My updated Monster High: The Movie thoughts and opinions! (Spoilers ahead!)
With the movie releasing just a few days ago, I have some new things I wanna talk about after watching it and also throw out some things that I liked and disliked.
We’ll start off with the things I thought were good about the movie!
First and foremost, The overall look and aesthetics of the sets and scenery was spot on! It truly felt like a monster world should. From the monster world portal and school itself to the Coffin Bean, everything was so perfectly eerie without screaming over the top halloween-esque.
The costumes for the lead characters were really good! I appreciate that there were multiple costumes for most of the characters and that despite initial impressions from promo material, the first costumes the leads wear are super cute!
The relationship Between Clawdeen and her dad, Apollo, was very sweet even though we only got to see a tiny bit of it thru the whole movie.
Frankie was so funny and loveable while still having some great heartfelt moments, they were my favorite character in the movie. I like that the movie made them feel new while still keeping the original charms of OG Frankie!
The music was catchy! I was a little wary about the movie being a musical, but I do think the songs were great for what the movie actually turned out to be!
The plot twist of Mr. Komos actually being Jekyll/Hyde’s son was actually unexpected for me and I thought it was a clever idea and was even hinted at in one of his costumes.
I’m actually kind of excited for the sequel that was teased at the end because I am like 90% sure that the person looking at the crystal ball is Clawdeen’s mother, Selena.
The nails are very reminiscent of Clawdeen’s monster form claw-nails, plus it would make sense for a werewolf who doesn’t know about the changes at Monster High to want something to do with a vampire who knows magic.
And now that we’ve covered some of the good stuff, it’s time for my complaints about the bad stuff...
To start, they should have had all of the Ghoulfriends be part of the main group! It really made me sad to see them hype up Lagoona, Abbey and Ghoulia in the promo material just for them to barely be part of the movie. They destroyed any character potential they could have had by making them meaningless side characters.
The original appeal of the series was that they were a big group of best friends despite their many differences in personality and appearance. In the movie, none of them have anything that makes them special and unique, they all just feel like the same character with different clothes.
A few examples of butchered characters:
THEY MASSACRED MY GIRL GHOULIA! They made her into some random prankster tiktok girl and took away all the smarts and sweetness that made her special. She seems like an after thought that the producers had when they realized they needed to pad out some time with comedic relief and pointless side commentary. Like during the first graveyard scene, how did Ghoulia not realize that Draculaura was already there and why did she not report Drac, Clawdeen and Frankie to Bloodgood for breaking the curfew?
And as for Abbey, she had one line in the entire movie. She was basically non-existent compared to how important and how much she was in the original series.
I’m also super sad to see Lagoona reduced to Cleo’s lackey and essentially replacing Ghoulia herself as Cleo’s best friend. They could have done some really interesting things with her, but they decided to give her little to no attention at all. I was really hoping they would do something with all the watery effects we saw with her promotion images.
As for a couple of the lead characters, I don’t like the changes they made to Draculaura’s personality. Wile they could have kept some of the new aspects, like the pressure she feels from her family to be the perfect vampire, they should have kept her as the kind and sensitive character she was in previous iterations of MH.
And Cleo was never a mean girl! While she could be vain and over dramatic in past series, she was still very friendly and generous to her friends and others.
While I liked the Jekyll/Hyde twist, Komos was an awful villain and his “betrayal” would have been more impactful if we had actually gotten a chance to know and connect to him, but instead, he was just kinda there when the plot needed a villain that wasn’t Cleo. While it’s to be expected from a movie like this, the entire conflict and rapidly following resolution was extremely disappointing.
It sucks that Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde can’t be part of the series anymore since they were totally scrapped and replaced by Komos.
A lot of the background characters were so ugly, they could have made them look so much better and more monster-like without taking attention away from the main cast.
and the worst thing about this movie.... NO FRIGHT SONG! NOT A SINGLE NOTE OF IT!
My final thoughts on Monster High: The Movie are while it definitely was not a perfect movie, it was still enjoyable to watch even with some of it’s flaws, which is a sentiment that can be related back to every past generation of monster high movies, and when/if they do make a sequel, I really hope that the entire Ghoulfriends group is able to have a moment to shine instead of there being just the three that already had their time.
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