Review of Halloween (2018) by Ronald B — 19 Oct 2018

When the trailer for Halloween 2018 played before our eyes, we felt excited that Michael Myers was going to return in full bloody glory. However, while this film has its moments of tension and nostalgia, there are many points where the horror falls short and Jamie Lee Curtis' returning character, Laurie Strode, is sadly underused. Disregarding all the Halloween sequels that came before this movie was conceived, this 2018 film reboot of Halloween picks up 40 years after the events of the 1978 John Carpenter classic. Laurie Strode is now an old woman who has an estranged relationship with her daughter and lives in isolation from the rest of the neighborhood. Michael Myers is imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital, despondent and still as a statue. The film opens with two investigative journalists trying to write a piece on the events of Michael Myers' killing spree 40 years. They are clearly obsessed with his infamy, going so far as to track down Laurie Strode and get her perspective on the events; she didn't bite though.

Michael Myers escapes because of a prison bus transfer gone wrong in the middle of nowhere. He effectively kills any witnesses, retrieves his familiar mask (after violently disposing of the previous owners), and goes to his neighborhood of potential victims. Presumably, his goal is to murder Laurie Strode and her offspring, killing any other humans along the way. This is more or less what we expect from a Halloween film, however, what would have made the film more fascinating is if it delved into the tortured psyche of Laurie Strode. Before Michael's escape, Laurie Strode appears as a crazy old lady stuck in her paranoid way which is the reason why her daughter Karen keeps herself and her family distant. Karen's daughter, Allyson, is a teenager who wonders why her grandmother is still obsessed with Michael after all these decades, but other than that she does normal teenager things like go to the Halloween dance and, later loses her cool when Myers begin his murder spree.

This is actually one of the biggest problems with the film. It never really feels like a Halloween film, instead opting for a DJ style scratch and match of different pieces from each of the films in the franchise, even borrowing kills from the horror genre a large. There is a scene near the beginning of the film which perfectly highlights a lot of the problems the film has. In this scene, the family has been trying to coax the traumatized matriarch of the family out of her hiding all and into a Formica diner of sorts. The dialogue between the various people at the table is cut more like a fight scene than a plot device. The cutting is jumpy, sporadic, it lacks rhythm and most of all, it needlessly builds and discards tension without a payoff; one of the cardinal sins a form of the storytelling. The primary problem of the film is that whoever was its biggest mastermind has no sense of mood or tone.

We don't want to come off as though we didn't enjoy the film at all, quite to the contrary this is a very good Friday night Halloween rental. But it doesn't feel like an entry into the franchise that we have all waited so long to see a proper sequel to. Friends the franchise will no doubt be frustrated by the lack of innovation. We do, however, find that perhaps maybe younger viewers less familiar with the franchise will find it to be an exciting and funny addition to their horror movie repertoire. After all, we do spend countless scenes following Jamie Lee Curtis's granddaughter instead of developing any plot, it is a thread that is dropped cold without explanation, without connection to the other entries into the franchise. If you're looking for a movie that is worthy of the title, I guess we'll have to wait for another generation of filmmakers. With that being said, if you are looking for a pretty good slasher movie to pass the weekend with, this is where we think the movie fits best. To sum it all up this movie (if it were a costume), would be perfect for the kid that loves to scare the crap out of people who has no idea who he wants to be. For the kid that wanted to be Michael Myers though, it's like getting a Frankenstein mask because it's all they had left.