- Broken Base: Is the movie or junior novelization better? There is more backstory and emotional investment in parts of the book, but Danny’s first-person narration leads to a lot of popular scenes getting cut out.
- Catharsis Factor: After how much of an already mean Jerkass he was, once Kankel is exposed for having lied about the curse just because Curtis's statue of Uncle Fred would've won the contest, it's pretty satisfying—especially when his own zombified father of all people then shows up to drag him away and punish him for it too.
- Moral Event Horizon: Mike Kankel. Causing the accidental death of Curtis Danko was bad enough, but he continued crossing lines by making up the phony curse and causing the entire town to stop celebrating Halloween, especially when it resulted in their chocolate factory being shut down, crippling the town's economy and leaving a vast majority of the people unemployed. Furthermore, it robbed the town of 20 years of Halloween, preventing many people from having fun for so long. On top of it all, this act also caused the Walker Family to be reviled due to Uncle Fred's unintentional part in Curtis Danko's death, resulting in them being ridiculed, hated, and bullied by the entire town. The fact that Coach Kankel shows little guilt over what he had done—and did it all out of nothing but cowardice, wanting to avoid being blamed for Curtis's death, and jealousy that Curtis's statue of Fred would be displayed instead of the one he made of his own father too—just adds more to it.
- Nightmare Fuel: The idea that Curtis Danko died by being trapped in a kiln and it being turned on with him in it. It's even worse when it turns out that Kankel and his friends locked him in there in the first place and the janitor accidentally turned it on while he was mopping.
- Reality Subtext: The film was shot in Australia...a country which also has complicated views on Halloween.
- Retroactive Recognition: Brittany Byrnes, who plays Dayna, would go on to play Charlotte in H₂O: Just Add Water.
- Spiritual Successor: ParaNorman can be considered one to this film as their plots both involve a protagonist who is the town outcast for reasons beyond their control, a curse, a zombie uprising related to said curse, and the twist of the supposed villain just being a misunderstood kid.
- Squick: When Uncle Fred is dressed as Cheesy the Clown, he drops his fake hand out of the front of his pants and offers $100 if a kid finds the hand. Remember, he's an old man and a zombie.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The family reacting to the tower of pumpkins, whose husband misses pumpkin pie and whose daughter has never had it, makes a decent impression, but never does show up again in any significant role to offer their perspective.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Ryan mentions his mom, Sandy, is Dayna's cheerleading coach, while threatening to complicate her life if he is excluded from the party, but she and Dayna never do interact despite this long-term connection, Dayna's issues with Ryan, and Sandy seeming like the Kankel White Sheep.
- Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While Mike Kankel was undoubtedly responsible for most of the events of the movie, having made up the false curse and causing the death of Curtis Danko (even if he didn't mean to), that doesn't make the rest of the town innocent. As mentioned above, considering they've constantly bullied, ridiculed, and harassed the Walker Family for no good reason, it's hard to feel sorry for them, especially in the part where Curtis Danko comes back from the dead, along with an entire zombie army.
- The Woobie: Curtis Danko is a tragic case of this. He was an outcast in his school, because of his Gothic appearance and taste in art.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/WhenGoodGhoulsGoBad
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