It’s amazing what a little hair cream can do.
When applied to hair follicles, it revitalizes the strand. When eaten, it causes a hallucinogenic effect. And when rubbed on the head of a dead person, it can bring that person back to life.
OK, so maybe this isn’t your everyday, run-of-the-mill hair cream.
It came from the underworld, where prisoner demons Wendell and Wild are forced to apply it to the head of their master (and father), Buffalo Belzer, to prevent him from going bald.
But then Wild discovers the cream’s drug-like effects after ingesting it. He forces Wendell to try some too. And pretty soon, the brothers have a vision of a human girl, Kat Elliot.
Kat, it turns out, is a “Hell Maiden,” with the ability to summon demons to the Land of the Living. At first, when they make contact with her in a dream, she has no interest in bringing Wendell and Wild to her world. But when they tell her they can raise the dead, she changes her mind.
Kat’s parents died five years ago in a car crash. And the worst part is that Kat blames herself since it was her frightened scream that caused her father to take his eyes off the road.
Kat hates herself for that.
All Kat wants is to see her parents again—to apologize to them and tell them that she loves them. And more importantly, to hear that they love her too.
Because of her traumatic experience, Kat has nightmares about the night her parents died. And when she first returns to her hometown of Rust Bank, she has a panic attack as she is driven over the bridge where her family crashed. (Her social worker stops the vehicle and checks on Kat when this happens, comforting her.) However, Kat eventually faces her past. She realizes that she has allowed even her good memories to torture her because of her guilt. And she learns that her hard past has only made her stronger.
Kat has a general distrust of people due to the mistreatment she experienced in the foster system. And since she thinks that her parents’ deaths are her fault, she also believes that if she lets anyone get close to her, they’ll die. However, when people at Kat’s new school (Rust Bank Catholic) go out of their way to help her, Kat slowly learns to trust again. And due to their heroic and selfless actions, she considers them to be friends by the end of the film.
Raúl, Kat’s friend, paints a mural of a mother protecting her child against monsters, and it’s clearly representative of Raúl’s own mother protecting her child from the Klaxons (owners of a chain of private prisons). This mural later inspires another father to embrace and protect his own children instead of scaring them away with his harsh rules.
Wendell and Wild want to travel to the Land of the Living so they can build a theme park and make lots of money. However, they eventually realize that they don’t care about money so much as they do about their father’s love and approval. They make amends with him and set out to create a theme park “down below” that is luxurious and fun instead of decrepit and torturous. And they stop trying to trick Kat into doing their bidding and set out to help her in her endeavors instead.
When a girl learns her parents use corrupt business methods, she stands against them. Five town council members refuse to give up the battle against the Klaxons, searching for justice for friends they believe were killed by them.
As I said before, Kat is a Hell Maiden—an ability that most of the world knows nothing about. Her powers allow her to see the future and summon and control demons. Sister Helley, a teacher at Kat’s school, is also a Hell Maiden. She too can summon demons, as well as use a type of teleportation magic.
Both women were marked as Maidens by a demonic toy bear called “Bear-ze-bub.” After Wendell and Wild trick Kat into swearing allegiance to them, Kat’s mark (which looks like a skull) glows green and controls her, preventing her from taking any action against the wishes of the demons.
Kat uses a spell to open a portal that allows Wendell and Wild to escape Hell. We learn that Sister Helley has opened many portals in order to help Manberg (the school janitor) capture demons. Manberg is an expert on demonology and uses a few spells himself to help the Maidens when Kat gets sick from swearing allegiance to her demons.
Kat and Sister Helley use a “blood bind” spell, causing Kat’s memories to project from Sister Helley’s eyes in green light. Then, Kat is forced to confront those memories in the form of a shadow monster. She fights it off and then goes through a portal allowing her to embrace the monster as a part of herself, since it was caused by her own fears.
Wendell and Wild use their father’s hair cream to bring many people back from the dead, including a priest. However, the bodies remain in their decrepit state. So, Wendell and Wild use clean clothes, fake eyeballs and makeup to make the undead beings seem more alive. [Spoiler warning] Eventually, the hair cream wears off, causing everyone who came back to life to die again.
Crosses adorn Kat’s Catholic school. A priest, Father Bests, serves as a corrupt headmaster and nuns serve as teachers. When Father Bests first comes back to life, he fears he has been sent to hell. When he realizes he’s alive, he praises God. But when Wendell and Wild inform him that they brought him back, he returns to his corrupted ways. Later, he gives last rights to two undead people before Wendell and Wild try to kill them.
Bat-like creatures, called “Soul-Jockeys,” bring the souls of humans to the underworld. There, the souls enter a theme park housed on the stomach of Buffalo Belzer where they are tortured. (Belzer gets these souls to chant his name in worship.) Wendell and Wild employ a bug-like creature as a mule.
People say they meditate.
We learn that Raúl, Kat’s friend, was born Ramona. When a girl calls Raúl “Ramona”, she corrects herself, saying that she forgot. And Raúl’s mother tells someone she has a son, not a daughter.
Several male demons are shirtless. Wild says his brother is “shooting blanks.” He also hides things in his trousers (which don’t have pockets).
Father Bests is murdered by the Klaxons when he threatens to reveal their dirty secrets. We see them hit him over the head with a golf club and then toss him in a lake to drown.
Wendell and Wild squish a bug and then bring it back to life with hair cream multiple times. They consider killing their pet to test the cream’s abilities, but they agree not to after realizing they couldn’t live with themselves if the cream didn’t work. Kat tricks the brothers into thinking their pet ate her and Raúl. Wendell threatens to kill his brother.
A woman orders bulldozers to crush a group of protesters (including her own daughter), and later she attempts to strangle her husband with handcuffs. We see a picture of a nun beating a screaming child. Wendell and Wild throw a brick at their pet’s head, hitting him. Some demons are squished by Belzer. A nun throws an eraser at Kat’s head.
Kat saves a girl from getting hit by a falling brick. Sister Helley risks her life to save Kat with a spell. When the spell ends, she falls to the ground and cracks her head open, bleeding heavily. (She is bandaged up and survives.)
Kat learns that shortly after her parents’ deaths, their brewery burned to the ground, killing all the employees inside. [Spoiler warning] And Kat later learns that the Klaxons started the fire and covered up their involvement.
[Spoiler warning] Kat bites into an apple only to find a couple of worms. She screams from the backseat, distracting her father, who is driving across a bridge. The family’s vehicle crashes into the water below. Kat’s mother, Wilma, opens a window and pushes Kat out to safety. But because Wilma stays behind to help her unconscious husband, she dies along with him.
[Spoiler warning] We learn that Kat was arrested and sent to juvenile detention because she pushed a bully (who had been physically harming her) down a flight of stairs.
We hear a handful of uses of “a–,” the British expletive “bloody,” “d–n” and “h—.” People sometimes exclaim “holy biscuits” or “holy moly.” God’s name is abused four times throughout the film (and an additional four times in a background song).
When Wendell and Wild consume the hair cream, they have a psychedelic hallucination of Kat.
Kat’s parents owned a brewery before they died, and we see people drinking alcohol there. Some people have champagne.
We learn that Kat went to juvenile detention. However, she was released on parole as part of a rehabilitation program called “Break the Cycle.” And while this program isn’t inherently bad, Kat believes Father Bests only signed up for it because it rewards the school with money (which it desperately needs). [Spoiler warning] We learn Kat feels this way because a former foster parent treated her as a financial asset instead of a person.
[Spoiler warning] The Klaxons hatch a years-long plot to demolish the town of Rust Bank and turn it into a private prison (one of many where they mistreat prisoners in order to make more money). They also make plans to abuse the Break the Cycle program to make money for the school before sending the kids back to their own prison, making the Klaxons even more money. And they conspire with Father Bests, Wendell and Wild to make these dreams come true.
Scary-looking monsters and demons are present throughout the film, which could frighten younger audiences.
A little girl disobeys her mother’s instruction not to eat a candied apple. Kat immediately breaks her new school’s dress code, altering her uniform to suit her punk-rebel style. Wild refuses to regurgitate hair cream. Wendell and Wild live inside Belzer’s nostrils and he sneezes them out when he wants to talk to them. Someone jokes about gambling. Characters lie and steal.
Wendell & Wild is a messy film. It’s meant to be funny and silly. Instead, it’s a little disturbing and deeply problematic.
Let’s just start with the concept of Kat being a Hell Maiden. Not a great start. Sure, she uses her powers for good—as does Sister Helley, a fellow Maiden—but that “good” is precedented on the use of demons.
That demonic presence, while not as “evil” as what you might find in a supernatural horror flick, leaves you feeling tainted. Like Hollywood is trying to normalize the occult (just look at my review of Hocus Pocus 2).
It’s hard when films are animated and clearly directed at kids and teens. Because even though this film appears to draw a clear line between good and evil—the Elliots and people of Rust Bank are kind and good; the Klaxons and Father Bests are corrupt and wicked—the characters presented are clearly mixed.
Take Kat. She was just a sweet little girl who lost her parents. She’s tough now because she had to be to survive. And she’s made some mistakes—bad enough to land her in juvie at just 13 years old. She summons demons and embraces her role as a Hell Maiden because she wants to have good in her life again. She wants her kind parents back. But in summoning those demons, she unleashed an army of the dead on the town of Rust Bank and nearly allowed the Klaxons’ wicked plans to succeed.
But these aren’t the film’s only problems. Raúl, Kat’s newest friend, is transgender. Language is sprinkled throughout the film. And then there’s the trope of every religious person secretly being corrupt (and the one non-corrupt one being a Hell Maiden).
Kat finds a way to fix her mistakes and make them right. She stops living with a chip on her shoulder, embraces new friendships and allows herself to love again. But I don’t see how Wendell & Wild is going to fix its multitude of mistakes.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
