The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist Special Review: Does Netflix Make a Step-Up Special?

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Copyright © Netflix, DreamWorks Animation Television

Title: The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist
Director: Kevin Peaty, Christo Stamboliev

Based on: The Bad Guys by Pierre Perifel (film) and Aaron Blabey (books)

Release Date: October 3, 2024



    Still continuing with DreamWorks' animated library of flicks this year, this one is another recent find. However, this will not be counted as a movie because it is classified as a TV special, which is a TV show by itself. This means this will not count as a movie review, primarily for the 2024 line of reviews, but reviewed anyway as this comes from an incredible movie. This special review is about The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist, the Halloween special of The Bad Guys franchise, which got released today! Just like the holiday special from last year, The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday, this special was also released on Netflix as a streaming original project. Although this may not be anything bad, The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist is not much of a special robbery adventure as well.


Summary

   The Bad Guys come up with spooky and haunted heist at a haunted mansion belonging to Reginald E. Scary. When they try to steal the amulet from the mansion, their mission takes some crazy turns and twists that they did not expect.


Thoughts

    Albeit the animation did take a bit of a step-up from the last holiday special, The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist made other things somewhat worse. Combined with its TV quality animation, it is easier to see because of its light values and shadows to create a spooky tone. There should still be hope for the animation quality to be just like the original like with the other DreamWorks holiday specials back in the past. This is the case but everything else was much worse than what was done last time with Netflix. The story does turn out to be harmless fun first as the titular thieves steal things from the mansion. Halfway through, it starts to come up with questionable twists, with the worst twist being at the ending due to how it is purely nonsensical. Plus, it was also anticlimactic which made things pretty unexciting after watching the whole special. Another thing that was made worse was the characters, especially the other members of the Bad Guys gang, due to the flanderization they had to take in. Even the voices were kept the same from the special when they would have hired the same actors from the 2022 movie. They were not really as bad in the Christmas special. In here though, they were changed to be unlikable towards Mr. Wolf until they reach character development at the end of the heist. Also, how scary of a name is Reginald E. Scary? It felt AI-generated at the television subdivision's best at least.



Conclusion

    The Bad Guys: Haunted Heist turns out to be a robbery that is not tragically bad nor special either. Thanks to being part of Netflix's TV show take on the franchise, the animation and voice-acting are still as weird. However, the story and characters are now somewhat more stupid. How much did DreamWorks Animation Television want to take in for the younger audience to enjoy only? Well, at least it is superior to Megamind vs. the Doom Syndicate. It is your choice whether you want to check out this haunted house special. If you want something better, just stick with the original Bad Guys film instead. Also, have very high hopes that The Bad Guys 2 will be a better treat.


    Score: 5/10 (even Professor Marmalade would be pretty shocked at this)




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