Reviews
‘Solar Opposites: The Hunt for Brown October’ Creatively Combines Two Holiday Classics [Review]
‘Solar Opposites’ returns for a transformative Halloween special that gets to the crux of the spooky season by riffing on a Christmas classic.
“Stop celebrating Halloween? Oh no, my pretty. I think you’ll find that you ARE Halloween.”
Halloween specials have become a long and storied tradition in television and they’re a great opportunity for series – comedies and dramas alike – to really flex their genre muscles and remind audiences of Halloween’s inherent splendor. The beauty of Solar Opposites is that it’s a series that’s endlessly devoted to pop culture parodies and extended satire subversions that have touched on everything from Gerald’s Game to Now You See Me. The Solar family have largely fallen in love with Earth and its customs through their obsession with television and cinema’s warm inviting glow. It’s the perfect series for farcical holiday specials that poke fun at the structure and tropes of these seasonal installments, which is exactly why Solar Opposites’ previous Christmas, Halloween, and St. Valentine’s Day specials have been some of the series’ most enjoyable episodes.
The horror genre is particularly conducive to sequels, so it’s perhaps only appropriate that Solar Opposites’ latest holiday installment – “’Solar Opposites’ Halloween Special Part 2: The Hunt for Brown October” – returns to Halloween with a direct follow-up to its previous Halloween special, “A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special,” rather than tackle a new festivity, such as Easter or St. Patrick’s Day. It’s satisfying to have Solar Opposites return to the horror genre, but “The Hunt for Brown October” brilliantly weaponizes the nature of horror sequels into a holiday special that’s exciting and new, rather than derivative. It’s an entertaining addition to anyone’s Halloween binge session.
Sequels can be set up for failure if they’re entered into under the wrong conditions. “The Hunt for Brown October” is careful about actually having something to say here rather than coming off as a hollow retread and round-up of the series’ past holiday hits. Solar Opposites gets playful and self-aware with the idea of a second Halloween special and begins as an outright refusal of the spooky season. The Solars go through a checklist of holidays that they’d rather celebrate before they’re roped into supernatural shenanigans that make their efforts to ignore Halloween increasingly impossible. It’s a successful angle for a “sequel” that doesn’t step on its predecessor’s toes.
“A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” got a lot of mileage out of its subversion of two powerful horror icons – The Crypt Keeper and the Great Pumpkin – the fallout of which becomes the catalyst for “The Hunt For Brown October.” The Great Pumpkin’s grisly end by Korvo’s hand in the last Halloween special triggers a spirit transfer that turns Korvo into this demonic deity. It’s kind of brilliant that Solar Opposites essentially does a Halloween version of The Santa Clause and turns to the plot of a celebrated Christmas movie and spookifying it. It’s an unexpected angle that’s more powerful than reserving it for the series’ next Christmas special or turning to a more conventional Halloween movie for the special’s inspiration. There’s something wonderfully ridiculous about the idea that the Great Pumpkin is a seasonal figure that needs to exist and it’s an angle that more horror films should employ. It’d be genuinely terrifying to see a final girl or survivor kill Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, or Michael Myers, only to then turn into their greatest nightmare because of some twisted cosmic karmic balance that’s bigger than them.
Korvo is the funniest character to experience this Great Pumpkin-ification based on his contentious relationship with Halloween in the previous holiday special. It’s a small detail, but one that gets a little more narrative juice out of this premise. The slow burn nature of Korvo’s transformation is understandably played for laughs, but it could have been fun to see Solar Opposites indulge in a particularly laborious and vicious transformation sequence that’s akin to An American Werewolf in London where it just goes for broke with gratuitous gore. “The Hunt for Brown October” turns the Great Pumpkin into its focal point, but there’s also some fun to be had with the surprisingly complex lore that it introduces regarding more Nightmare Before Christmas-esque holiday totems such as the First Witch and the Grand Brown Gravy. A whole holiday hierarchy that brings Highlander to mind is an effective way for Solar Opposites to go all-in with this convoluted idea and set up future holiday specials to come. It’d be genuinely shocking if none of these ideas or characters ever appeared again.
“The Hunt for Brown October” is mostly interested in Korvo’s plight, but the abundance of Halloween figures also facilitates an enjoyable enough B-story where the Pupa and JK Sevens embrace their morbid juvenile curiosity and try to eviscerate Halloween’s First Witch. This digression isn’t necessary, but it’s a fun aside to return to on several occasions that’s fueled with a gleeful maliciousness that’s appropriate for the Halloween season. If nothing else, it’s appreciated that Solar Opposites continues to develop the Pupa and JK Sevens’ budding friendship.
On a similar note, Korvo’s resistance to his supernatural transmutation also has seasonal side effects that turn the rest of the Solars into creepy alternate versions of themselves. This feels like an easy excuse to get wacky varieties of Terry, Yumyulack, and Jesse that rival Korvo’s own macabre metamorphosis, but it’s not especially annoying or distracting. All this helps contribute towards Halloween spreading and enveloping the Solars’ surroundings like a virus. Forget about Spirit Halloween. Solar Opposites explores Sickness Halloween.
Solar Opposites always has such a good knack for subverting standard sitcom tropes, which are once again at the core of this Halloween special and feature a hilariously hackneyed scenario where nothing can go wrong, which of course means that everything does. Solar Opposites routinely welcomes “sci-fi bullshit” and so it’s no surprise to see “The Hunt for Brown October” develop a fascination with dark magic and wicked elixirs as a solution to restore normalcy. This is a fairly straightforward special, but it still finds an opportunity to detonate some satisfying surprises that leave the Solars feeling like bigger outsiders than ever, even after they’ve neutralized this Halloween magic.
Solar Opposites’ “The Hunt for Brown October” tells a frivolous and silly story – because of course it does – but it culminates in a satisfying final act where the Solars need to use the power of Halloween to defeat Thanksgiving and survive the season. This experience helps Korvo better appreciate Halloween’s true glory and why it’s regarded as such a cherished holiday. This, on its own, is true lunacy. It’s also a conclusion that feels purely Solar Opposites and the perfect way to resolve a Halloween special of this nature. “The Hunt for Brown of October” is on the weaker end of Solar Opposites’ four holiday specials. However, that’s not to say that this is an unsuccessful episode of television and Halloween programming.
“The Hunt for Brown October” is still incredibly strong and it’s certainly on par with a standard Solar Opposites episode. It’s an amusing addition to anyone’s October watchlist and this episode plays even better if it’s watched back-to-back with “A Sinister Halloween Scary Opposites Solar Special” and enjoyed as an hour-long Halloween spectacular. It’s unlikely that Solar Opposites is going to stop with these holiday specials and there are still limitless ideas for them to explore. One can’t help but wonder how The Wall or the SilverCops celebrate Halloween, for instance. However, a future return to Halloween is going to require a more layered approach that works a little harder to sensationalize this scary season.
“Solar Opposites: The Hunt for Brown October” is currently streaming on Hulu.
Movies
‘Recluse’ Review – Harrowing Haunted House Horror With Lots Of Skeletons In Its Closet [Tribeca 2026]
A haunted house story is tense, terrifying storytelling when it’s properly executed. There’s been a growing tendency in horror to blend together harrowing haunted house stories with traumatic homecomings. A family member’s illness or death triggers a return to something dark that was intentionally left behind. Recluse hits all the tropes that one expects to find in this type of horror film, yet it manages to push this story in a daring, disturbing new direction that uses sound as a superpower.
It’s a unique lens to experience a familiar story about family secrets, generational trauma, unresolved grief, and the importance of not just legacy, but preservation. It’s a hell of a directorial debut from Henry Chaisson that’s guaranteed to get under the audience’s skin as they’re dragged through this painful, toxic tale.
Recluse is a gothic haunted house story where an isolated audio engineer, Joan (Sasha Frolova), returns to her family’s estate to check in on her father after he suffers a terrible accident. Joan suddenly discovers something much more sinister that paints her family’s tragedies in a very different light. Chaisson’s debut functions as a fascinating companion piece to this year’s undertone, which does a lot of the same things.
These two films make for a fascinating case of parallel thinking that tackles comparable subject matter through a similar lens, albeit in a bigger, less claustrophobic story in Recluse’s case. In fact, it’s the perfect horror film for anyone who was let down by undertone and didn’t feel like it brought enough to the table. It’s a considerably more conventional horror film, but this isn’t meant to denigrate its high quality. Recluse may hit some familiar notes, but it’s a scary, well-crafted haunted house horror story that goes for the jugular.
A gripping mystery that involves the tragic, unresolved circumstances that surround Joan’s mother teases a chilling connection to the recent horrors that have afflicted her father. Joan desperately tries to put these pieces together and give her family some sense of grander peace before she’s pulled under and becomes another victim of this festering curse that’s systematically worked its way through the Wyatt family. By doing so, Recluse digs into some deeper commentary on collective trauma, a very literal look at the “sins of the father” adage, and how one selfish decision can ripple through generations and fracture off into different dilemmas. By the end, Recluse has brilliantly flipped the powerful concept of legacy on its head by illustrating the horrors and sense of entitlement that can be born out of this idea.
A legacy is just another name for a curse under the right context.
”Listen” is a simple but powerful command from Joan’s father that she briefly obsesses over. In a way, it becomes Recluse’s grander mission statement, whether it’s in response to Joan listening to the people in her life, the signals that her body and mind are telling her, or the world’s greater whims. It’s important to reconnect with these grounding pillars, especially when it feels like control is slipping away.
Recluse excels with how audio and soundscapes can create entire universes that are full of rich details that transport individuals to these environments. There’s also a level of objectivity when it comes to audio recordings and the evergreen permanence that they’re able to provide. Joan’s career as an audio engineer makes sense for someone who wants to cling to hard evidence and proof of existence. It provides great insight into Joan without ever getting lost in contrived exposition.
Joan’s entire life is built around audio engineering, and so it makes sense that Recluse features excellent sound design that really goes above and beyond with its production elements. All of the sound design is expertly handled and turns the film into something special. These auditory elements intuitively keep the audience on edge so that they’re more susceptible to the actual scares that eventually strike. The smallest sound effect gets turned into a crushing, cacophonous assault. It’s a really effective way to build terror. Writer/Director Chaisson also handles the film’s music, which achieves a sublime, unnerving dissonance that further heightens the free-floating anxiety.
The story at the center of Recluse is slightly generic in some respects, but the film’s visual language and tone make it feel distinctly memorable. It also doesn’t hurt that the home that Joan returns to is basically an eerie art studio that’s full of contorted paintings. Recluse never struggles to generate mounting dread and terror that pump through every scene. Powerful, thoughtful cinematography consistently reinforces the film’s themes. Joan is constantly reflected in different surfaces or viewed through mirrors. She’s also often confined to tight, constricting framing that all speaks to her refracted identity during this moment of loss and her attempts to regain agency and control by making sense of something that’s seemingly unexplainable.
Recluse is full of truly disturbing visuals that make it seem like Joan is lost in a dream that turns out to be an extended nightmare. It’s a surreal journey reminiscent of invasive psychological horror like Silent Hill, with a touch of Sinister and Hereditary thrown in for good measure. There are so many individual frames that could endlessly fuel urban legends and creepypastas.
It does a great job with how it presents Joan’s fragile state of mind, where chilling flashes of the past sneak up on her and unresolved trauma manifests into unsettling imagery. There are endless shots that are obscured in darkness, or shadow is creeping in from the corners of frames like a suffocating force of nature. It’s very rare that a scene is fully lit. It leads to a very lonely, isolating atmosphere that’s easy to get lost in.
Chaisson’s debut stands out from the many other high-minded haunted house horror films without succumbing to the same pretensions that often drag down these stories. It’s a grief-stricken character study that’s full of upsetting visuals that scratch at something visceral and raw. The horror elements connect, and the answers to its grander mystery provide an appropriate and believable sense of closure. Those who are looking for an atmospheric horror film that isn’t afraid to be different while still channeling something real will appreciate Recluse.
Recluse made its world premiere at Tribeca; release info TBD.
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