Is Haunted Hotel Your October Escape?
A haunted hotel is a terrible inheritance. The guests are difficult, your brother is dead, and he is still around to tell you how to run the place. That is the setup for Haunted Hotel, whose second season reaches Netflix on Friday, October 9. If your October queue is getting relentlessly grim, this is a more sociable prospect.
The first season follows Katherine, a single mother trying to keep the Undervale going with help from her brother's ghost. I like a haunted-house premise that makes leaving impractical. Somebody still has to pay the bills, however many spirits are hanging around.
Creator Matt Roller put the hospitality workers alongside the monsters in his description of the series. That is the attraction: a building you ought to flee becomes a place somebody has to maintain.
We have not reviewed season two. To see whether its premise is for you, start with the first season's opener, Welcome to the Undervale. Netflix's synopsis has Katherine hiring an exorcist so she can attract paying customers. Getting rid of the haunting would apparently be good for business and terrible for the sitcom.
If you want a second checkpoint, watch through to episode three, Randy Slasher. Its setup pairs Katherine's date with a killer menacing the others. That should tell you whether you like this particular collision of family embarrassment and horror. Keep the episodes in order; this is a trial run, not a highlights reel.
Give it one episode
Netflix lists the first-season episodes at 25 minutes each. Start with the pilot, rather than promising yourself a whole season before the new one arrives. You are testing whether Katherine and her impossible household are people you want to spend more time with.
The premise makes Haunted Hotel worth that experiment. A joke about the electricity bill can belong beside a ghost without apologising for either. If you want your October horror to leave room for company and ordinary irritations, try the Undervale. If the pilot leaves you cold, check out.
