{"id":49792,"date":"2025-09-24T14:08:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T18:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=49792"},"modified":"2025-09-24T14:08:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T18:08:07","slug":"haunted-hotel-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/24\/haunted-hotel-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Haunted Hotel [2025]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A family tries to run a failing haunted hotel in Matt Roller\u2019s hilarious adult animated horror-comedy Haunted Hotel, streaming on Netflix.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, and most important: I loved this show. I laughed long and hard, had a blast at all the ghosts, goblins, and ghouls, and just had a great time. That\u2019s the big thing, right? Jumping into an entertainment and being flat-out entertained from start to finish on the jaunty 10-episode run. I rarely binge-watch things, preferring to spread out, but I ran through this like a teenager running away from a masked killer (aka Episode 3 with a riff on Bag Head Jason – my favorite).<\/span><\/p>\n

The story: a mom and her two kids, an insecure teen boy, and chaos goblin younger girl, take over her recently deceased brother\u2019s struggling, massive, and secluded hotel. The catch: it\u2019s filled with ghosts. Some nice (like said brother), some mean, some normal, some gory, and all just a little weird. Oh, and an all-knowing demon trapped in the body of a seven-year-old Victorian child. Other monsters, myths, and creatures show up for their particular band of chaos. It\u2019s a smorgasbord of horror. Think Ghosts (UK or US, take your pick, both are great) mixed with Gravity Falls (one of my favorites), but adult animation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s a show that revels in exploring, expanding, disassembling, and just reveling in cliches. Creator Matt Roller was a writer on Community, Rick and Morty, and Archer. Breaking down tropes and presenting a meta-understanding of story are hallmarks of all those shows. Roller and the rest of the writing team use tropes to gain laughs in honest ways. The team obviously loves horror, and it’s fun to turn horror into irrelevance mixed with world-weary adulthood and requirements. I love mixing the fantastical with the mundane. It\u2019s the sort of set-up that will argue semantics of a ghost saying \u201cboo\u201d; how it’s said, why, the context, before exploding someone\u2019s head.\u00a0 Overall, the writing is strong. Often, a concept like this will use up its idea quickly. But to my great surprise, Haunted Hotel grew stronger as it went. An understanding of the world and characters becomes better defined, and moves away from what jokes would find in the basic conceit. It helps that each episode looks at a different corner of horror and sci-fi, keeping it fresh, whether it be body snatchers, Lovecraftian horror, a basic ghost story, cults, or more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thankfully, it doesn\u2019t sink too often to the easy humor of body fluid (outside of ghostly-based jokes) or crude sex jokes. The running gags land each time, and the characters come and go (outside of the core) to keep their bits fresh (even as they rot off). Quips, asides, and overall irrelevance pervade. The whole is mostly episodic, with some character depth arcing softly across the ten.\u00a0 But nothing too strong, if you miss an episode or two, watching here and there with your partner, you won\u2019t be lost. The continuing characters are well defined and used to good effect. Yes, familiar like the Louise Belcher-ness of the girl, or older-in-knowledge-but-unknowning-of-basics demon boy relating to Stewie. Heck, Will Forte as the brother plays the character Will Forte does best: bumbling but lovable, enthusiastic loser.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The animation is solid. No slouching at all, but not setting a new mold. It has the clean, just detailed enough look of Big Mouth or Brickleberry. There\u2019s a direct pattern to the character designs that works, with expanded detail for specific episodic monsters. Visual gags abound, both in how the stories progress, ghosts look (so many funny deaths), and baked into the background (many horror locations are presented as landscapes; it was fun to try to catch them). ON that note: as to be expected, the show is a reference-a-rama but rarely is a direct nudge of \u201cHEY YOU KNOW THIS\u201d but fun uses of what we know. Some are direct (\u201coh, that’s Quint.\u201d) and some are more subtle (\u201coh, that\u2019s what Quint said and did in one scene\u201d, something I wouldn\u2019t get if I didn\u2019t watch Jaws two weeks ago). As noted with the deconstruction, much of the humor comes in casting a \u201cwhy\u201d question to tropes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The voices behind those characters are well-suited. The previously mentioned Will Forte is the most recognizable, though Chaos Goblin is Natalie Palamedes from Powerpuff Girls and a zillion other things. Jimmi Simpson is perfect as demon-child Abaddon, and Skyler Gisondo works Ben\u2019s insecurities with ease (as he often plays insecure characters, even Superman\u2019s Jimmy Olsen slides a bit there; he\u2019s good at it). Holding it together is Future Man\u2019s Eliza Coupe as the put-upon mom.\u00a0 A few guest starts pop in as expected. Loved having geek-god Keith David in the series start. Sad he didn\u2019t return, as he was seemingly set up for a recurring or overarching villain. But perhaps that\u2019s something lost as the production went on, focusing on more enclosed stories rather than lore-dropping (but I love me some lore, GIMME WEIRD HISTORY!). Anything with Kamail Nanjiani gets points from me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Haunted Hotel is a hilarious horror send-up of adult animation. Consistently funny in quippy writing, story beats, and visual gags, it’s a great way to start the spooky season (start? For me, it never ends).\u00a0 Check out Matt Rolle\u2019s show on Netflix; all episodes are streaming now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A family tries to run a failing haunted hotel in Matt Roller\u2019s hilarious adult animated horror-comedy Haunted Hotel, streaming on Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[99,219,477],"class_list":["post-49792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-animation","tag-comedy","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49796,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49792\/revisions\/49796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}