HALLOWIEBE Review: Fun Family Fodder

Halloween as a party has been on the rise in the Netherlands for the past decade, and though it is nowhere near as popular here as in the United States, it's still gaining traction fast. So while we have a rich tradition in Sinterklaas films "for the whole family" in the Netherlands (including our very own horror version for the adults), Halloween was not represented as such over here. Until now.

Jasper ten Hoor and Ivan Hidayat are known for their very witty shorts, and I can recommend their Sandwitch (viewable here) to everyone. Now they have made their first feature-length film, Hallowiebe, featuring the two leads from Sandwitch , and the question is: can they also handle an 85-minute narrative? Thankfully, the answer is yes, though fans of their earlier work may be disappointed that Jasper and Ivan had to dial down on the violence and horror, this being a children's film after all.

In Hallowiebe we follow Wiebe, a lazy, overweight, bumbling security guard, who has wasted all his money on a television advert hugely overselling his qualities. The ad pays off though: when the theme park Halloween Happyland needs a team of guards in a hurry, they hire Wiebe. It's a windfall, the highest paying job of his life. The task: guard the empty park, the night before Halloween, to prevent anyone from sabotaging the party the next day. There is one catch though: Wiebe doesn't have a crew, and needs to enlist people in a hurry while almost nobody wants to work with him after his previous failures.

There is another, more dangerous catch: a deranged tech-billionaire hates Halloween and sends his army of robots to the park to destroy it, guards included, to prevent the party from getting more popular. Can Wiebe and his woefully unprepared crew of misfits learn to work as a team and survive the night?

Reading the synopsis and watching the poster will give you exactly the right idea of what to expect here. This is a by-the-numbers family film, very formulaic, and often predictable to a fault. But it's made by genre lovers, and that oozes through every seam, from the music cues to the horror references. Wiebe himself is an egoistic idiot and you might wonder why we're supposed to root for him at all. His sole redeeming quality is that he is played by Duncan Meijerling, who manages to make Wiebe a lovable and funny goofball. Wendy Ruijfrok is the young smart sidekick who tries to keep everybody alive and she is good in the role. And the other Sandwitch alumn, Max van Kreij, has an infectious and almost illegal amount of fun as the perpetually sneering villain. The audience I saw it with was never bored, even through the inevitable preachy bits, and that is an achievement.

Jasper ten Hoor and Ivan Hidayat do not aim high, but they do not miss either. Hallowiebe is kiddie-oriented fun and the fact that they manage to make their brand of humor work in this format bodes well for the future. Hopefully, that future also holds a kick-ass science fiction horror film for adults. Please?


Hallowiebe is released wide in the Netherlands today.