Review: “Halloween” ( 2018)

On October 25th 1978 John Carpenter’s masterpiece “Halloween” was released in North American Cinemas on a budget of $300,000 dollars. The movie went on to gross over 70 million dollars worldwide, therefore making it one of the highest grossing independent films of all time.

Even though not the first of its kind, Carpenter really perfected the art form of the slasher film with this motion picture, the execution was flawless.

A sequel was made in 1981, which in my view completed the “Halloween” story perfectly.

After the “Michael Myers-less Halloween 3” they brought back Michael Myers in “Halloween 4” & in each sequel after that to various degrees of success. In 1998 Jamie Lee Curtis reprised her role for the very first time since “Halloween 2” to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first “Halloween” film in “Halloween H2O”

So here we are another 20 years later  (Fuck! Time has flown by) and we have the 11th entry in the series which serves as a companion piece to the original 1978 film while ignoring every single sequel that came afterwards.

It’s been 40 years since Laurie Strode (Played once again by Jamie Lee Curtis) survived a vicious attack from Manly Man killer Michael Myers on Halloween night. Myers has been locked up in a mental institution all this time but manages to escape when his bus transfer goes horribly wrong, of course right before Halloween. By the way the bus crash and how it happened was left to speculation.

This time however we get a new version of Laurie Strode. This time she is more “Sarah Connor-esque” mixed with alcoholism and paranoia. The woman still suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome from the events that took place 40 years earlier. We find out she has been divorced twice in this timeline. She had a daughter that was taken away from her when she was 12 because she was a labeled an unfit mother cause she was racing her child to be this little paranoid soldier.

Her daughter named Karen played by Judy Greer is now an adult married with a daughter of her own. Her daughter’s name is Allison and is played by Andi Matichak. The relationship between Laurie and her daughter is a complicated one due to the fact that Karen always felt her mom had mental issues and resented how she was brought up and how it wasn’t easy for her to grow up as the daughter of the survivor of the Haddonfield Halloween attacks.

Ever since I was a kid I was a fan of this series so I’m going to judge this latest entry in the genre it belongs to and compared to other “Halloween” films. It’s been a few days since I’ve seen it and I’ve only been able to write this review now so looking back on it after a few days I feel like there are better “Halloween” movies and some that are definitely worse.

As they often say with horror movies, if you start to break them down and you bring too much logic into it they start to fall apart right before your eyes, so it’s better not to analyze certain movies so much so that you can continue to enjoy them.

The thing about this movie is that it’s entertaining and not boring in my view. However you do feel that in certain moments that it could have been better had they improved certain things on the script. The script was written by comedian Danny McBride, taking a break from his usual dick and fart jokes movies and directed by David Gordon Green, also a first time horror director. I feel like their inexperienced in the genre showed through the movie on a few occasions.

I feel like the character of the granddaughter, as well as some others,  were useless and the subplot with her friends and the high school party wasn’t necessary. It took the focus away from Laurie and her daughter. The movie was at it’s strongest when it focused on Laurie & those affected by the massacre 40 years earlier. You get the feeling movie studios are afraid of making horror/slasher films without teenagers.

This is the first sequel however that ignores “Halloween 2” so Laurie & Michael are no longer siblings. I’m a little biased when it comes to this because I personally love “Halloween 2” & now when Michael Myers escapes and returns to Haddonfield, he no longer has a family there & continues with the story arc that there were just random attacks.

They have a new “Dr. Loomis-like character” in the story named Dr. Sartain and is played by Haluk Bilinger. His character is involved in what was supposed to be a major plot twist in the story yet they don’t do anything really with that plot twist and it leads to nowhere and it feels redundant in the long run.

As I wrote earlier Laurie Strode is now a “Sarah Connor-esque” character and her house literally has been turned into a fortress with an underground bunker and weapons to boot. This location of course plays a pivotal part in the showdown between the 3 generations of Strode women and Manly Man Michael Myers in the third act.

Besides some of the problems with the script the film is indeed a “Halloween” film and it was nice to see Jamie Lee Curtis in the role of Laurie again. Ironic how there are so many feminazis today complaining about the lack of strong female characters in movies yet the horror genre has featured strong female characters as the leads for decades now. Whether it was Leatherface, Jason, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, Chucky or Pinhead among others , they all face a female protagonist in their various stories & Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode is one of the most iconic non-villain characters in horror movie history.

Some notables are back as well, such as Nick Castle as one of the two guys that gets to play Michael Myers this time, along with James Jude Courtney. Castle played the original “The Shape” in Carpenter’s original.

Speaking of John Carpenter, he’s actually involved with this incarnation of the story as an executive producer and also came on board to do music along with his son and godson. The score is really good proving that the guy still has it.

There a few good suspenseful moments in the movie and Manly Man Michael Myers has a few good kills in it, this includes 1 victim that you often don’t see getting killed in movies.

If you’re a fan of the franchise you will notice that there are nods to previous “Halloween” movies throughout the picture. Some even variations of previous “Halloween” sequences.  This felt cool but at the same time it felt in some instances they were just remaking previous movies.

Overall I liked the movie. I think it’s a worthy entry in the “Halloween” franchise and like I wrote, there are better “Halloween” films (Some that I’m very fond of ) but there are definitely other “Halloween” films that are much worse.

This is a film that’s either a 6 or 7 out of 10 for me at this moment in time but I’m in a good mood and I appreciate the effort that was put into it especially after seeing recently a couple of slasher films that didn’t try too hard.

So if you’re a fan of the franchise chances are you’ll like it. I did, flaws & all.

So see ya’ in another 20 years for “Halloween H6O” reviewed by Old Macho

7/10