Halloween 2018
I expected to dislike this movie just on principle. I did not dislike it.
Knowing ahead of time that the film essentially trashed everything from Halloween 2 to Halloween 37: Michael on the Space Shuttle helped. After viewing this version I think rebooting by pretending that none of that ever happened was exactly the right move. Josh Hartnett never existed, LL Cool J didn't die, Busta Rhymes never tased Michael's junk, Paul Rudd never stole a baby. All of the big three franchises (Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare) skidded off the rails with sillier and sillier premises. Making Michael some supernatural immortal creature (as in Halloween Resurrection) was ridiculous. Resetting the series back to square one was, in my opinion, a brilliant move. It allowed the film to flow naturally without having to conform to the asinine spirals of the sequel storylines. I liked it.
If we're being honest, the first film really wasn't great cinema. The Omen and The Exorcist were far superior films. But Halloween was in a class all to itself. It was sort of hokey in a lot of ways. But it was great for what it was. It completely changed the horror genre. No, it basically created a new genre. I loved it then and I respect it now. And while we're being honest, part of my adoration for the film was the sight of PJ Soles exceptional frame. I absolutely adored her. Love, love, loved her.
Back to 2018. This film was pretty much standard slasher fare. The same slasher fare that Halloween spawned 40 years ago. Serial killer escapes, takes out his frustrations on some random teens and goes after the one that got away. No new ground was really broken.
I did think it was telling that one of the characters said (paraphrased) "So he killed five people 40 years ago. By today's standards that's nothing." I gotta tell you, I've thought the same thing about Charles Manson for years.
What I liked most about this film was how much love it showed the original (and even some of the ignored sequels). Not going to spoil it all, but here's a for instance. In one scene Michael tosses Laurie off a balcony where she hits the ground with a thud and lies there motionless. He looks down at her from the railing, looks backward at a noise in the house and when he turns to look down at the ground again, Laurie's gone. It was a note-perfect homage to the climactic scene of the original. Just beautiful. There was no doubt the people directing and guiding this film had a real affection for the series. So, so many callbacks to the original it would take a book to catalog them all.
Now, the few complaints.
1) This is a constant complaint for me. How. The. Hell. Does. Michael. Know. How. To. Drive?/ I've been asking that since 1978 and nobody can answer me.
2) The ending felt rushed and out of place. Like a lot of films it felt to me like they said "Oh hell, we're at 88 minutes, got to close this out now." It was less ambiguous than the original, but still left far too much unanswered.
3) There were pieces and parts of the film that seemed unnecessary and/or tacked on. The cheating boyfriend/lovelorn pal rabbit hole didn't yield any fruit and really only served to make the granddaughter look like a bitchy twat. Also badly done and completely unnecessary was the New Loomis turn.
4) The killings seemed a little too random. In the first there was some sort of rationale for who he chose to take down. Here, some of the targets seemed just to be objects of convenience rather than purpose. That seemed out of character.
During October I ALWAYS watch Halloween, Halloween II, Halloween III (an underappreciated film), Rocky Horror, Friday the 13th 1, 2 and 3 (my favorite because of the girl in it), The Exorcist and Trick or Treat. I've started mixing in some of the Saw movies, Hellraiser and others.
I expect I will add this one to the mandatory list. It's a nice bookend to the first. I'm actually looking forward next year to watching them back to back.
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