Review of Halloween (2018) by John M — 18 Oct 2018

Happy Halloween. So 40 years have passed since the infamous babysitter murders. Michael Myers has been apprehended and locked away at a rehabilitation hospital. He is being transferred to new facility, so let's hope nothing happens on the bus ride over.

Now I am a big fan of the original Halloween, even though it is not something I watch religiously. I haven't seen any of the sequels or the Rob Zombie reboot so I don't have a ton of experience to go off of.

I do recognize that the first movie catapulted the slasher subgenre to a whole new level and I do also acknowledge how cool it is to be watching Halloween on Halloween, October 31st, so of course I jumped at the opportunity.

So how is the 2018 installment? Well, it has been a long time since I've had this much fun watching a horror movie in a theater. Other than the degree that this entertains, one of the biggest surprises about this has to be that Danny McBride is one of the writers on this (yes, that Danny McBride).

It is one thing to write fan fiction, but he is a genuine fan and you can tell that he wanted this to be good. To give credit where it's due, this features a really solid script. It keeps the story moving with the quickness, and there are even full breaks for joke exchanges, which is exactly what this movie calls for.

The pacing is dynamite, and this is a really lean movie, and I mean that in the best way possible; it's 100 minute long movie if you subtract the credits, and there is no fat to chew on, so none of your valuable time is wasted.

It knows why its fans are here, but it also knows when to pull back. They know that the audience is going to leave far happier with just the threat of something bad happening instead of actually witnessing the dismemberment of a child.

I don't think that they ever gave a good reason for why Michael Myers only tries to kill certain people and not everybody, but I do think all of the choices that they made were the correct ones. I really had a blast watching this, and I think it is good horror fun from start to finish.

My biggest gripe about this has nothing to do with the actual movie itself: the trailers to this give too much away in the scares. There are a number of sequences that are setup exceedingly well, but they were undercut due to me already knowing how it was going to play out.

The iconic music is back and great as always, and I think die hard fans and casual genre fans alike are both going to really dig this.