Review of Halloween (2018) by Cameronhalmans — 20 Oct 2018

Halloween (2018) opens a new door for a beaten down franchise. David Gordon Green delivers the best film in this series since John Carpenter's original. With Homages and humor thrown in the mix, Green creates a successful, scary, and entertaining movie that can function on it's own, despite some flaws in the fluidity of it's story telling. Halloween (2018) is directed by David Gordon Green and is co written by Gordon Green and Danny Mcbride. These two have worked together multiple times but mainly through comedic efforts, primarily in Pineapple Express. The speculation surrounding these two made sense, but for the most part, they did a good job with this film. Starting with the direction. The three most important things to get right in a film like this is Michael Meyers, the atmosphere, and Laurie Strode. All three of these things were sent into the right direction. Michael is menacing again in this film. He's brutal, lethal, and kills with no reason, just for pure evil's sake. There isn't any confusing mythology surrounding Meyers either. The film retcons all the other sequels and goes back to the basics of just pure evil. Not to mention,the mask in this film is terrifying. The aesthetic: Green captures those October vibes better than any other sequel has before and the score added in by Carpenter and company elevates this film to a higher plateau. Lorie Strode: Jaime Lee Curtis is back in another Halloween movie, but this time she's not running, she's waiting for the evil to return. Curtis delivers an unhinged and emotional performance, the likes of which we just haven't seen in this franchise. It was big for the filmmakers to treat the Strode character right and they did just that. Moving on to other noteworthy topics of conversation, the kills in this movie are so satisfying, however weird that sounds. Green directs a scene that clearly looks like it was inspired by Carpenter where Michael walk around the streets of Haddonfield, entering random homes and murdering random people. The scene looked to be shot in one take, but focuses on the sheer brutality of Michael's evil. A huge bright spot in this film was the character of Allyison, the granddaughter to Laurie Strode. If this character fell flat, then the film loses such a huge factor. However, they casted the perfect person for the job in Andi Matichek, she knocks it out of the park. For the most part the side characters are serviceable in Halloween (2018), my favorite of which include the two investigative journalists that start our story off. They add a level a pure interest into Michael in this film and do not just seem like cast aways, they serve a purpose to this film. With all the things that make this film great, there's a number of things that hold it back from the original, and that' the screenplay. The writing in this film up until the last act is pretty good, for the exception of some pretty terrible characters (CAMERON, RAY, DR. SARTAIN.) The main issue with this film is Dr. Sartain and the direction the filmmakers decided to go with him. It's hard to grasp how David Gordon Green and Danny mcbride sat down, watched the final cut of the film, and thought the decision they made with this character fit in the film. I will not spoil anything but the writing in this moment was extremely underdeveloped and the idea really wasn't sought out at all from that point forward. There are some questionable performances in this film. Judy Greer seemed uninspired until the last act. Toby Huss, who plays Ray, the husband of Judy Greer is not good in this. His character offers noting but stupid lines of dialogue that are supposed to be humorous but fall flat. This may be nitpicking, but the child actor that plays the boy who discovers the bus crash is the worst part of this movie, he's terrible.

But, with all that being said, this film delivers despite its flaws. Halloween (2018) is a return to form for this franchise and a film that I definitely recommend everyone go see. It's a fun time. (3.