Contemporary Cult: Hubie Halloween (2020)

Happy Halloween to all and to all a good fright.

I didn't grow up reading Danny Peary's Cult Movies books and I'm not of the following generation who created podcasts inspired by them - though I listen to and love those podcasts. Folks of my half-generation need our own canon of contemporary cult cinema. It's time for us to define our "classics, sleepers, weird and wonderful," as Peary puts it. We'll debate the definition of a "cult movie" by stretching the boundaries, make predictions about a film's future cultability, and honor a new generation of artists in this new, on-going series called Contemporary Cult. 

Some editions of Contemporary Cult will be for paid subscribers, while others will be unlocked for all. Make sure to sign up here to receive all editions as they come out. 

Growing up in the era of TBS syndication and the heydey of Comedy Central, Adam Sandler was the biggest star on television if it was the middle of a Sunday afternoon. Movies like The Waterboy, Big Daddy, and Billy Madison were always always always within remote reach. By the time I was old enough to be cued into film criticism (something that has become both an amazing blessing and an unavoidable curse), he was a reviled hot topic. Those fan-favorite comedies had given way to movies like I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry and You Don't Mess with the Zohan and Jack and Jill.

But whatever you may think of Sandler's comedy, he's turned out to be an excellent businessman. He's made hundreds of millions of dollars moving his movies to Netflix, where they've become cogs in their algorithmic content machine. One such film was 2020's Hubie Halloween, a movie that isn't exactly that good but was so destined for sleeper status that it's the closest Netflix will ever come to cult cinema.