Review: Haunted Hotel Season Two
It’s that time of year again when we drown ourselves in horror movies and shows that’ll fuel our nightmares for weeks. One such case is the spookily endearing Netflix animated series Haunted Hotel, where running a hotel can be frightening, especially when ghosts and demons overrun it. The 10-episode series, featuring Will Forte, Eliza Coupe, and Skyler Gisondo, centers on Katherine (Coupe) and her two children as they run the Undervale Hotel, full of the spirits of its previous residents. With help from the hotel’s owner and Katherine’s deceased brother, Nathan (Forte), they encounter a series of supernatural events while struggling to run a successful business.
Despite the concept being somewhat akin to “Hotel Transylvania”, I hadn’t watched Haunted Hotel when it first came out last year. Either it didn’t entice me enough to put it on my Halloween watchlist, or other horror movies caught my attention more. For all I know, it could be both. It wasn’t until the release of the show’s second season that I decided to catch up on season one to understand its concept better, and I surprisingly enjoyed it. Amid Netflix’s sea of raunchy adult animated comedies with similar humor and premises, Haunted Hotel was a well-deserved breath of fresh air, tolerable and even funny. It blends adult, macabre comedy with fun, charming plots that are delightfully spooky, delivering an animated sitcom that feels familiar by design but endearing in its family dynamic and callbacks to classic horror tropes.
As a result, I have a clearer sense of what season two of Haunted Hotel will deliver, as it aims to offer even more paranormal adventures for Katherine, Nathan, and the rest of the family. This time, they’re joined by Shayna, a rebellious teen who becomes the hotel’s newest employee after helping them deal with the ancient god’s ooze. With the new addition, the second season has them confront numerous supernatural situations, like Annabelle’s dinner party and a witch’s curse, amid the usual family drama. Animated sitcoms beyond their first season can either make or break their concept, and Haunted Hotel’s second season is one instance where it ended up as good as the first. While it still offered a few sitcom tropes we’re familiar with, season two also retained the good spiritual merits from the previous season, making the show another reason it’s worth checking into this Halloween season.
One such merit is its combination of adult humor and genre storytelling. Since the same people behind “Rick and Morty” made the show, Haunted Hotel offers humor that’s parodic in its horror tropes and endearing in its dysfunctional family dynamic. I’ve only seen one episode of “Rick & Morty”, so I can’t compare the two in terms of comedy. But I will say the humor in Haunted Hotel ended up being more hilarious than I expected. This is because the voice cast continues to do a decent job, including Will Forte and Skyler Gisondo, and the writing is surprisingly suitable. Some of it is a bit on-the-nose, but the rest honestly got me chuckling more than scared, and for a series like this, that’s exactly what they should do.
But what matters is that the humor didn’t get in the way of the family dynamic, which is the series’ heart. Rather than indulging viewers with one sex joke after another, Haunted Hotel focuses equally on developing the characters amid their misadventures at the hotel. Granted, it does feature a few sex-related jokes, but most stem from the family’s genuine chemistry and even its horror tropes, making it more tolerable than Netflix’s other adult animated comedies. However, what really helped was the heartfelt vibe it gave the family and its plots. Season one offered such moments involving Nathan and his “death day” and the finale with Abaddon saving his found family. For season two, the best episode that utilized its endearment was “Ghost Day Out”, where Nathan learns to spend each moment to the fullest after meeting and falling in love with Bridget. It may not be highly emotional, but it also highlighted Nathan’s character arc beyond his typical comic relief routine.
I’ve been watching plenty of adult animated shows that follow the usual raunchy formula. Most of them end up being derivative carbon copies of each other, either passable or forgettable, except a few. Fortunately, Haunted Hotel is one where the blend of adult comedy and story is actually fun, let alone delightfully spooky. Its second season proves that theory with another round of creepily fun, charming encounters that never lose sight of the soul of its dysfunctional family. Its sitcom tropes may get in the way at times, and its new employee, Shayna, has little to do beyond her debut in the first episode. But that didn’t change the fact that this is one of the few adult animated shows I actually enjoyed most, thanks to its solid voice cast and macabre humor. After being indulged in raunchy, unfunny shows on Netflix, this is a solid change of pace that’s also a suitable option worth adding to our Halloween watchlist.
