Review of Halloween (2018) by Tom G — 19 Oct 2018

Despite the promise of the trailer the movie itself turned out very average. There was some bad acting with tertiary characters (In a horror? Who'd have thought!) and an odd number of laughs thrown in that didn't seem to fit, there are also one completely unneccisary plot twist that added nothing to the story. None of those were as big an issue as the fact I didn't feel they did Michael justice. They toned down his supernatural side to make him seem more human (always a mistake) and his kills reminded me more of Jason Voorheese's style than his own. Lacking was the disturbing curiousity he used to show around his victims and he did very little in the way of toy them (like when he wore the sheet to pretend to be a ghost in the original). Michael also managed very little in the way of stalking.

Jamie Lee was superb (and I'd expect nothing less) and this is really Laurie's story not Michaels. Unfortunately this is also her fifth Halloween with three of her appearances being retconned by this movie, this somewhat reduces the impact of her story as we've seen different versions of it several times over. Also on the positive side was the superb soundtrack provided by John Carpenter and his son which helped to give the movie a bit more of an authentic feel. As is often the case the references to the original movie were blatantly and didn't really add anything.

Final note, this a replacement to Halloween 2 and it's suprisingly similar to that movie. Which ultimately leaves me wondering what the point was in taking this route. We now have three branching continuities of Halloween and that's not even taking in to account the Rob Zombie remake. Did we really need that?