adults – not parents, babysitters or police – though this serves two distinct purposes. On a Watsonian level, it forces the children to solve their own problems and move towards a greater responsibility. Doylistically, the ineptitude of the adults naturally creates a more urgent and suspenseful storyline. 

So parents are an important part of these stories – or rather, their omission is. Getting rid of the adults is a frequent requirement of any story involving child protagonists... after all, it's a parent's task to keep their children safe, and that greatly impinges on any adventures.

Coraline's mother is perpetually grouchy due to a neck injury and the stress of moving into a new house, and both she and Coraline's father are busy writing and editing a gardening catalogue. Naturally they have no time for Coraline's stories, and by the third act they're not just unobservant but liabilities as well. Captured by the Beldame, Coraline must venture back into her realm in order to rescue them, along with her past victims.

Max's parents are a little more attentive and openly affectionate, but spend the greater part of the story placed under a spell by the Sandersons, along with the rest of Salem's adult population, dancing in the town hall.

But J.D.'s parents are certainly the worst, appearing only briefly at the beginning and end of the film to indicate the end and renewal of normalcy, with J.D. forced to handle affairs in their absence (he's left in the care of a babysitter who is not only disinterested, but actively malicious at times, and who disappears halfway through the film). J.D.'s mother leaves with the helpful advice: "if anything happens, call the police and hide in the closet." And we learn nothing of Chowder's parents beyond the fact that his father works overtime at the pharmacy and his mother is at the movies with her personal trainer.

At certain points, the children also try to get help from law enforcement. In the case of J.D., Chowder and Jenny, they are flatly disbelieved by a boorish constable and his jittery rookie, first humiliated and then piled into the police car, where they watch in horror as the house drags the men into its basement.

Max, Allison and Dani are even less successful: they approach a police officer who promptly tells them to get lost – then (once they're gone) laughs with his girlfriend about how: "they thought I was a real cop!" 

As for Coraline, the thought of seeking help from the police or any other adult in the vicinity never even occurs to her. The other films at least felt the need to pay lip-service to what any child naturally would do in a dangerous situation (seek help from an authority figure) but by the time this point comes in Coraline's story, we're already in the third act. Call her failure to seek out help authorial fiat to keep the pace rolling.

All that said, the children are not entirely without assistance, and this assistance – when it comes – has a dual purpose. In any supernaturally themed story there must naturally be a degree of exposition about what the protagonists are facing and how they can be defeated. Think of any fairy tale with a quest narrative, and you'll find any number of dwarfs, fairies or talking animals willing to lend advice to the young hero. They are a plot device, but an important one, and capable of being fleshed out into actual characters.

I'll refer to them as "Exposition Doorkeepers", as they not only provide explanations and advice, but also stand as a sort of usher between the normal world and the supernatural; individuals who take children seriously and share important information about what they face. And coincidentally, two of these Exposition Doorkeepers are black cats.

The most three-dimensional is Thackery Binx, a Salem resident who failed to save his little sister Emily and so was put under a curse to guard the Sanderson house, taking it upon himself to prevent the witches from being woken up and then assisting in their destruction. He has a plot-arc of his own, connects the prologue to the main story, and his reunion with his little sister closes off the film.

In comparison, the unnamed black cat in Coraline has far less character: a personality for sure (especially when voiced by Keith Davids), but enigmatic in his background and motivations. He wanders in and out of the Other World at will, helps Coraline on several occasions, and is eventually used as a Chekhov's Gun when Coraline throws him at the Beldam to secure her own escape.

The Exposition Doorkeeper of Monster House has an even smaller role, appearing in only one scene (and a voiceless cameo in the credits): a guy called Reginald 'Skull' Skulinski, an arcade game player. Chunky, nasal, bad facial hair – an obvious parody of self-important man-children who are still obsessed with adolescent pursuits (and so respected utterly by pre-teens). He gives our trio the basic rundown of how the house works, instructing them to find and extinguish the heart.

So our heroes know their enemies, know what's at stake, and know how they must be defeated. As with most undertakings, they're going to need ingenuity, imagination and bravery to achieve their ends.

Coraline is the story most based in fairy tales, and so she uses familiar tools to defeat the Beldame: challenging her to a game, finding the lost eyes of the children with a seeing stone, and using trickery to open the little door and scamper to safety. For the kids in Hocus Pocus, they rely on the advantages of the modern world (and the witches' ignorance of them) such as sprinkler systems, car headlights and intercoms – though ultimately it comes down to a desperate stall for time when they realize the sisters will be destroyed by the light of the rising sun.

But it's J.D., Chowder and Jenny who demonstrate the most inventiveness, taking the time to plan their attack like a military operation, one involving a dummy filled with cough medicine, torches sellotaped to water pistols, and a plan that adapts and changes over the course of the night (the Monster House is eventually taken out by a stick of dynamite and some aerodynamics).  

It's also worth mentioning that at different points, both Coraline and Allison call upon traditional methods of repelling evil to save themselves: Coraline is given a seeing stone (a stone with a naturally bored hole through it) that she uses to spot the missing eyes of the children, and Allison reads that a circle of salt will protect her from witchcraft, a method she uses to effectively protect herself later (getting called a "white witch" in the process). 

But the crux upon which all stories revolve is naturally each tale's villain, and the most striking similarity between these three films is that all of them have women as their embodiment of evil: the spider-like Beldame (who takes on the button-eyed visage of the Other Mother), Constance Nebbercracker (the angry spirit of a woman who has possessed her house) and the Sanderson Sisters (three old school witches who have sold their souls in exchange for power).

All of them have a vested interest in children (though Constance is more indiscriminate), two for the express purpose of gaining vitality by stealing lives and souls. The ways in which the villains operate is almost identical: much like the witch in the gingerbread house, or the Pied Piper, or the Child-Catcher in Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang, or heck, even your standard stranger offering sweets, it's the promise of games and treats and toys and fun that lures in their intended victims.

The Beldame is the most obvious example: she creates a parallel house filled with delicious food, magical gardens, lively music, performing mice and theatre acrobatics to enchant Coraline. The Sanderson Sisters use Sarah to sing children into hypnosis with some very telling lyrics: "come little children, I'll take thee away, into a land of enchantment; come little children, the time's come to play, here in my garden of magic..."

Finally, the Monster House occasionally lures in a victim by showing them something they've lost: Z's boyfriend sees the red kite that Nebbercracker confiscated when he was a child, and on two separate instances Chowder is lured out by the sight of his missing basketball.

It's an old and deeply folklorish way of getting what you want: the lure of worldly enjoyment to hide the trap lying beneath. As parents say, never take candy from strangers – except (ironically) on the one night of the year in which parents send their children out to do precisely that: the day on which these stories take place.

And these methods have proven extremely effective: there were at least three children before Coraline that fell for the Beldame's trick; she meets their restless spirits still trapped inside the parallel world. Likewise, Hocus Pocus opens with the sisters successfully draining a little girl of her life-force and dooming her older brother to immortality as a cat. And across the course of Monster House, a number of individuals are dragged into the house - in fact, what gives the story a greater sense of urgency is that the protagonists are racing against the clock to keep trick-or-treaters away from the titular house.

In Constance's case, it is her rage rather than any diabolical plan that motivates her, and it's actually unclear what she's achieving when she snatches up passerbys whenever they cross onto her property (misplaced vengeance?) But in all three cases, the likes of Coraline, Max, Allison, Dani, J.D., Chowder and Jenny are not just fighting for their own lives, but the lives of the other children in their neighbourhoods.

There is contrast to be found in the villains too, for there's a profound difference in the nature of the antagonists despite their gender and motivations. The Sanderson sisters belong to an old school Christian belief system, in which they are described as having explicitly sold their souls to the devil in exchange for magical powers. In the grand scheme of things, they are the most evil of all the villainesses (despite their comedic bent), pursuing their goals to extend their immortality and continue to spread fear and misery.

The Beldame is derived from a very different source, and one gets the sense she's acting according to her own nature, rather than the three mortal women who deliberately chose to be evil. She is an ancient creature from folklore and fairy tales, though she (like the witches) must prey on children to exploit their youth and expand her own power.

Constance is something else altogether; a restless, angry spirit who was so tormented in life that she possessed a house after her untimely death. A flashback paints her in a sympathetic light, depicting her escape from a circus after being kept in a cage and taunted by the audience. As much victim as villain, she's given the most generous send-off: after the Monster House is destroyed she's seen as a peaceful spirit who's reunited with her husband before disappearing.

(This idea – of evil being created, not born – is also explored to a much greater extent in 2013's Paranorman, which probably would have been a much better fit for this essay had I not really wanted to watch Coraline again).

Most interestingly of all, each movie ends on a moment of heavenly grace (though any angelic or priestly help in fighting witches, fairy tale monsters or vengeful spirits is never considered at any point during any of the stories). The three ghost children in Coraline are depicted as ascending angels, Thackery's soul is freed from its feline body and reunited with his sister (with obvious symbolism they move through the cemetery gates and into the rising sun beyond), and as mentioned above, Constance is briefly scene as a golden spirit, dancing with her husband before disappearing, clearly at peace.

In all cases, this is not the last scene of the film (in both Hocus Pocus and Coraline, there is still lingering danger – the sentient witch's book in the former, and the Beldame's hand in the latter) but all provide a degree of closure and a heavenly contrast to the evil prevalent throughout the story.

So there you have it: three Halloween movies aimed at children which are very different in how they're brought to life (live-action, CG animation and stop-motion) and yet very similar in a striking number of ways. In all cases the villain to be defeated is a supernatural woman who targets children specifically by promising them superficial treats, leading other children to protect their peers without the assistance of parents or the police, and a final depiction of a peaceful afterlife for those deserving of it.

In my mind they form an unofficial trilogy, and it was great catching up with them this Halloween.