Fun fact: the inspiration for “A Madea Halloween” came from a short segment of the 2014 film “Top Five.” In the segment, there is a fake trailer for a fake Madea movie shown, that is about a Madea Halloween movie. The only problem with this is that the trailer and segment in the film was making fun of the outrageous concepts of the Madea franchise. Tyler Perry loved the idea of a Madea Halloween film, but apparently didn’t get the memo on the ‘making fun of’ part.
"BOO" begins painfully with an extended sequence centering on a frat house. They’re famous for throwing epic Halloween parties, and they soon find themselves hitting on the daughter of Tyler Perry’s character. He forbids her to go to the party, and after she acts increasingly rude to him, he decides to call Madea to watch the children while he works. Then, Halloween and horror-themed hijinks ensue.
I laughed, I’ll admit it. However, I laughed three times. Every time it was at a visual gag or moment of slapstick. Though, whenever any character opens their mouth, the smile left my face as I was forced to endure some of the most painful dialogue I had ever heard. Some sequences go on for 15 minutes with no plot movement whatsoever or just stretch a joke out to unbearable lengths. In one segment, we go from someone talking about how Tyler Perry’s character needs to get control of his daughter to how he got a pencil stuck through one of his testicles as a child. I watched the film, and I don’t understand how it got from point A to B.
Somewhere in the middle of the movie, there are a few moments of inspired humor. When it’s just the elderly alone in the house and creepy high jinks begin to happen, you can see the weird genius of the concept of old crotchety people in the setting of a horror film. However, this genuine humor lasts for just 15 minutes, at most, before it goes back to terrible jokes and cringe-inducing dialogue.
Also, a personal message to Tyler Perry: please do not cast YouTube-ers who were made famous by uploading vlogs and pranks as main characters in your mainstream Hollywood film! The lead frat boy is played by Yousef Erakat, and he is painful to watch. In my “Storks” review, I mentioned how the pigeon character was annoying, but at least the filmmakers understood that he was there just for laughs. Yousef does not leave your eardrums intact any moment he is onscreen as he seems to shriek every line he says louder than those who are scared in the film!
"BOO" also seems equal parts afraid of the new generation. The plot revolves around how adults are always in the right and the teenagers are always snot nosed brats, yet it seems ready to pander to them at any opportunity. For every finger wagging moment, there’s another one featuring a hip YouTube-er, a famous rapper or smoking weed.
The whole movie just teeters between being bland and being bad. When it isn’t bad, it’s just mediocre. And while I think it’s fine that a movie can be made just for some laughs, that doesn’t mean it must be awful! There are films that exist purely for stupid laughs that are good! Hell, even I have a dumb comedy favorite, it’s “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” and while I’ll admit that that movie is bad, it’s nowhere near as bad as this!
Combining cringe-inducing jokes and dialogue with a poorly paced, pandering and all around awful story, "BOO! A Madea Halloween" manages to make the Madea franchise even worse. A few inspired moments can’t save the rest of the garbage in this film. What could have been a self-satirical romp about the weird directions some franchises will go ended up absolutely terrifying me. Terrifying me at the thought that I paid money to see this.
Rating: 1.5/5
Photo Courtesy of Lionsgate and Tyler Perry Studios.
