Review of Halloween (2018) by Beyond The B — 21 Oct 2018

This October horror has come home!

'Halloween' (2018) is the most exciting and exhilarating slasher film since 1996's 'Scream' and delivers a big screen rollercoaster horror experience like nothing else in recent memory. It delivers a sublime blend of brutality, gore, dark comedy, thrills, tension and isn't scared to be self-referential; making sure it addresses any potential 'yawner' moments before the audience does.

'Halloween' (2018) pays deep homage to John Carpenter's 1978 masterpiece while playing with the slasher genre's tropes to great effect; sometimes subverting them, at other times leaning hard into them, all the while having a ball playing in the genre's sandbox.

One thing that was surprising was how funny it is, well, it's not super surprising since Danny McBride was one of the writers, but it was packed with jokes.

Now, sometimes that can be to the detriment of the story - especially if you are trying to convey dread, fear and build tension. However, in the case of 'Halloween' (2018), the humour is naturalistic, aligned with each scene's endgame, is based on the kind of stuff horror fans would, or think they would say upon coming face-to-face with a slasher killer like 'Michael Myers' (not in that awful 'Halloween: Resurrection' way) and most importantly, the humour is used to develop the characters into more rounded people rather than fodder.

Also, it is so well placed it offers those moments of brevity required for an audience to breathe for a moment, before the tension gets cranked up again.