HALLOWEEN: Jamie Lee Curtis Steals the Show in an Otherwise Competently-Directed, yet Average Slasher Sequel

Genre: Horror, Thriller

Produced by: Jason Blum, Malek Akkad, Bill Block

Directed by: David Gordon Green

Written by: David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Jeff Fradley

Production Company: Universal Pictures

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Nick Castle, Andi Matichak, Omar J. Dorsey      

Runtime: 104 minutes

SYNOPSIS: 

Set 40 years after Michael Myers’ (Nick Castle) killing spree in Haddonfield, Illinois, its sole survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has spent the rest of her adult life secluding herself from the society and preparing for the inevitable return of The Shape himself. When that day eventually comes, and when Michael starts leaving dead bodies in his wake, Laurie has to put all her years of rigorous training to good use to stop Michael and exact revenge on her friends’ death in 1978. 

REVIEW: 

John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) is one of the most culturally important films in cinematic history, especially in the slasher genre. Some might argue whether it was Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) or Halloween that first popularized the slasher genre, but the fact that today there’s been more Halloween copycats than Psycho’s prove that the Halloween formula works better for the future generation of slasher movie filmmakers. 


Because of Carpenter’s original, a slasher movie does not qualify as a slasher movie if it’s not: a) made with a low budget, b) set during a holiday or a commemoration of a murder, c) have a villain in the form of a masked serial killer with bladed tools as their weapon of choice, d) have a teen-dominant cast members, d) use a stalk-and-slash storyline involving the killer hunting the teenagers down at night, e) punish the sexually active characters by death (the grislier, the better), and f)  leave a female protagonist as the only one left standing to fight off the killer (the protagonist usually being the purest and most innocent of the bunch). From then on, it is just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. 

Beyond that, the Halloween film series is the first instance that dares disregard continuity when it comes to franchise filmmaking. No other film franchises reset their timeline as often as the Halloween series (its real contest being the James Bond film series). It’s a franchise which sees major characters getting killed off and resurrected and even going as far as having an anthology movie bench its poster boy Michael Myers (Halloween III: Seasons of the Witch (1982)). 

So, it’s really business as usual for the Halloween series when director David Gordon Green announced that his version of Halloween (2018) will retcon a bulk of the series’ previous installments, hence making a previously deceased character in Halloween Resurrection (2002) Laurie Strode now alive and well. However, unlike Jamie Lee Curtis’ maiden return as Laurie in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998) where it retcons everything after Halloween II (1981), the actress’ second return as that same character decides to wipe everything out of existence except Carpenter’s original. 

And undoubtedly the major casualty of Halloween II’s exclusion from David Gordon Green’s Halloween’s universe is its plot twist involving Laurie Strode being Michael Myers’ sister. In this movie, the overruling of said twist comes in a scene with Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and her two teenage friends walking down the sidewalk, where one of them asked Allyson whether her grandmother is really Michael Myers’ sister, to which she replies, “It’s just something people made up”. 

In saying so and, as a result, downplaying the familial nature of Laurie and Michael’s relationship, 2018’s Halloween invents this new narrative portraying Michael’s actions in 1978 as a random act of killing designed to satiate the character’s murderous appetite rather than personal vendetta. On the one hand, some might argue that Michael’s perceived absence of an emotional motivation in the new narrative renders the progression of events in the first movie, from his perverse fixation towards Laurie to his decision to kill off only the people emotionally associated with Laurie, meaningless.  On the other, it’s the absence of motivation that actually makes The Shape a far more frightening presence in this incarnation. 

In a way, it retains the air of mystique Carpenter had envisioned of the character in the first place. Not every serial killer needs character development. Not every serial killer’s motive needs explaining. Going deeper into the killer’s psychology, like understanding how and why he got to be who he is now, can put the movie in a dangerous position where the killer becomes such a sympathetic character that the audience root for the killer instead of the protagonist. In a slasher movie’s case, the best serial killers are those who are unsympathetic, those who the audience know very little of, those whose reasons are as shallow and inhumane as the pleasure of seeing others get hurt, and certainly, those who the audience wants dead by the end of the movie. 

To the screenwriters’ credit, they are able to tap into Michael Myers’ lack of reason brilliantly by purposely giving the character little to no depth. Basically, everything the audience knows about Michael rests on what’s been established in 1978, no more no less.  We know that he killed his sister Judith Myers when he was six, which initiated his thirst for killing, but how did he get to that point? Why did he kill his sister? It’s the audience’s lack of knowledge on the “why” and the “how” that helps this version of the character embody what his then-psychiatrist Samuel Loomis (the late Donald Pleasence) describe as “pure evil”. Throughout this movie, he’s just this unstoppable force of nature who would not hesitate snapping a pre-teen’s neck in half, hammering an old woman’s head to pulp or killing anyone for no reason, even those not associated with Laurie. 

Nick Castle reprises his role of Michael Myers/The Shape for the first time since the first Halloween movie, and even forty years on, the actor shows no signs of weariness. Castle’s Michael Myers can still instill fear as effectively as his first appearance, whether just by standing in corners doing nothing but show his sheer, imposing physique or sneaking through houses in his lumbering, yet noiselessly menacing pace. But the character’s fear-inducing presence would not be complete without the mask, with its grimy, discolored features in this iteration adding a lot to the creepy factor. 

But by far the best element of 2018’s Halloween is its characterization of Laurie Strode. Whether it’s by the virtue of age, her gruff, hardened personality in this iteration adds a great deal of depth to the character that transcends beyond her past “final girl” archetype. The screenplay here smartly uses Laurie, a serial killing survivor, to explore deeper theme like trauma, the manner in which she tries to overcome it, and how the experience transforms her for better or worse.  

For the better, in a fist-pumping, female empowering way, her experience transforms her into this badass, almost action heroine-like survivalist, who equips her house with stockpile of guns and booby traps. By that standard, this is undoubtedly the franchise’s darkest, grittiest take on the character. 2018’s Laurie is the sort of character that’s based on a line in the movie prays for the day Michael escaped custody so she can kill him herself. She’s an advocate for women in today’s culture, those who can take care of themselves without men’s help, those who actually stands up and confronts their past demons head-on rather than stay silent or run away from them. 

For the worse, the experience transforms her into this paranoid figure, whose life is dedicated solely to preparing for Michael’s return. As a result, through a flashback sequence and her adult daughter Karen (Judy Greer)’s voiceover, it indicates that Laurie’s survivalist parenting style comes at a cost of providing her daughter with the ideal childhood. Throughout the movie, its Laurie’s attempt in making Karen understands why she raises her certain way and Karen’s resentment towards Laurie that helps create this estranged, yet emotionally compelling relationship between the two. 

Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance as Laurie Strode manages to strike the perfect balance between being a badass and a human. She fully commits to the action heroine aspect of the character with her fierce drive and surprising physicality. Her stunts in this movie require more fighting and gun toting than just the routine “final girl” screaming and running, and she never looked like she missed a beat in the action. By the same token, she is also as committed to the dramatic side of the character. There’s just so much tragedy, world weariness and history that surrounds the later stages of Laurie Strode’s life, aspects that can be felt through the actress’ every line delivery. 

It’s every time the movie focuses on Laurie’s trauma, her relationship with her adult daughter and her revenge plot against Michael where it’s got deeper things to say that the genre generally suggest. However, 2018’s Halloween often diverts towards many different places beyond just the Laurie and Michael storyline. Unfortunately, and to a certain extent frustratingly, it diverts towards the kind of different places that further takes the spotlight away from the thing it sets up in the first place. 

This movie is supposed to be the long-awaited final showdown between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, the satisfying closure to Laurie’s forty-year long personal vendetta. At the same time, it also wants to be a teen slasher movie, a teen romance movie, a psychological thriller and so much more that the end product comes off as jumbled. It fails to justify its reason to have multiple characters in the narrative other than for them to provide the occasional comedic moments, to be a plot device to get a certain character to a certain place or to pile up the body counts to please the masses. 

As a result, there are so many unnecessary characters present that could and should have been cut entirely out of the movie.  Honestly, there are two British podcasters here who look like the Warrens knock-off from the Conjuring series who are just in the movie as a convoluted plot device to help Michael get his mask. 

It’s not just the side characters. In fact, removing a main character in Laurie’s granddaughter character Allyson, her teen friends and her whole inconsequential teen romance story would possibly make Halloween a much more focused movie. On the one hand, the teen element has always part of the heart and soul in the Halloween franchise, but on the other, here, it seems like a shoehorned addition. Allyson particularly feels like the movie’s third wheel, a character that is just there to go to a high school party, scream and run when the killer’s on the loose, and pretty much nothing to advance the plot. Even as a character to help fuel family tension, there’s already enough strong tension between mother-daughter Laurie and Karen respectively, rendering Allyson’s involvement irrelevant. 

But since the movie still insists on keeping these scenes, it results in one that is filled to the brim with many weird tonal shifts between horror and comedy. Sometimes right in between or after intense slasher kills, the next scene is a “comedic sequence” involving two cops discussing their dinners. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to 2018, where two cops discussing their dinners is a subplot in a slasher movie. 

Plus, since the writers have put themselves in the difficult position of introducing so much plot points and having to catch up and resolve each and every one of them within such a short space of time, there are certain major plot points and character decisions that happen throughout the movie that are quickly brushed aside to the point that they feel like throwaway moments. 

One of the prime examples involves a character the movie referred to as “the new Loomis”. Right around the beginning of the movie’s third act, there’s a moment when “new Loomis” suddenly makes a decision, and it’s the plot-twist type of decision that in any other movie would have logically change the proceeding come its third act. But before the movie even goes deeper into this particular plot point, it is completely abandoned within split second through some circumstance (a circumstance which if revealed would mean a major spoiler). In the end, what’s potentially a major plot point is nothing more than filler.  

There is no denying though that David Gordon Green has passion for the material at his disposal. His fanboy-style creative expression is felt in every frame as this Halloween movie is littered with visual callbacks to some iconic moments and Easter Eggs that exist in its predecessors, particularly John Carpenter’s original. Or some might call it the exact sequences from the other Halloween movies that have been copied and pasted into this iteration, albeit with a few alterations. 

There’s one scene involving Michael Myers sneaking into a house shot in a semi-Steadicam kind of way that harkens back to Carpenter’s voyeuristic direction of the 1978’s Halloween opening sequence. There’s even another scene involving Michael Myers stealing a knife from someone’s house that’s a carbon copy of a sequence in Halloween II, not just in the direction, but also down to the sole occupant’s costume. In terms of aping every Halloween directors’ style, Gordon Green does it so faithfully. 

Still, his fairly competent direction could not quite compensate for the lack of atmospheric horror. In an era where slasher movie’s scares are defined by the gore factor, Carpenter’s Halloween would look like a children’s movie if compared to the modern-day slashers. To Carpenter’s defense, at least the 1978 version had sustained tension. That movie relied on slow-burn build-up and patience to keep people on edge throughout the movie. Even after Michael Myers is done killing one people, the tension though is far from done. 

Gordon Green’s sense of tension here comes in fits and starts. It’s a slasher movie that never takes its time to build suspense leading up to the slasher kills. Instead, it falls into the trappings of the average slasher movie by sidestepping suspense-building for the sake of body counts. Sure, those who like more deaths in their slasher movie would be pleased with 2018’s Halloween, but there’s so much kills that just flies by abruptly, and in the end, unremarkably. 

It doesn’t take advantage of Michael Myers as this ghost-like presence who likes to creep in the dark and stalk people obsessively as often as it should have been. Without any build up whatsoever, this movie just shows Michael coming into people’s houses, killing a bunch people, and going, leaving blood-splattered mess in his wake, in sequences that only last maybe a minute or two. And it’s not the type of mess that unsettles the audience. It’s the tensions-been-drained-out-of-the-scene type that allows the audience a time to breathe, which is bad news for a horror movie.  

CONCLUSION: 

2018’s Halloween shines when it focuses on the Laurie Strode-Michael Myers story arc, but fades when it also decides to settle for the conventional, been-there-done-that teen slasher territory. Some of the slasher kills are occasionally thrilling, but they lacked Carpenter’s voyeuristic direction to stand out above the rest. 

Score: 6.5/10