‘Halloween’ (2018) Movie Review
Thank you David Gordon Green & crew for reviving the Halloween franchise. While not perfect, the latest installment in the long-running slasher series is easily the best since 1995’s The Curse of Michael Myers (in my opinion of course). Despite going a little overboard with the “Thorn” storyline, Curse was the last entry that really felt like a Halloween movie until now (again, an opinion). Coincidentally, it also marked the final appearance of Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis, a character who was a vital part of the earlier films. The creators of this year’s Halloween set out to make Michael Myers scary again and for the most part they succeeded. Michael is nasty, angry, and mean as hell…but who wouldn’t be after being locked away for 40 years?
Halloween 2018 is a direct followup to the 1978 original, virtually ignoring all of the previous sequels. This may be a little difficult to get your head around initially, but it’s not the first time the series has veered off into an alternate universe. Once you can accept that Michael Myers has been incarcerated for four decades without causing any problems for the folks at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, the movie turns out to be quite a lot of fun. The story is fairly straightforward. Two investigative journalists visit Michael in the sanitarium where they hope to get him to communicate, to explain what drove him to commit the murders so many years ago. Not having much success, they seek out Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in order to learn how the experience has impacted her life. Once again, the results of the journalists’ efforts prove to be less than satisfactory. Laurie has been living in seclusion in a gated house in the woods which she has turned into a kind of fortress in preparation for the day Michael escapes from confinement. She is estranged from her family after two failed marriages and now has a daughter named Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). As a child, Karen had been removed from her mother’s custody after Laurie was deemed unfit. Laurie still tries to maintain a relationship with her granddaughter in the midst of her family troubles and must cope with post-traumatic stress all these years after the murders of her friends.
While Michael Myers is being transported to a new facility, the bus carrying him crashes and he escapes. This works out well for Laurie because, as she reveals to Police Officer Hawkins (Will Patton), she has been praying for Michael to escape so that she can finally kill him. “The Shape” is once again free to slaughter his way through Haddonfield, leading up to a showdown with Laurie four decades in the making.
In this second effort to bring Curtis’ Laurie Strode back to the series following a long absence, Halloween hits a lot of the marks missed by H20. First, the story takes us back to Haddonfield and re-introduces the babysitter angle. Also, this time around Laurie is a much more sympathetic character. We get a sense that she is a very lonely person who, despite her best intentions to protect her loved ones, ultimately fails to keep her family together. The new film also depicts Michael as more aggressive and deliberate in the way that he stalks and dipatches his victims.
One area where the film struggles a bit is the story of Michael Myers’ new doctor, Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), who accompanies Michael on the bus when it crashes. Some of Dr. Sartain’s actions are inexplicable and do not seem to have much purpose, other than to maybe add suspense to a dangerous situation in which Allyson finds herself while she tries to make her way to Laurie’s house. Also, we are led to believe that all of Laurie’s preparations are fueled by her expectation that Michael would one day return for her. Yet alongside the arsenal in her “bunker” are other survival items such as food storage, which suggests that at some point Laurie decided to go full prepper. If Michael is an obsession for Laurie and the primary factor which governed her decision to reinforce her home, then it is unclear why she would expect to be holed up in her basement for any extended period. These are minor criticisms, however, and should not detract from anyone’s enjoyment of the film.
What works really well in this sequel is the decision to avoid getting into back stories. Gone is the brother-sister aspect of Michael and Laurie’s relationship. I was a little skeptical of this at first, since it essentially wipes out a key plot point of Halloween II (1981). However, what made the Michael Myers character so frightening in the original Halloween was the randomness of his actions; the fact that he killed without purpose. Likewise, in Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake we are presented with Michael’s screwed up childhood and dysfunctional family as the driving force behind his eventual killing spree. In the new movie, there are several characters who are actively seeking answers as to why Michael is driven to commit murder but we, as an audience, do not need to know the reason. He is simply “The Boogeyman” and that’s how it should be.
Surprisingly, there is a fair amount of humor in the new Halloween and it does not hurt the film as with some of the previous entries. Most of these instances involve a little kid named Julian (Jibrail Nantambu) who is being babysat by Allyson’s friend Vicky (Virginia Gardner). This kid steals every scene he’s in and it turns out the young actor improvised many of his lines. Fortunately, the comedic elements are genuinely funny here and work well in the film to compliment the horror. We have seen other Halloween movies whose attempts at humor tend to fall flat and in some cases become cringeworthy (looking at you, Resurrection). There’s also plenty of violence as Michael slays his way through various cast members, including some inventive kills that don’t necessarily involve the old butcher knife. Cinematography and set design are very effective in capturing the Halloween vibe that was present in some of the earlier films. An interesting aspect of the new movie (without giving too much away) is the way in which certain shots from the original are re-created with Michael and Laurie seemingly switching roles. This serves as a nice juxtaposition and appears to symbolize how the hunted from the first Halloween has now become the hunter.
In summary, this new Halloween sequel is a satisfying entry in the series and should please long time fans of the franchise who might not have been thrilled with the last few installments. The film raked in a nice $92M worldwide on opening weekend, so it’s a safe bet that Halloween will return to Haddonfield again in the near future.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Captain Kirk masks.
