A Halloween Carol
When I saw the previews for this, I thought this one had a good chance of being one I really might like. But unfortunately for me it was a case of the previews being the best part of the movie. It was a Halloween version of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, the basis of several recent Hallmark Countdown to Christmas movies. Which makes perfect sense, right? After all, the spooky ghosts of the Dickens classic fit right in with a Halloween theme. I really liked what I saw of one of the ghosts, and a scene they showed of Meghan Ory, the lead who played the Scrooge character, was funny and she was cute in it.
Meghan plays Everly, a fashion designer who specializes in wedding dresses. We first see her stalking to work being all Scrooge-y about Halloween and all of its paraphernalia. We soon find out that she was publicly humiliated at the annual Fire Station Halloween Bash many years ago, and that has permanently cast a blight on her Halloweens. Along with that, as is usual with Hallmark heroines, it has caused her to erect walls around herself and close herself off both to love and in her professional life and her other relationships. And also, as usual with these characters, the big traumatic event has something to do with a man. Hallmark heroines are traditionally very fragile flowers when it comes to romantic disappointment. One setback and the whole trajectory of their lives is down the tubes. In addition to keeping Beau (Kevin McGarry), a great guy who loves her, and a fireman to boot, firmly in the friend zone, she has also quashed the ambitions of Tracy, her talented and loyal assistant. Her refusal to avoid risk and otherwise open herself up to change is symbolized by turning down opportunities to make custom Halloween costumes during the season. Specifically, a couples costume, Avocado on Toast, designed by Tracy.
The night before Halloween, Everly is visited by the ghosts of, you know, past, present and future, to show her the error of her ways and help her turn her life around. The ghosts were the best part of the movie, particularly her dead former mentor, Anna Watkins, the filling the role of Jacob Marley, and Grant, The Ghost of Christmas, I mean Halloween, Future, played by and Lochlan Quarmby. He had a lot of charisma.
When he takes her 10 years in the future she gets her final wakeup call when he shows her Beau, her childhood “friend”, playing with two little munchkins that she knows are not theirs, because she would be around 50 at this time. So would he, but he apparently found himself a much younger woman. Also her business has been taken over by her continually thwarted assistant and she is relegated to slaving away at her sewing machine all alone in her house. Lessons learned, she emerges on Halloween morning a changed woman, bent on making amends to Tracy and Beau. The Tracy situation goes well, but Beau is not as cooperative as she had hoped. She forgets the lessons learned and proceeds to hide herself under the covers instead of attending the fateful Fire Station Bash. This serves as the 15 minutes-to-go romantic setback and tension builder.
The production values of this movie were up to snuff and of course the Ghosts helping our doomed heroine change the trajectory of her life were a reliable if predictable plot device. The script was OK, though for me, the jokes didn’t land. I enjoyed Meghan Ory’s performance in the short snippets we saw in the preview. I liked her cheerfulness and energy. And she brought that animated performance to the whole role. But that became a problem for me. She maintained that high energy regardless of where she was in her journey with little nuance or modulation. Her crying scenes were unconvincing. Frankly, and I suspect this is an unpopular opinion, her exuberant performance got on my last nerve. I don’t know if it was the actress’s interpretation, or the Director’s, but it didn’t work for me. Unfortunately.