Hallmark Channel
With less than a week before the ‘Countdown to Christmas’ begins, Hallmark is getting fully into the Halloween spirit with the new romantic comedy Haunted Wedding, starring Janel Parrish and Dominic Sherwood as a soon-to-be-wed couple dealing with an angry spirit who may bring all their plans crashing down around them.
Jana (Parrish) and Brian (Sherwood) share a love of ghost hunting, though Jana is more on the scientific/sceptic side of things while Brian is a full-fledged believer. After failing to find any ghostly activity at a purportedly haunted location, Brian surprises Jana with a proposal which he’d set up in advance. The spirit moves her to say yes and she is immediately planning to have their wedding at an inn in Pennsylvania that promises a truly haunting experience. When Jana and her maid of honor Rachel (Lauren Cochrane) arrive, they are greeted by the owner Marion (Sharon Bajer), who is at her wits end with customers fleeing the inn out of sheer terror. She’s quite surprised Jana would want to risk having such a major event there, but she aims to please. Jana notices a room that guests are not allowed to rent — a sign saying so keeps falling over — and Marion confirms it is the room of the original resident Angelique. Excited by the activity she’s already seen (and Rachel is less than thrilled to be surrounded by ghosts), she awaits Brian’s arrival with the ghost-hunting equipment so they can check out the room. Before you know it Angelique appears, forlorn and angry, assuring the couple that she will never allow such a happy event to take place in her home.
Doing more digging from information obtained by Marion and the local historical society, Jana and Brian learn that Angelique was in love with a Scotsman named Malcolm, who had immigrated to the country for its patriotism, joining the Army to fight the Redcoats, and falling in love with Angelique in the process. Unfortunately her father forbid her from marrying beneath her status, so the two conspired to elope even if it meant she would lose everything. On the eve of their elopement, Malcolm is killed by a Redcoat, and Angelique died soon after, many said from a broken heart. Jana and Brian locate the spot where Malcolm died, which is now a pub dedicated to his memory, and find his ghost there as well. They know the only way to ensure their wedding is a success is to reunite the two lovers but … they are both trapped in the spots where they died. Brian calls in some ‘psychic’ friends like Earl Dewberry (Dan De Jaeger), who is obviously inspired by Otho from Beetlejuice, and he seems to prove he’s the fraud he was painted to be in a TV news story despite his best efforts. The couple come to the conclusion that the spirits need to be connected by an item that held some meaning for them both, and after Brian loses a medal that belonged to Malcolm all seems lost. The guests are arriving at the inn and Angelique is getting more despondent with each failed attempt to reunite her with her long lost love. Will Jana and Brian be able to find a solution and carry out their own wedding?
Hallmark Channel
Haunted Wedding is a delightful Hallmark treat for ‘spooky season’. If you squint, you can see influences here from Ghosts and Outlander, but they are faint enough to not feel too referential. The story by Rod Spence and Nina Weinman has quite a few laughs — no real scares — and a lot of heart. The only issue is that in order to fill the allotted run time, it becomes a little repetitive with solutions to problems coming late in the story when they should have been much obvious earlier on but would have shortened the movie. There is a lot of Jana and Brian saying, ‘we’ll solve this problem’ and a lot of Angelique being angry because they haven’t and telling them she will not allow their wedding to go on. Much of the humor comes from Rachel, Marion and Brian’s best man Steve trying their best to make things run smoothly, while at the same time Steve is also trying to show Rachel he’s totally into her while she awkwardly rebuffs his advances. One scene with a caterer had some laugh-out-loud moments as Angelique prevented them from having a tasting. Overall, the story is charming and it really will tug at your heartstrings by the end.
Parrish and Sherwood have some good chemistry together, with Parrish’s Jana being the more level-headed of the two. Sherwood also pulls double duty as look-alike Malcolm, adopting a Scottish brogue for the character (and interestingly they both have two different colored eyes and it takes forever for them to consider the two may be related). Cassandra Potenza is very good as Angelique, putting a lot of emotion into her situation but also being apologetic for her behavior. Lauren Cochrane and Erik Athavale get most of the laughs as Rachel and Steve, De Jaeger also has his moments as Earl, and Sharon Bajer is appropriately harried as Marion, trying to juggle the ghostly intervention and wedding preparation, being forced to become the caterer as well with some funny results (the reaction to what is supposed to be a wedding cake is pretty funny).
The film is directed well by Jeff Beesley, the effects with Angelique and Malcolm appearing and disappearing are handled very well (although they really seem to go out of their way to not show Sherwood as Brian and Malcolm in the same scene, seeing one or the other from the back when they are together), and the production design is warm and cozy. The entire production pulls all the elements together from locations to sets to acting to make Haunted Wedding a frightfully fun, romantic Halloween treat.
Haunted Wedding has a run time of 1 hour 24 minutes, and is rated TV-G. The film is available On Demand and is streaming on Peacock.
Hallmark Channel
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