Dead End: Paranormal Park

With how far animation as an entertainment medium has evolved from its earliest stages to now, cartoons nowadays try to go beyond what was done in yesteryears in terms of content. With trailblazing shows like She-Ra, Steven Universe, Adventure Time, The Owl House, and many more tackling adult, mature and different themes with an over-arching narrative often resulting in a final product that doesn’t exist only to sell toys (thanks 90s and early 2000s cartoons). It’s grown to a point where if any cartoon that really just wants to exist as a fun, enjoyable side entertainment without a deep story or characters, it unfortunately can sometimes suffer from it, with many people being disappointed if a show doesn’t evolve into something bigger and grander. But lighter shows with minimal stakes can still be well-made, enjoyable, and updated from past examples as long as they carry similar ideas and methods to constructing a timeless and enjoyable experience. However, the cartoon of question today, Dead End: Paranormal Park, falls somewhere in between both these avenues. This is a show following newly appointed employees of a haunted house theme-park, Phoenix Park, which just so happens to be actually haunted. The series follows the stories of Barney (voiced by Zack Barack), a trans boy who has decided to live in the theme park away from his home after his parent’s refuse to stand up for him against his verbally abusive and transphobic grandmother, and Norma (voiced by Kody Kavitha), a Pakistani-American girl whose obsession with the theme park, especially the owner, Pauline Phoenix (voiced by Drag Queen Clinton Leupp), makes her feel right at home in this new position. These two, along with Barney’s dog, Pugsley (voiced by Alex Brightman) who gains sentience and the ability to speak after being possessed by a demon, and Courtney (voiced by Emily Osment), a demon whose trapped in the mortal realm and tries desperately to return to the demon world, find a home for themselves in this run-down theme park, encountering new friends (even new crushes) and new paranormal threats that they encounter on a daily basis. Together, they take part in spooky supernatural situations that clashes with their own personal demons and try to unravel a mystery involving Pauline and the park that changes the entire perception of this Paranormal Park. Released on Netflix in 2022, Dead End Paranormal Park doesn’t quite have the strengths of the previously mentioned story-driven trailblazing cartoons, but also contains enough strong elements to make it an enjoyable unique show.

The series is based on the works of Hamish Steele, a freelance British animator who originally created this premise under a web short simply titled Dead End, in 2014 before it evolved into an eight issue web comic series and graphic novel that explored a similar premise to the one presented in the Netflix series. Seeing how this little story has gone from a indie-developed online cartoon into something that is being produced and showcased on something like Netflix is a pretty cool story in its own right, but the series also carries some great nuggets of ideas, concepts and themes that make it a fun experience to watch as well. The set-up about these two kids working in this haunted theme park and taking part in wacky supernatural adventures that often tie into their own personal anxieties and familial issues is a great premise for a comic series as well as an episodic series. The show also carries with it a charmingly simple but engaging atmosphere. It’s a world that’s laid-back and surprisingly chill with a lot of the crazy ghostly occurrences that take part in this little theme park, but it also carries that fun spooky side that never goes too far to be uncomfortable but dips its toe just enough that it carries a shade of creepiness (like something that might scary very young children). It has established rules that feel organic enough to make the world feel liveable, but its not overly complicated to figure out either, its that nice balance of simple yet open enough to make people want to see more. Its like a mixture between Scooby Doo and Beetlejuice (which is fitting since Beetlejuice’s voice actor, Alex Brightman, is part of this show). In terms of how well it functions within this episodic format (featuring roughly ten episodes for its first season), the show is mostly made up of small fun adventures that mainly focus on goofy situations, but underneath it is still a small connective tissue that develops the characters and evolves this mystery to a completed point. Its handled perfectly decently, but not quite to the levels of the heavy hitters. Its definitely more along the lines of smaller-scale goofy shows that had a hint of an over-arcing narrative without delving too far into it, but it has aspects that could transition into something more. Its hard to say that it nails its story or narrative as overall, its mystery isn’t anything special, the pacing can sometimes make any plot revelations come out of nowhere, and the mostly goofy episodic nature mixed with the small episode line-up means it doesn’t transition from one to the other very smoothly, but it still has room to grow in that department. Its second season does do a decent job upping the anti by providing more of an overarching narratives that brings in more stakes and threats (sometimes to the point of going too heavy into it), but it ironically doesn’t feel as engaging as the more down-to-earth stuff.

The characters from this series are designed very nicely from the comics and feel like they are given a lot of attention from Steele’s passion in wanting to portray them and their unique issues in an honest and open manner. Much like other series have explored in recent times, Dead End has a lot of LGBTQIA+ representation within its framework and it’s handled in a very natural and interesting manner. A lot of the cast are given these attributes that showcase some minorities that don’t get a lot of representation, especially in regard to Barney. Seeing an openly trans boy in a cartoon is not only refreshing and feels like the next logical step in animation after its own progressive steps in showcasing other LGBT individuals, but showcasing the unique struggles and problems that a transgender person faces are really interesting and really well explored here; how they feel invisible in a family that accepts them but doesn’t support them, how they can run away from their lives to be in more comfortable environments without realizing what they can leave behind, and how to best resolve issues with people that you still love even though it may be an entirely different experience than it would be previously. Norma’s autistic tendencies and struggles with social anxiety also leads to great moments and how it ties into the park (especially in regard to Pauline) and how escapist entertainment can become engrossing to people within the spectrum and how damaging it can be when that veil is crushed by harsh reality, it’s interesting material and definitely elevates the show to be more than just another episodic kids cartoon.  Most of the side characters are simple but likeable as well; Pugsley could very easily come off as annoying with the humanoid voice in a dog-body trope, but he proves to be perfectly fine  and goes into a far more important direction that expected as it keeps going, and Brightman is a great talent to hear come out of any cartoon character, Courtney’s cynical, bratty and often violent nature makes for a nice contrast from the other upbeat and enthusiastic characters but feels poorly used throughout the show, the character of Pauline evolves into a pretty fun role as more is explored about her backstory and her connection with the park, two of the other park workers voiced by Kenny Tran and Kathreen Khavari are expanded upon in the second season to feel like more than just background roles, a creepy angelic figure named Fingers may not bring a lot from a story-telling perspective and is a little too obvious with his intentions, but is delightfully morbid and off-putting through his strange design of just being an elongated hand with no beginning and Jamie Demetriou bringing a sensible yet condescending tone to the character, and the rest of the cast are small but decent enough faces to make for background roles that work in those roles nicely enough. The voice actors are all quite good and play their parts well, but a flaw that sticks out is how a majority of the characters are sadly defined by the singular element they are set up with from the beginning. Barney is just trans, Norma is just obsessed with Pauline, Courtney just wants to get home, etc, and that does leave them feeling a little shallow as characters, but as it keeps going, it does get better. Honestly seeing the two leads develop on a smaller scale is some of the more engaging elements of the series as despite being simple, their problems do feel universal and lead to some interesting stuff like Barney’s relationship with his boyfriend and Norma coming out as bisexual after being rejected by her female crush/best friend.

The visual style for the show clearly takes its look, coloration and mood from the web series and graphic novels, which results in a style that while similar to other animated shows of the time, does still carry its own flair to make it its own thing. The colors are very bright and luminescent in moments where they really stand out, the designs of the characters are very distinct and bring out a lot of personality, and the lighting and framing for a lot of the visuals assist in giving the show that hint of a dark edge that makes it bright and happy when it needs to be, and dark and spooky when its need to be, with both still featuring a lot of color in both parts. It does show its roots as a web series as sometimes the character outlines can look a little basic and choppy in parts (especially in regard to how they move which feels a little stilted due to coming from a picture-based medium), but it’s not a huge distraction. The writing shines when it has to showcases a character’s emotions or turmoil and it really nails the depiction of trans representation as well as autistic representation, but otherwise the writing can leave some things to be desired. The mystery isn’t anything to write home about and it doesn’t suck the audience in enough to make them want to answer it, the humor is pretty underwhelming and doesn’t result in that many good lines, some character developments don’t feel as satisfying when they come to completion (Courtney’s role and arc is a little messy) and come the season’s finale, while it has a hint of a build-up and a small feeling of scale, it doesn’t feel quite as strong as it should feel. But while some of the episodes that are focus on being funny don’t always work, the episodes that want to be creepy work pretty nicely, as well as ones that want to be a bit more out-there and fun with their delivery. The penultimate episode of the first season is done as a musical and its surprisingly effective. The pacing is handled great, the stakes feel a bit more climatic than the other episodes (even the final episode sadly), and a lot of the music sounds really good and catchy, most likely due to having the lead singer of Fall Out Boy, Patrick Stump, help write the music.

As one of the newest cartoons to leave an impression on people, Dead End Paranormal Park has potential to be something great, but right now, it sits comfortably as a well-executed simply good series. Considering that now that Netflix has cancelled the series after its second season, its important to look at what it is as a whole, and overall, its a relatively charming if flawed series. For everything that it nails, it equally has something that isn’t the most impressive, and it doesn’t come anywhere close to other trailblazing shows of this era, but with likeable enough characters, a fun spooky atmosphere, memorable visuals, good LGBTQI+ representation, and a premise that does spiral into something more, but maybe not able to handle it as well, it feels like this delivered something that at least became the best version of itself even with all its faults.