(courtesy IMP Awards)
It would be fair to say that if you had any choice in the matter, that you would not stay at the Undervale Hotel.
Located somewhere in update New York, the short-term lodging at the heart of Matt Roller’s Haunted Hotel should be the establishment of choice for brides looking for the perfect location wedding option or anyone wanting to get away from it all.
There’s one teensy-weensy problem … or quite a lot of them – it’s filled to the brim with all kinds of ghosts who like to stab people or who are obsessed with candles or maybe murderers or perverts or both (in a past life, anyway).
It’s the presence of these supernatural entities, all of whom are quirky as hell, that make running the hotel a massive headache and financial disaster for Katherine (Eliza Coupe) who took over the business on the death of her much-loved brother Nathan (Will Forte) almost a year earlier.
Moving in with her awkward 13-year-old son Ben (Skyler Gisondo) and his younger, sassy black magic practising sister Esther (Natalie Palamides), Katherine is also a mother of sorts, though she refuses to call it that, to Abaddon (Jimmi Simpson), a nightmarish demon bound for eternity to the body of a 17th-century boy who is constantly yearning for a much-delayed return to hell.
Or, you know, to bring hell to earth; either option will do, he’s not fussy.
It’s quite the familial unit, especially since Nathan is still around, one of the many ghosts who haunt the place and who provides some off-kilter hospitality advice when he really should just leave the running of the hotel to the far more level-headed Katherine.
If the premise sounds a little familiar, or you know, a lot, it is eerily reminiscent of Ghosts, the British/UK/etc show where a couple move into an inherent manor house, intent on opening a B&B, only to discover the place is packed full of the ghosts of people who have died there or within the property line.
The key difference in Haunted Hotel is that everyone can see the ghosts which makes for some fairly amusing moments where normal family issues such as Ben trying to work out who he is or Esther wanting to make friends at a new school or Katherine going on her first date since her divorce are set against ghosts and monsters and strange wardrobes doing all manner of highly unusual things.
Things that, by the way, owe a great deal to a range of horror influences from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to The Shining to The Innkeepers and on and on; if you know your horror, you will find something like 80 visual Easter egg references scattered through the ten episodes of the first season and likely considerably more narrative ones.
If, however, you are like this reviewer and horror-averse, you will have to rely on how much of the popular horror zeitgeist you have absorbed which, as it turns out, is quite a lot, with Haunted Hotel proving to be quite the accessible animation comedy vehicle.
In other words, if you know your horror then you will find a great many influences to unpack but if you don’t, you will cope just fine, not simply because the show goes for some obvious influences but because the way the family reacts to living among ghosts, demons and the odd zombie (who actually gives Esther a chance to wrestle with some potently lingering daddy issues) is hilariously relatable.
Not so much, it should be noted, because all of us spend our day routinely dealing with the ghosts of those who have unfinished business – much of which, by the way, is very very banal and funny – but because we’re all trying to make our way through life with families born or chosen and doing so against some fairly formidable obstacles and challenges.
To be fair, none of usually face apocalypses, possession of demonic kind (good thing too; when Ben calls the Vatican to get an exorcist, it doesn’t quite work out as planned) or portals of hell opening up (don’t use the good salt to keep the demons out; oops, too late!) but that’s what makes Haunted Hotel so low-key funny as the family (mostly) blithely wrestles with living life when they are forever surrounded by the dead.
While Haunted Hotel isn’t as richly comedic as The Great North or Rick and Morty (for which Roller used to write), and it may feel like a photocopy of shows you have seen before, it’s still sweet and funny and hugely entertaining and you will find yourself loving far more than you don’t.
There’s also something highly endearing about the way the show treats its characters and the fairly typical family dynamics that power the show.
Haunted Hotel is all about how we relate to others and what having a home feels like even when that home is full of creatures who form a strange extended village of sorts and how even when that family might get cloned or summon the dead, that there’s still a lot of connection and relating to be had.
And it’s way that all happens against a fairly atypical background that provides many of teh laughs; we all know life can be a massive challenge at times and what Haunted Hotel does with placing some fairly intense emotionally revelatory conversations against demonic incursions or possessive living hotel rooms is simply highlight to an hilarious but affecting degree how deeply weird life can be.
Does Haunted Hotel always succeed in the way some of its peers do with complex, consummate ease? Not necessarily but it hits the mark more often than it doesn’t, offers up an ensemble cast of very strange ghostly characters and some off-the-wall storylines, all while reminding us that no matter what we face, and Katherine, Ben, Esther, Nathan, and yes, even Abaddon, face a LOT, that we can count of family to save the day even if they don’t always mail it quite the way we want them to.
Haunted Hotel streams on Netflix.
Behind the scenes …