The Curse of Bridge Hollow

After lampooning horror films in the Scary Movie series, Marlon Wayans offers a spooky family comedy that's only sporadically funny and not all that spooky.

If anyone were to take the movie super-seriously, the idea that it’s bad for a dad to explain away fears by applying science feels almost offensively dumb. Only Rob Riggle, playing an extreme fan of The Walking Dead, seems to have gotten the memo to be funny. No kid will leave confused by any aspects of the plot except, perhaps, how a digital ouija board app on an iPad can be fully trusted. Daughter Sydney (Stranger Things’ Priah Ferguson) is the main character here, though, making friends with the school’s local paranormal club and accidentally unleashing Stingy Jack from a cursed turnip. It’s also a town that goes all out for Halloween, with elaborate themed yards and houses. In the vein of the Goosebumps movies, Hubie Halloween, Ernest Scared Stupid, and Boo!

Spooky season is upon us and among the new arrivals includes a new family-oriented Halloween movie starring Marlon Wayans and Priah Ferguson.

- Attic Earlier in 2022, he produced the score for Netflix’s Tyler Perry’s A Madea Homecoming and 13: The Musical. The movie features plenty of themed music and a huge original soundtrack so here’s everything you need to know.

Halloween is already spooky enough. Now, imagine if those "harmless" holiday decorations suddenly came to life. Hopefully, that doesn't happen to you this ...

As a member of Destiny's Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time, Kelly eventually dabbled in acting in addition to singing. Known for his comedic roles in movies like 21 Jump Street, The Hangover, and Talladega Nights, Riggle plays the Gordon family's new neighbor who goes all out for Halloween with his decorations. Now, with the help of her dad, she's determined to resolve her mistake. The actor and comedian plays Sydney's father, Howard and let's just say that this Halloween-loathing dad probably has every reason to dislike the holiday after this wild adventure. Hopefully, that doesn't happen to you this Halloween, but that's reality for the cast of Netflix's The Curse of Bridge Hollow. After unknowingly releasing an ancient, evil spirit on October 31, it causes decorations to come alive and wreak havoc upon the townspeople.

The décor is tired of being neglected this Halloween season. A restless spirit with malintent uses any and every Halloween decoration and animatronic in.

It feels like a story and script that would benefit from a tighter additional pass, which is frustrating since there are also plenty of compelling ideas in the movie that are left a mystery and not overexplained. Nocebo wags these tired archetypes in the audience’s face, but what’s encouraging about the film is that there’s a level of authenticity here that comes from Filipino screenwriter, Garrett Shanley. It’s no coincidence that Christine’s job centers around the exploitation of children and Felix is a marketing strategist who only views people in terms of dollar signs. It’s difficult not to be charmed by a family-friendly Halloween movie that instills the importance of Halloween while embracing it on a massive scale. A lot of Nocebo’s success relies upon not only if audiences buy into this central relationship, but if the payoff of where this all goes is actually worth the effort. Nocebo is technically a fantasy horror movie, but so much of its material examines the survival of capitalism through the exploitation–and vilification–of overseas workers, which in this case narrows in on Filipino culture. It’s through the peripheral characters and the wholesome family bonding that the target demographic is at its most pointed. Parenthood–whether it’s the stresses that surround this responsibility or the idea that someone else doesn’t deserve it–is subject matter that frequently finds itself at the center of the horror genre. On that note, Wadlow’s latest is the season’s most endearing gateway Halloween film. Bridge Hollow is at its most entertaining when it’s theming set pieces around whatever current Halloween décor is on the attack, and luckily that’s pretty often. Howard and Sydney race through town for answers on how to break the curse while Stingy Jack races to thwart them. The décor is tired of being neglected this Halloween season.

Marlon Wayans co-headlines, flaps arms, makes an In Living Color reference.

The Curse of Bridge Hollow reminds me of that. The plot features a running thing in which the Wayans character is afraid of skeletons; it coalesces with Wayans grabbing a chainsaw and chopping through a bunch of them to the tune of “Highway to Hell,” and Wadlow directs the sequence like it’s Raimi for Babies. Beyond that, it’s rough sledding: The screenplay requires Wayans to swat at a murderous clown and recite the words “Homie don’t play that,” and if you get the reference, hooray, I say, HOORAY for YOU. Meanwhile, Sydney’s mother Emily (Kelly Rowland) transitions from being a lawyer to being a maker of “artisanal vegan baked goods” and everything she makes is rock-hard and gross, leading to multiple scenes in which nice people take a taste and try to continue being nice as they masticate foods that taste like soil and have the textural consistency of petrified peat. It’s deeply indebted to a [Goosebumps](https://decider.com/movie/goosebumps/) plot? [THE CURSE OF BRIDGE HOLLOW](https://decider.com/movie/the-curse-of-bridge-hollow/): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? And so Sydney goes up to the attic and finds a weird old mummyface lantern and lights it and doesn’t realize that by doing so it ignites a spirit that brings Halloween decorations to life so they may attack in the name of Stingy Jack, who’s Bridge Hollow’s old mascot or icon or legend-person or whatever. Sydney has to find a spell to reverse the curse, all the while listening to her dad insist that there must be a logical scientific explanation for this when we darn well know there isn’t. And so rubber bats, yard zombies and plastic skeletons and spiders come to life and start with the biting and hitting and snarling. Well, Howard (Wayans) ain’t, anyway, and he’s the dad in a big dumb broad family comedy, so he’s trying fruitlessly to set the tone for being a Halloween hater, despite his 14-year-old daughter Sydney’s (Ferguson) resistance. It’s directed by Jeff Wadlow, the same guy who did [Kick-Ass 2](https://decider.com/movie/kick-ass-2/)? [Stranger Things](https://decider.com/show/stranger-things/) star Priah Ferguson and Marlon Wayans headline family-friendly scary-season comedy The Curse of Bridge Hollow, now on Netflix.

The Curse of Bridge Hollow on Netflix stars Priah Ferguson, aka Erica from Stranger Things, and gives her a chance to shine.

But unlike Erica, who hasn’t yet had a big battle scene in Stranger Things, Sydney gets a chance to grapple with some monsters head-on. Don’t look too closely at the script, or you’ll find yourself wondering why Sydney’s mom (played by Kelly Rowland) responds to her daughter’s freak-out about anthropomorphic Halloween decorations by giving her permission to go to a Halloween party. In one memorable scene, she calls out, “Hey, itsy-bitsy!” before absolutely annihilating a giant, hairy spider with a freakin’ flamethrower. At least Sydney’s new town is really into her favorite holiday— Halloween—but this provides little comfort when her dad, a science teacher, dismisses the spooky decorations in town as childish. She buys a costume and a toy bat, and she lights a spooky Jack-o-lantern that she found in their new home’s attic. Let Erica fight a Demogorgon in Stranger Things Season 5 challenge!