Wow, this one is much better than the sequel. Except for one issue that I will bring up when I get to it.

That’s Max Doyle (Sterling Beaumon) who is really into magic. And that’s Phears (Brian Stepanek) behind him who is considerably more of an actually scary character than he is in the sequel. In the sequel he is an absolute joke. Here he’s just like Nukie, but that’s getting ahead of myself to the problem with this movie. Max has moved into a house that once held a family that Phears murdered (although in the sequel we find out he only made them ghosts, but didn’t actually kill them). He pops out of the mailbox and goes into Max’s room. Max is practicing his magic when he says some words that catch Phears’ ears. We will find out that those words are part of a spell that can be used to send Phears away and not just some fancy magic sounding words as Max believes. Then we hear voices whispering from the vents. Phears refer to them as his children, and leaves the room.

After we get introduced to Max’s family, the two other important parts of the movie are shown to us. First, are the two kids above. They are ghosts of two kids that lived at the house, but were killed by Phears along with their family. We occasionally see the ghost of her mother, but she’s barely in the film. The second thing is where those voices are coming from. There’s an invisible hole in a wall in the basement. On the other side is where Phears comes from and where he has a bunch of spirits he is waiting to unleash on the world. Phears needs to find the ghost kids because there is a spell and a ring that could ruin his plans, which they may have knowledge of.

That’s the setup. The kid just wants to just do his magic show at school and his greatest dream is to have Ali Lohan’s character be his assistant. But the two ghost kids, the “tunnel” in his basement, and Phears are having none of that. Hell, Phears literally splits Max’s dog Buster in half, emerges from the dog’s body, then shows that he can strip the skin off of Max and make it hurt next time. The dog then does snap back together though. So, this establishes that Phears can travel inside animals. In fact, he refers to himself as “the animal traveler”. Now is where the real problem in the film comes out.

That’s not the little girl ghost. That’s Phears having taken on her form. He takes on her form, the little boy ghost, and Max in quick succession in front of his underlings before revealing his plan to travel amongst them. Then he turns into a humanized form of himself. By that I mean he turns into the actor without all his makeup on.

That’s the same actor who played Arwin from The Suite Life. Makes sense since the Mom is played by Kim Rhodes who was the Mom on The Suite Life. The problem is that they showed that he can take on the form of other people and not just a humanized form of himself. Once you know he can do that, then just like when you find out Nukie can turn into light and fly anywhere, you wonder why the hell he doesn’t use this incredibly useful ability. I mean, go and replace the Mom. She’s the character that Max trusts the most and the film even provides a scene where he could have done it. Or replace Ali Lohan’s character to stick close to Max. This movie even sets up a scene where knowing that he can shapeshift, we expect him to do something with that ability which makes sense, but he doesn’t.

You see that? That’s a scene near the end of the movie where Phears pops out of a mouse on a teacher while she is alone in a classroom. Makes sense to get her alone by disguising himself as a mouse. Then he freezes her. Makes sense so that she can’t tell anyone what she just saw. Then he takes on her form so he can easily move about the school without anyone noticing someone who doesn’t belong. Nope, he turns into the humanized form of himself. What? Why do all that setup and then not have him do that? It’s really the only material problem with this film.

The rest of the film is a mixture of comedy and scares as it builds to Max finally getting the full spell and ring to send Phears away…till the sequel.

The movie ends with a cockroach laughing sinisterly, then the movie Joe’s Apartment (1996) begins.

If you can get past Phears not using that incredibly useful ability for anything useful, then this is perfectly fine. It’s much better than the sequel.