HALLOWIEBE OVERDRIVE: This Is NOT A Review...

I normally don't review Dutch movies aimed at children, but there is a first time for everything and last year that was what happened with Hallowiebe, a fun family film with a Halloween theme. I am a big fan of its directors Jasper ten Hoor and Ivan Hidayat, who made many funny and scary shorts, often both at the same time. But were their talents applicable for a feature-length film for children? Yes. Hallowiebe turned out to be a success, with 90,000 sold tickets (which is a lot in the Netherlands) and currently its IMDb rating is 7.7. Not bad for a debut!
Hey, I liked it a lot as well.

The investors of the film were happy enough to allow a sequel, and it is currently out in Dutch cinemas: Hallowiebe Overdrive. Security guard Wiebe and his team once again need to save the theme park Halloween Happyland, which has a great new attraction: the giant robot which almost destroyed the park in the previous film's finale. But a smaller, sleeker robot is spotted at night, trying to steal the big one. Who can be behind this threat? Evil billionaire Sam Haine, the villain of the first film, is in prison and cannot have made this new opponent, which is faster, stronger, and seems to have no weak points. Can Wiebe and his team prevent the theft? Maybe more importantly, can Wiebe handle his own ego, which has swollen to gigantic proportions after his success in the first film?

In my opinion, Hallowiebe Overdrive is a better film, better paced, funnier, and the language puns and money shots really hit. The cast is game with everyone from the first film reprising their roles. Duncan Meijerling is Wiebe, and while we have even less reason to like him this time he is often hilarious, buffooning his way through the plot. Wendy Ruijfrok plays his smart(er) sidekick Jenny who constantly saves the day, and even Max van Kreij is back as Sam Haine, now imprisoned, in a segment which is an extended spoof of Silence of the Lambs. If you liked the first film I'd definitely recommend this one. But hey, don't listen to me, as I cannot review this film.

Why can't I review the film? Because I'm in it. Yes, in some scenes in Hallowiebe Overdrive, a group of journalists can be seen chasing after people for interviews. Most of that group consists of actual journalists, many of which had reviewed the first film, and that included me. Fun as that was (and probably my first on-screen acting credit), I cannot in good faith review a film I was part of, even if I only can be seen for a couple of seconds. What I CAN do however, is maybe tell a bit about my day on the set.

The real theme park used as Halloween Happyland is called Toverland, and it has a few very nice rollercoasters. One of those is made from wood, and regulations dictate that once a year, the rails need to be detached, the wood checked, and the rails re-attached. That day the park was closed and the production team could use it for the film's daytime shots, using extras instead of visitors. It also meant that for a lot of the day the air was filled with the sounds of hardcore carpentry at great heights, but hey, you can't have it all. The production did get beautiful sunny weather and that was worth all the inconvenient sounds.

So on the 3rd of March this year, I took my car, picked up a few colleagues at different points in the Netherlands, and drove to the far South-East. There we were given instructions on where to stand and who to badger. For one shot we all had to gang up on actress Iris Van Geffen, who plays Halloween Happyland's manager. Several takes were done and each time we became more enthusiastic, until director Jasper ten Hoor asked us to tone it slightly down as this was a kid's film AND we kept standing between Iris and the cameraman. Next take, we all ran towards Iris, yelling questions, but as she was moving forward and the cameraman was behind her, this meant that after we reached her, we all had to run backwards. This is apparently not a talent of mine as I stumbled and went down in the crowd. Jasper told me that my impromptu stunt unfortunately wasn't captured by the camera "...but we all know it happened!". Ah well...

The second shot thankfully did not require any backwards running. We were split up in smaller groups, to interview individual members of Wiebe's team. This was fun as our questions were not scripted and we were allowed to try and get the actors to laugh. The whole day the atmosphere was good, the Toverland park crew was very hospitable and the food was good as that is rule number one on low-budget film sets.

Directors Jasper ten Hoor and Ivan Hidayat, genre nerds that they are, even provided us with a quiz of sorts. Hallowiebe Overdrive is rife with language jokes and movie references, some obvious, some obscure, and this extended into the props we got given. Below is a shot of some of the notebooks, cameras and microphones we got. The microphones are all labeled for stations which appeared in horror movies, and we spent our waiting time trying to find out which films they were from. Some were pretty obscure! I'll give away "Schokkend Nieuws" because that is a Dutch genre film magazine. But all the others are legit from other films!
And that concludes my on-set report.

Hallowiebe Overdrive is currently playing at Dutch cinema's and the first Hallowiebe can be seen on Amazon Prime in certain regions.