The first half of the movie is really quite solid. The three girls who played the Sanderson Sisters as kids did an okay job. They captured the mannerisms quite well, but the actual acting was average. If this movie had been more focused on that part of the movie it would have been better. Unfortunately, only about 20 minutes of the movie's run-time is actually spent on that part of the movie. We didn't get the chance to really learn anything about either the young Sanderson Sisters or this 4th witch. She barely even spent any time in the movie and only served as a plot device for giving Winnifred her book. Although some of the witch's interactions with the modern era was funny, and there really are some funny moments in this movie(particularly at the beginning), it was just too much of retreading old ground and not enough fresh ideas. The general lack of original ideas really became prevalent at the halfway point when everything after that was just more of the same material from the first movie repurposed. There were some fun nodes and cameos here and there, but nothing particularly outstanding since they didn't get a chance to shine beyond a passing moment. The comedic elements quickly went from great and well executed at the beginning to less and less impressive as we got to the modern era part of the movie. It's as though they ran out of steam part way through and settled after having such a strong idea for the beginning. The song and dance number in the middle was really uninspired since it was just shoehorned in and not smoothly transitioned into like in the previous movie. Possibly, the worst part of this movie is the ending. It was an interesting idea of having the magic backfire on Winnifred and her sisters, but I didn't like how mushy the ending wound up being. It's as though the writers changed midway through so as to make it as non-scary or wicked as possible. The ending just felt out of character for Winnifred.
On a personal note, I really wish this movie had just focused on the Sisters as kids. There was a lot of potential in that part of the movie, and really getting to learn more about the Witch's Forest would have been a great angle to look at this movie from. It really would have been interesting to see an interaction with other witches or to see if the sisters gathered more sisters in their coven that were either betrayed or lost to time. Either way, they had something going with the earlier part of the movie that if they just kept going with it would have been amazing to see.
Sadly, this movie falls squarely in the middle because it just couldn't deliver beyond the halfway point.
