Not gonna lie, I thought of writing about this movie because we actually did have a full moon this Halloween. Also because this pandemic feels like a curse, still here because some of us just have to throw caution to the wind and light the black flame candle? And much like a certain iconic part of the film, sometimes it feels like we’re warning everyone and they keep on partying, repeating a curse easily onto themselves. Dancing until they die.
I’m sorry, that got dark really quick.
Something that stands out to me about Hocus Pocus is its caution against prematurely celebrated victories, while still holding an overarching promise of the eventual triumph over evil. In the prologue of the film, the Sanderson Sisters are hanged for their crimes, but it’s still a tragedy how Binx is separated from his family. (Besides, the witches died laughing that they’d return). Three hundred years later, as Binx tells his story to the kids who brought them back, his conclusion is “I figured out what to do with my eternal life.” He figured the entire purpose of his immortality is to simply keep the witches from resurfacing. But now that they’ve resurfaced, his purpose to to help defeat them again.
Have you ever redefined your testimony like that? Things like “the problem was gone, but I still seem to suffer from it…but the important thing is the problem is gone.”
Or perhaps, “I still seem to suffer from it, but then I figured the purpose of my life is to help prevent it for others. The reason God planned for me to go through that was so I can help others.”
Or maybe sometimes it even gets shifted to, “I still seem to suffer from it, and I failed to protect others from the same, but maybe we’re supposed to help shut it down together.”
And there’s nothing wrong with feeling the significance of important work such as empathizing with others and helping them work through something similar. And I am never one to say there is nothing to come of that. There are probably many wrongs or evils we have individually turned around or defeated in our actions in others’ lives. It’s hard sometimes to appreciate the results of preventing something, so I do not take such resolves lightly. And there’s nothing wrong with changing our minds under new circumstances.
But what’s interesting in the character of Binx is how driven he is by his survivor’s guilt, that it defines his entire immortal life. His entire purpose, he feels, is this one story. This testimony of being called to do one thing, which he constantly beats himself up over should he fail to protect anyone.
It seems like a lonely life. Then he bonds with Dani, a little girl much like his sister when he was a human, and their bond goes beyond simply another human to protect. When the Sanderson Sisters are burned in a kiln and the kids celebrate their victory (prematurely), Binx still sounds bittersweet about it all. Glad the witches are defeated, sad that he couldn’t have done it earlier, still feeling the weight of his loss in the past. To his surprise, he is invited as part of the kids’ family, adopted as Dani’s new cat, into a warm and cozy home for the first time in centuries. Binx allows himself to be taken in, allows himself to bond without any actual need or duty. Dani promises to take care of him for generations and generations. It’s a lovely, warm and fuzzy moment, and it was nice to see a moment of rest for him.
It doesn’t seem like the best ending, though, for Binx as someone who was once human and who was separated from his family forever. It’s a much needed reprieve, but it can’t be his eternity, watching generations of this family die, too. As cuddly as everything is, he is still cursed. And that’s because it’s not the ending.
Should we really expect to have it all figured out, our stories now done, our purpose in life rooted only in one thing? And what happens if we someday fall short of that one thing?
Well, the Sanderson Sisters, still protected by magic for this one night, easily return to life. It seems nothing can kill them in this night. This Halloween while the candle still glows and the moon is round is all theirs. Perhaps it’s like the way evil works in a fallen world. So long as it is metaphorically night, evil still can return.
Thankfully, the powers of evil are also reactionary because they are so conditional and fragile. Once the sun comes up, the once powerful Sisters would turn to dust. They take on trying to suck the lives out of children, take from others to stave off any of their own losses or demise. As little Dani points out, however, it doesn’t matter how young or beautiful they make themselves by taking from others–selling their souls and harming others in order to gain is what makes them “the ugliest thing I ever met.”
The witches continue their plot of luring children over, but become fixated on trying to specifically destroy the child who gave them such a challenge. They constantly try to take Dani, and the fight continues until Max downs the potion so that they have no choice but to take him instead. It was never asked or planned of him to give up his life for his sister, but it is one thing he does out of protective sacrificial love. Winifred Sanderson proceeds to take him, but not before whispering what a fool he is “to give up thy life for thy sister.”
She is soon defeated, however, along with her sisters, by the imminent rising of the sun and dawning of a new day. She is also destroyed by landing on hallowed ground. In that moment, the way you know the curse is truly defeated is the sad, satisfied meow of Binx.
The children are happy, until Dani sees the lifeless body of Binx and begs the cat to wake up because he’s not supposed to die. In that moment, she hears a gentle voice tell her, “Please don’t be sad for me, Dani.” She looks up and for the first time sees Binx as a human. His spirit is at last set free. He can move on to heaven, and reunite with his sister, as he yearned for all along.
While that is still what he wants, and what he goes on towards, his spirit is just a bit happier in knowing and loving Dani, promising that he’ll always be with her. He kisses Dani on the cheek goodbye, actually thanks Max for lighting the black flame candle, and even frames it as a positive thing because unearthing the evil allowed it to be confronted and truly defeated and not just buried. But Binx is no longer a lonely spirit defined by one testimony and cyclical purpose until his happy ending. His love for Dani and bonding with these children made his time enduring the curse less lonely, less perfectionist, less guilt-ridden.
And in the end, still taking love with him, he goes into the light.
Maybe our time enduring whatever curse there be, whatever events we are supposed to learn from, and whatever callings we feel will be messier than planned. Maybe we fail sometimes. Maybe we fixate too much on one directive in life sometimes. And maybe with our mistakes, and the love in our hearts to do better, we find one another, and we make life a little more bearable.
Perhaps while evil still can promise to return from the dead, while we wait for the coming dawn or for a certain reunion, we make the darkness a little easier to face.
Maybe our stories are more tangled up or complicated than we had originally planned, but the goodness of it isn’t just the coming dawn–but the fact that we are in this together.
