(courtesy IMP Awards)
It may come as a surprise to those seeing a blog full-to-bursting of Halloween posts this October that this reviewer is not one for horror.
That may seem to be a small and niggling liability in a season devoted to horror, both its manifestation and banishment, but trust me, there are ways and means around this unwillingness to be frightened, horrified, scared and downright terrified, and one of them is the hilariously over-the-top and gloriously delivered silliness of Haunted Hotel, which has just dropped its second season of mirth, merriment and monsters.
Set in a place of hospitality, the Undervale Hotel, which is jam-packed full of ghosts, including one of the main characters, Nathan Freeling (Will Forte) who is upbeat and chipper (although his cause of death adds a layer of tortured complexity to this seemingly superficially bouncy persona) and which seems to attract more than its fair share of ancient evils and demonic intruders, Haunted Hotel is not the sort of place most mortal souls would care to book into, much less stay in.
It’s something that Nathan’s younger sister, newly-divorced Katherine Freeling (Eliza Coupe) is all too aware of as she tries to make a go of a hotel where zombie ducks live in hotel rooms, purple goo turns guests and employees alike into ancient-evil serving possessed zombies and a simple concierge bell leads to some very un-motherly behaviour.
Business like and grounded, Katherine doesn’t just have all manner of supernatural beings to contend with; her family is quirky as hell, both biological and adopted with daughter Esther (Natalie Palamides) so well-versed in fighting evil that she has a spell and a counter-measure to every entity that comes her way (should a young girl be this competent in fighting the dark arts? Katherine thinks not), adopted son Abaddon (Jimmi Simpson) actually an ancient demon caught in the body of a boy from the 1700s (he’s both malevolent and innocently winsome which makes for brilliant comedy) and son Ben (Skyler Gisondo), a socially awkward teen who wants to do the right thing but who is easily led by ghosts, both those who want to date him and/or possess him.
You can see where a sensible, level-headed businesswoman like Katherine may encounter some difficulties.
After a promising if occasionally weak first season, which executed well enough on its goofy premise to keep this reviewer watching and eager for a second tranche of episodes – only eight this time, down a little from the first seasons’s 10 – Haunted Hotel is back with episodes which deliver the quirk, the fun and a surprising amount of emotional growth and maturity.
It’s the sign of a talented group of creators that a premise which could have quite easily simply coasted by on its hilariously expansive setting is expanded and deepened, not so much with the idea of ghosts and demons and foul entities oh my who are everywhere as they were the first time around, but in the way the family at the heart of the outlandishly monstrous stories are given a chance to grow and deepen as characters.
We’re treated, for instance, in the final episode of the season (“The Visit”) no less, to an origin story where we see, rather affectingly, especially in an end-of-episode montage, how Katherine and her family came to be at the Undervale Hotel and how Nathan was struggling, despite his seemingly undeniable perkiness, to stay on top of things.
We get to see how Esther came to dabble in the dark arts as a way of coping with her parents’ divorce, Ben is struggling with being an eldest kid, Abaddon is plain crazy but also unexpectedly vulnerable and how even Katherine, for all her straightforward thinking, is as fallible and able to be lured into a bad deal with the supernatural as anyone else.
In “Astral Esther”, where Esther’s has projected her body out of her body only to misplace it (oops!), we get to see the tight bonds between mother and daughter, and how even in a hotel full of supernatural events, what really matters and will endure is the enduringly strong love between a family which may be quirky but which loves being together.
That is the hallmark of this season; it sings the praises of family and togetherness, even among ghosts such as Stabby Paul (Duncan Trussell), Candle Head (Matt Roller, the creator of Haunted Hotel) and a range of other hilariously deranged souls who form a self-help group, try to elect a mayor (Nathan goes for the gig but it doesn’t quite go the way he expects) and have a lot of fun, not that different to the communal family fun of Ghosts.
With more laughs per episode and a willingness to make merry with any and all horror elements, including that which would otherwise send this reviewer packing but which in animated form are funny rather than run-from-the-room terrifying, Haunted Hotel has a fine old time in its second season.
There’s mortal peril as an ancient evil tries to dig its way out of the basement, a new employee in humorously offhand Shayna (Natalie Morales) whose family bloodline performs a key role at the hotel, some truly touching moments in “Ghost Day Out” where Nathan falls rather beautifully in love, freaky mermaids which make lake fishing not as bucolic as might otherwise be, and the sort of generalised supernatural mayhem from which great, quirky, oneliner-roch, great character-driven comedy is made.
There’s so much going on in any one episode but Haunted Hotel never loses its gift for offbeat hilarity, and its ability to find touching moments and vulnerable humanity and a celebration of family in the midst of a hotel full of the kind of beings and manifested evil that should make any kind of familial happiness impossible.
But possible it is, and while season three is not a lock just yet, you can only hope this cleverly funny, hugely inventive and wildly imaginative show which deftly combines the silly and the serious to highly watchable and surprisingly emotionally involving effect, gets another chance to show us that life and death aren’t that separated and that there’s love, family and friendship to be found on whichever side of the mortal divide you happen to find yourself.
Haunted Hotel streams on Netflix.
And why not? Another clip …