Jeff Wadlow, the director behind Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare and Fantasy Island, attempts to give Netflix its own version of a Disney Channel or TV family Halloween movie with The Curse of Bridge Hollow, but rarely can it be steered out of bland cliché storytelling.
The film follows Sydney (Priah Ferguson), a teenage girl who reluctantly moves with her family to the quiet and Halloween-loving town of Bridge Hollow, where the legend of Stingy Jack and the town’s witchcraft past drive their love for the spookiest holiday of the year. After rummaging around her new house’s attic, she finds a strange jack-o-lantern that suddenly releases the spirit of Jack and begins to turn everyone’s Halloween decorations into real-life monsters. With the help of her dad (Marlon Wayans), a science teacher who hates Halloween, and her new friends, Sydney must find a way to stop Jack before midnight otherwise every day in Bridge Hallow will become a nightmarish Halloween.
Overall, the concept of The Curse of Bridge Hollow isn’t half bad and the execution can be a lot of fun at times. The idea of Halloween decorations coming to life as scary monsters but maintaining their prop-like quality is actually kind of cool and works really well for a family-centric horror film. Zombies can still bite people and killer clowns can wield dangerous weapons; there’s still a plasticity feel to it all that strips away the bloodshed for some good horror fun for the whole family. The creature designs are also great with it feeling like decorations coming to life rather than just generic monsters. Wadlow directs some solid sequences, including one through a horror maze, that are fun to watch.
Still though, The Curse of Bridge Hollow’s strength is only its great concept. From the start, the film feels a cheap TV holiday movie you’d find on Disney Channel. That isn’t too hard of a knock since some of them can actually be good, but once its story starts, it feels like nothing special. It’s in your face exposition immediately waters down the experience. It feels like you’re being dragged along on its adventure rather than you willingly wanting to go. The whole curse backstory and how it gets solve has no depth. While there can be some fun chemistry between Ferguson and Wayans as a dysfunctional father/daughter duo, their performances mostly fall flat. The rest of the film’s characters are mostly forgettable and generally only step out from the background to dish out mostly unfunny lines.
The comedic elements of The Curse of Bridge Hollow feel like forced laughs and frankly, feel as uninspired as its small-town setting. For a town that just gushes over Halloween, Bridge Hollow is a boring, generic setting and most of scenarios that Sydney and her group run into are just way too suburban. It would’ve been great to see more of the town’s love for Halloween showcased and explored deeper not only to appeal to the horror community, but also just to be a fitting and fun ode to the Halloween season. If it included a mix of traditional and modern takes on the holiday, it could’ve been a spooky delight for all. Instead, it’s just clearly cashing in on the timing of its release and really only provides enough Halloween fun for a passable watch.
There are some cool aspects to The Curse of Bridge Hollow that will please some horror fans looking for a good watch with the family this Halloween, but if it leaned a little harder into being an ode to the spooky season, its strengths could’ve maybe outweighed its immense shortcomings.
