Review of Halloween (2018) by Thomas O — 30 Oct 2018

Halloween (1978) was one of my first and favorite horror movies of all time. The simplicity, the music, the relentlessness, and suspense defined a lifetimes worth of slasher movies both good and bad. So where does Halloween (2018) stack up...? Fortunately it captures alot of the same pillars of that foundation where the scariest moments are waiting and wondering when and where Michael Myers might show up. It is sped up for modern audiences which ends up ratcheting up the body count and to some degree even speeds up his overall presence. Losing a little bit of the methodical slow stalking approach that made the original so good. But still captures the essence and spirit to be really good.

I miss Loomis and what he represents to the original and they unfortunately don't make up for it anywhere else in the film. And it exposes the lost opportunities in the film, with the documentarians uncovering nothing and seemingly have a pointless conversation with little or no depth with Laurie Strode and an initial nothing burger at Smith Grove. And speaking of Laurie... completely underutilized here. When you have an actress as good as Jamie Lee Curtis I want more depth and I wanted more. I felt like she could have been the Loomis of the film and really told a story from a slightly different perspective than he did while still saying "no you don't understand this guy is evil". To make it worse there is a complete misfire with his new therapist. I want spoil anything here but I could have done without this guy and the plot he represented.

So despite the challenges in the film I go back to what makes the original Halloween so special music, simplicity and relentlessness without a ton of pretense. It delivers on that promise. You have to suspend a little disbelief in all the sequels and the extravagance of decades of formula based slasher films sit back and allow yourself to be scared by really the OG stalker/slasher with all due respect to Norman Bates.

De.