rewatch review #1: the scream team (2002)

One of my favorite parts of the changing seasons is watching old movies to get in the mood of whatever season is coming next. In the winter, I’ll watch The Muppet Christmas Carol (Brian Henson, 1992) and A Christmas Story (Bob Clark, 1983). In the summer, I might watch Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993) or The Sandlot (David Mickey Evans, 1993). In September, it’s You’ve Got Mail (Nora Ephron, 1998)—although this movie is actually evergreen to me. It can be a Christmas movie too, if you focus on the winter parts of it, like the scene where Meg Ryan is decorating her Christmas tree and talking about the Joni Mitchell song, “River.”

But while the other seasons (like winter) can be tinged with melancholy—for me, October rewatches are mostly happy, classic, and uncomplicated. Pumpkins, cobwebs, witches, wizards, vampires, monsters, bad CGI—it’s pure Halloween bliss. Ever since I first looked at my phone and was shocked to see it was October, I’ve been checking ABC/Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween schedule (expanded from 13 Nights of Halloween!) repeatedly.

I watched Hocus Pocus (Kenny Ortega, 1993) on October 1st, to kick things off right. Maybe it was that I was collaging and watching Felicity during the commercial breaks, or the fact that there were commercials interrupting the magic at all, but sadly: Hocus Pocus did not totally pass the test of time. I love Bette Midler and the moment the Sanderson sisters sing “I Put a Spell on You,” and Thora Birch totally steals the show, but—as happens sometimes when you rewatch a childhood favorite—the general timeline wasn’t what I remembered, and it was weirdly paced and boring at times, and I just didn’t buy into everything. I thought to myself, Oh yes, this is a children’s movie.

A few days later, I decided to rewatch the Disney Channel Original Movie The Scream Team (Stuart Gillard, 2002). When I think about the movie villains that still hold a place in my head, The Scream Team’s Zachariah Kull often comes to mind. Zachariah is an early 1800s inventor who, legend has it, burned down his house with his wife inside. He is hanged for his crime, and he haunts his small New England town for 200 years, setting fires and stealing souls. (And he kind of looks like Joaquin Phoenix.)

Then Kat Dennings gets there with her brother in 2002, following the death of their grandfather. Zachariah steals their grandfather’s soul, and they must get it back so that he can cross over to the afterlife. In the process, they discover Zachariah was wrongly executed: the fire was an accident! He had discovered natural gas! The town was afraid of his vision for the future, so they killed him! It’s wild.

Watch it for the oddly complex and death-focused plot, for Zachariah Kull (who I still found scary), or for Kat Dennings in her third IMDB credit, rocking numerous double denim ensembles.