It’s that time of year when the leaves change color, the air gets colder and the days are shorter. It’s also the time of year for celebrating Halloween with costumes, candy, pumpkins, and most of all scary movies. 

  With the release of “Hocus Pocus 2” and “Halloween Ends,” we can see an increase in love for fall favorite movies for the season once more. 

  “Hocus Pocus 2” released on September 30, starring Better Midler, Sarah Parker, and Kathy Najimy, who play the iconic roles of the three sisters Winifred Sanderson, Sarah Sanderson, and Mary Sanderson, are back to play their respective roles in the second movie, earning a rating of 6.1 stars on IMDb, and 62% on Rotten Tomatoes, but an audience score of 2.9. 

  Anna Fletcher who is famous for directing “Step up” (2006), “27 Dresses” (2008), and “The Proposal” (2009) is back to directing the sequel of Hocus Pocus. 

  “The movie was good,” senior Grace Janis stated. “But the first Hocus Pocus was better because it’s sentimental to me and just the original.” 

  Over the past years, we’ve seen movies that fans treasured for years, but then came out with a sequel that just seemed unnecessary. For example, “Pocahontas 2”, “Mean Girls 2”, and “Jaws the Revenge” have all received scores lower than 2.5 in audience reviews and are all sequels to movies that fans adored. 

  While the first Hocus Pocus is considered a cult classic some fans have different opinions about the meaning of sequels overall.

  “It’s usually unnecessary as the stories often are already over and it just takes advantage of people’s admiration for the classic movie. It often has poor storytelling and makes a bad movie overall.”  

  Bailey Blue, senior, shared her thoughts on the term for movie sequels, “Some movies leave the ending open for sequels and some do not. In Hocus Pocus’s case, it was clearly not intended for a sequel, and making one 20 years down the line is a clear sign of being a money grab, and putting the movie behind a Disney+ paywall is pretty lousy.” 

  Another seasonal scare is the final movie of the Halloween franchise “Halloween Ends,” which got a 6.1 on IMDb, 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 1.9 audience star rating. 

  The director David Gordon Green, who formerly directed “Halloween” (2018) as well as “Halloween Kills” (2021), which are all sequels to the original “Halloween” (1978), comes back with Jamie Lee Curtis for the official finale to the Halloween franchise.

With years of Halloween getting many, many sequels, and 13 movies in total, some are not surprised that this movie came out poorly. 

  Corinn Coulter, a former MHS student, who has had a love for Halloween movies, stated, “The movie was not how I expected it to be. Without giving spoilers, Myers was barely even in his own movie. There are characters I feel like that don’t make any sense, and give no importance to the film.” 

  With a film that has characters feeling so vacant, it’s hard for that movie to be a good film, comparing it to its classic “Halloween” it seems to be a worthless movie.  

  Yet others think that “Halloween Ends” wasn’t that bad. Abigail Marquardt, junior, gives her opinion about the movie’s ending, “I think this was a proper way to end the Halloween movie series. However, I do not think this is the end of Michael Myers, and I really want to see more.” 

  “Hocus Pocus 2” and “Halloween Ends” both share different reviews and complex opinions from various people but these reviews and thoughts shouldn’t stop anyone from watching any of these films. Go and enjoy.