Is Wicked worth the watch? A horror blogger's thoughts.

Find out if this witchy movie is worth the watch (if, like me, your taste ranges from horror to musicals; look at us containing multitudes)

Beloved subscribers,

Long time, no talk. Remember last time when I promised I would start our regularly scheduled content again? I LIED

But, to misquote Arnie, I’m back, baby (she says, for the second message in a row). As we’re winding up the year and I’m looking at 2025 (BARF), I want to actually bring back a regular publishing schedule again. So, hold me accountable in January. For the time being, you get this: random pings every time I have too many words to say about a specific topic and my friends are all in bed so I can’t say it at them.

In an unusually timely fashion*, I’m writing about something that’s currently in the cultural consciousness: the movie adaptation of the musical Wicked starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. These thoughts could not be fresher; I’m writing this as I arrive home from a 10 PM Tuesday night showing. I was on the fence about this movie. Its marketing campaign is… confusing, with the trailer shot more like an action adventure than a musical, and I DON’T like the idea of splitting it in two parts. BUT, I’d seen it starting to get really positive reviews, and as a musical fan, it seemed like my honor-bound duty to find out for myself: is it worth the hype? Stay tuned if you want to find out as well.

*The last two horror articles I wrote for our blog, which I was meant to write in response to the zeitgeist, were about Oppenheimer (published one year after the movie came out) and MaXXXine (published four months after I saw it in theaters).

G-d damn it; it was good

Perfect? No, of course not. What is it - Rocky Horror Picture Show? But it’s good. If you like musicals, it is worth a watch. It’s really well shot and well acted; the songs are all a lot of fun and the sets are appropriately colorful and alluring. If you were on the fence about watching Wicked, like I was, then this is me asking you to give it a chance.

What you get when you’re not too busy being self-conscious

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been writing an article about what I call “self-aware” movies. That is, movies that know exactly what they are and are content to be so. Also known as: the answer to the irony-poisoning that ravages the superhero genre. In horror, it’s a slasher movie that’s not embarrassed to be “trashy” - it doesn’t have respectability and it’s not trying for it.

So, with that on my mind, I sat down for 2 hours and 40 minutes of singing, dancing, and elaborate choreography. (Yeah, it’s somehow that long despite only being the first half; I was shook when the credits rolled and I checked my phone to see it was 1 AM). The movie is saw is not the movie that was marketed at me. If you watch the trailer for Wicked, you might be led to believe it’s an action adventure. It features a little singing in it (it’s hard to avoid), but the trailer seems to be downplaying the musical aspect of the film. The trailer is self-conscious about the movie being a musical in a way that the actual movie isn’t.

It’s not just Wicked(‘s trailer - again, the movie itself is fine). It’s the fact that so many people didn’t realize that Wonka was a musical until they sat down to watch it. It’s me watching the trailer for Cyrano seven billion times, but being shocked when I put on the film and Peter Dinklage began to sing. Marketing teams seem wary of musicals; they are silly and camp and obviously not mass appeal. It’s sad that this genre I have so much love for is looked on with disdain.

To jump briefly back to horror: that’s something I actually have always appreciated about the genre and its fans. When I was writing my article about self-aware movies in contrast to self-conscious movies, my friend asked me for examples of each. I seriously struggled to think of a horror movie that was self-conscious. Self-aware? Easy. Scream, X, MaXXXine, Tremors, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. But self-conscious? Don’t get me wrong - there’s plenty of bad horror out there. It might be schlocky, cheap, inconsiderate, over-the-top, nonsensical, problematic, and any other number of things, but it’s still definitely horror.

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Today’s horror recommendation: My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Since this is an article about Wicked, about two teen girls who build a relationship, I figured I’d give a recommendation with similar themes. Also, since you’ve politely sat through this horror blog’s review of a non-horror topic, I figured I owe you a purely horror suggestion. If you’ve never read anything by Grady Hendrix and you like classic horror tropes, then you have a treasure trove awaiting. My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a fantastic place to start (it’s where I did) as it’s a classic scenario: teen girl taken over by some demon in an 80s high school setting that has no clue what its students get up to behind closed doors. I don’t want to give any spoilers away, but know that this book is so good that after reading one of the climactic scenes at the end, I found myself so genuinely creeped out that I had to watch a YouTube video of puppies before I went to sleep.