Hocus Pocus & the All New Sequel

The story opens in colonial Salem, Massachusetts, in 1693, where the three Sanderson sisters, Winifred, Mary, and Sarah, live near town and are tolerated despite rumors of witchcraft. When nine-year-old Emily Binx is lured from her home by Sarah's enchanting song, her sixteen-year-old brother Thackery Binx chases her into the forest and watches as the witches brew a potion and feed it to Emily. Thackery leaps from the loft to intervene and manages to spill the cauldron, but the sisters have already given Emily the potion and inhaled her life force, a golden light, leaving her dead. As punishment, Winifred transforms Thackery into an immortal black cat, condemned to live forever with his guilt.

Three hundred years later, sixteen-year-old Max Dennison resents his family's move from Los Angeles to Salem. On Halloween, after bullies steal his sneakers and his mother forces him to take his eight-year-old sister Dani trick-or-treating, Max and Dani end up at a party hosted by the family of Allison Watts, a classmate Max has a crush on. Max suggests they visit the old Sanderson house, now a shuttered museum, and Allison agrees, producing keys inherited from her mother. Inside, Max ignores warnings and lights the Black Flame Candle, an artifact said to resurrect the witches when lit by a virgin on a full-moon Halloween night. The Sanderson sisters materialize in the doorway.

The witches seize Dani, but Allison frees her while the black cat attacks Winifred. Max activates the sprinkler system, temporarily incapacitating the sisters, and the cat instructs him to steal Winifred's spell book, which is bound in human skin with a living eye on its cover. The group flees to the graveyard, hallowed ground where the witches cannot tread, and the cat reveals he is Thackery Binx. He explains that the candle's magic lasts only one Halloween night: Unless the witches steal children's life force before sunrise, they will turn to dust.

The children seek help at Town Hall, where their parents are attending the annual Pumpkin Ball, but the Dennisons dismiss the warnings as a prank. Winifred seizes the stage and performs "I Put a Spell on You," cursing all the adults to dance until they die. Allison devises a plan to trap the witches in the kiln at their school, and the trap succeeds. However, the sisters reconstitute from green vapor, invade the Dennison home, steal back the spell book, and kidnap Dani. Max tracks Dani to the Sanderson house and tricks the witches with a fake sunrise, freeing Dani and spilling the cauldron, though Winifred saves a vial of potion.

In the graveyard, the zombie Billy Butcherson, Winifred's murdered ex-lover, switches sides after Max cuts the stitches sealing his mouth. Binx knocks the vial from Winifred's hand, and Max drinks the potion himself, offering his own life force to save Dani. Winifred begins draining Max in midair, but as sunrise breaks, she turns to stone on hallowed ground and crumbles. Sarah and Mary explode into dust, and Max's life force returns to him. Binx's cat body lies lifeless, the curse broken. The ghosts of Thackery and Emily appear, reunited; Thackery thanks Dani and Max before walking with Emily into the light. Max and Allison share their first kiss, and Max finally accepts Salem as home. In an epilogue, the spell book opens its eye and flies from the house, implying the danger is not over.

Part Two shifts to first-person narration twenty-five years later. Poppy Dennison, the teenage daughter of Max and Allison, is a junior at Jacob Bailey High who is determined to distance herself from her family's Sanderson legacy. Her best friend Travis Reese, an aspiring physicist, has shielded her from the annual Sanderson retelling since seventh grade. Isabella Richards, the popular class president and daughter of Salem's first Black mayor, asks about Elizabeth Sanderson, a fourth sister Poppy has never heard of. Max, now the AP US History teacher, deflects without revealing his personal history.

Poppy harbors a crush on Isabella and confides her family's full Sanderson story at lunch. Katie Taylor, daughter of Principal Jay Taylor, the bully who tormented Max years ago, overhears and begins taunting Poppy, eventually revealing Poppy's secret at a Halloween party. Humiliated, Poppy flees with Isabella and Travis to the Sanderson house. Inside, Isabella reveals she possesses the spell book, which appeared on her bed, and that a DNA test proved she is a descendant of Elizabeth Sanderson. The friends use a spirit board, and a spirit feeds them an exchange spell. When Poppy reads it aloud, the house erupts in a supernatural windstorm. Max, Allison, and Aunt Dani arrive but vanish, exchanged for the Sanderson sisters. Winifred blasts the teens with lightning, transforming Isabella into a Boston terrier. Poppy and Travis escape with the spell book while Isabella is separated from them.

In the graveyard, the ghosts of Binx, Emily, and Elizabeth Sanderson appear. Elizabeth carries cemetery dirt that allows her to exist beyond hallowed ground. Binx explains that the exchange spell becomes permanent at sunrise unless the blood moonstone, a Sanderson family heirloom, is found and destroyed, breaking every active Sanderson spell. Elizabeth teaches Isabella a locator spell that points to Winter Island, site of a historic lighthouse. Meanwhile, Sarah uses Isabella's stolen phone to sing her enchanting song through calls, creating a network of zombie-like searchers.

Poppy recruits Katie, whose competitive spirit Travis provokes, and they drive to Winter Island. Isabella's latent lightning powers activate, guiding the group to unearth the moonstone. The Sanderson sisters arrive with their zombie army, recapture the spell book, and seize Poppy, Travis, and Katie. Isabella sneaks into the Sanderson house and frees them, and Poppy snatches the moonstone from Winifred. In the graveyard, Elizabeth channels energy through Isabella and restores her to human form, explaining that the moonstone must be struck with Isabella's lightning over open space.

At the lighthouse, Winifred casts the exchange spell on a massive scale, trading hundreds of living souls for an army of dead witches. Among them is Druscilla the Dreadful, the Sanderson sisters' mother, who immediately betrays Winifred by declaring she intends to rule alone. Druscilla's attack sends Travis to Hell and scatters Elizabeth's cemetery dirt, causing Elizabeth to vanish. Winifred corners Poppy on the catwalk, but Katie knocks the moonstone from Winifred's hand. Poppy catches it, hurls it over the ocean, and Isabella strikes it with a bolt of lightning. The shockwave sweeps the entire coven off the tower.

The moonstone's destruction breaks every Sanderson spell. Travis and all bewitched citizens reappear unharmed. Poppy reunites with her parents and Aunt Dani. Max apologizes to Principal Taylor for abandoning him twenty-five years ago. Isabella confesses her feelings to Poppy, and they share their first kiss. The following evening, Elizabeth appears one final time and warns the friends that witches can never truly be killed, charging them with protecting Salem. Poppy realizes the spell book has vanished again. One year later, a teenage boy in Winifred's green cloak stands at Billy Butcherson's grave with the spell book, one eye glowing green, the other socket empty. He reads a resurrection spell, and the coffin rises from the earth.