Review: Halloween (2018)
If I’m being generous, the Halloween franchise has a shit timeline, they’ve retconned the whole series three or four times now, trying to recapture the magic of the first movie, and they’ve had mixed results ranging from pretty ok to absolute dogshit. When they announced that they were doing another reboot, this time being a straight sequel to the first movie and nothing else, and it was being written by Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, it’s easy to roll your eyes and say that won’t work. But it worked, Halloween 2018 is not only the best sequel Halloween’s ever gotten, it’s the only one that actually captures what made the first film work so well.
40 years on from Michael’s rampage from Haddonfield, the town has gotten itself back in shape and most of the new generation only know of the legend of Michael, not understanding why a masked man killing five people across one night is worth mentioning anymore. Among the new generation is Allyson, granddaughter to Laurie Strode and the only person in the family willing to still talk to her after her PTSD from Michael’s attack left her bitter and lost her custody of her daughter, Allyson’s mother Karen.
As luck would have it, Michael crashes a transfer bus on the 40th anniversary and after finding his old mask again, he starts terrorising his old stomping grounds again. Only this time, Laurie is prepared for him and she’s not going down without a fight.
Like the original there’s something very simplistic but effective about the story, by removing a lot of the extraneous crap of the sequels – most notably Michael and Laurie being related – the film returns to the roots of a bogeyman style killer slaughtering people at random because that’s all he knows how to do. But there is more to it than that, the added family angle with Laurie, Karen and Allyson and the fractured relationship they all have from Laurie’s was a nice touch and made things a little more personal, especially going into the final act. Plus I like the fact that the film wasn’t afraid to bring up the relatively small stature of the original and how teenagers nowadays aren’t gonna blink an eye and five people being killed. It updated the story without feeling like it was shitting on the original, it fit in very well with the narrative.
Character work was pretty strong throughout, some of the teenagers were expendable though some of them surprisingly made it through. Allyson’s boyfriend Cameron was common and garden variety dickhead, his pal Oscar was a nice guy until he pushed too hard and became a Nice Guy TM, and neighbourhood friends Vicky and Dave were your typical horndogs – the Lynda and Bob of this story – although Vicky had a great rapport with the kid she was babysitting, Julian, a hilarious little bastard who was the only one to recognise he was in a horror movie and bugged the fuck out soon as he could.
On the law side, I’ll give props to the film for having the cops take this matter seriously, once they knew it’s Michael Myers they nut up and start focussing on taking him down since a number of them – namely main cop Hawkins – remember that night and don’t want it to happen again. I did look up to see if Hawkins was in the original but far as I could tell he wasn’t which is a shame in regards for typing to films together but he did a solid job on his own terms, taking action when he needed to and rarely hesitating. He spent a good time with Michael’s new psychiatrist Dr Sartain and had a nice talk with him over the legal issues surrounding letting Michael live or die, and since he was firmly on the die side of the conversation it was easy to root for him.
In the Strode family, three generations of women all worked in tandem to deliver a great family theme of the film which moved away from the murderous brother route into a dysfunctional but loving relationship. While I would’ve loved to have seen Danielle Harris return as Jamie because she was the saving grace of her movies, I understand that would’ve confused people and her replacement, Judy Greer as Karen, wasn’t bad, a little too green at first, arguing with Laurie about her obsession with killing Michael and robbing her of a normal childhood. But Greer’s inate likeability and a nice twist to her character later in the film made it easy to see things from her perspective and not think her too adversarial towards Laurie.
Newcomer Andi Matichek played Allyson, Laurie’s granddaughter and the only person in the family to still talk to her, Allyson is essentially Laurie from the first film, she’s a little more jaded thanks to being a teenager in 2018 but she cares for her grandma and while it’s debatable whether or not she believes the warnings about Michael but she listens and that’s the main thing. Much like Curtis did in 78, Maticheck has this regular, All-American feel to her character, she’s headstrong and driven but kind and friendly as well, and she’s a goddamn teenager so once Michael starts fucking shit up her screams of utter terror match Laurie’s as well, a lot of the horror of the second act revolves around her and she makes it work.
And of course, Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode, following her shitty demise in the shittiest of shitty sequels, Resurrection. Thankfully all that’s thrown out the window and instead Curtis is given a new Laurie to play who didn’t exactly have the happy ending you thought she might. In the years since 78 she’s been divorced twice, she has a fractured relationship with her daughter and she lives alone in a gated cabin in the woods, suffice to say she’s fucking lost it. But Curtis makes it work, this Laurie is a goddamn bad-ass – especially in the final act where she is frankly amazing – but we get those moments where the armour breaks, where Laurie is reminded that Michael is an insane killer and will kill her family if she’s not careful and that does scare her. It’s an interesting choice to make Laurie go down the Sarah Connor route of trauma but I liked that they did and it gave Curtis enough new meat on the character to do something different.
For the first time since arguably the first movie, Michael Myers is scary again, and he’s a lot more brutal this time around. The return to random killings opened the film up to a lot more avenues and they played with them very well, having Michael stalk, sneak and butcher people with nary a fuck to be had over who they are and what they mean to the rest of the cast. It’s great having this walking brick shithouse of evil again, small flashes of humanity break up the slaughter – like how he handles a crying baby which is a tense fucking scene to watch – but for the most part, this is the same emotionless murder machine we know and love.
Directed by comedy director David Gordon Green and co-written by Danny McBride, it’s hard to imagine this working on paper, but if Jordan Peele can make it work then so can they, and they bloody well did, there are some genuine chills in this film including a fantastic long take where Michael kills two people in two separate houses all while the street is filled with trick-or-treaters and gets away with it. Obviously returning Michael to the random killings is frightening in its own regard but it’s more than that, it’s his shark-like attitude, how he’ll silently stalk his prey, putting them on edge waiting until the right moment to strike and it’s that waiting that makes the film work so well, you know Michael’s gonna strike – he’s fucking Michael Myers – but it’s the waiting for when that sends the shiver down your spine and Green manages to utilise that very well. The final act is a standout for it’s solid action in the Michael VS Laurie fight but arguably the scariest scene int he film is when Laurie is surrounded by Shooting Dummies in the dark and you can’t get a good bead on if one of them is Michael waiting to strike or if he’s somewhere else, or even if he’s in the room at all, it’s one of the best scene of the franchise if I’m being honest.
Not that there’s a lot of competition but you get what I mean.
I can see some OG fans not liking this touch, but I enjoyed how funny the film could get at times, I’ve already mentioned Julian who I swear steals this entire movie from everyone in just five minutes of screen-time and there are a couple other moments that made me laugh. But it’s a good change of levity, the rest of the film is so dreary and serious to match the tone of the original that mixing it up and adding some laughs not only separated this film as its own entity but worked to bring this film into a new generation. The same with the gore, the 78 film didn’t have much – if any – gore because it didn’t need any but for 2018 audience, to get that visceral reaction they added slit thoughts, impaled chins, stomped heads, it’s not the goriest film in the world but it’s the sudden onslaught that catches you off-guard and makes even more of the impact when it comes around.
Halloween 2018 is one of those rare decades old sequels that actually works and works well, you can tell that Green and McBride are massive fans of the original and pay their tribute to the film – and to the franchise with some clever little nods and call-backs – here and make what could’ve just been expensive fan fiction into arguably the best sequel of the lot. It matches the original in it’s simple yet effective storyline but adds in a dysfunctional family and modern sensibilities to mix things up, Michael is terrifying once more with the added help of bad-ass trauma survivor Laurie to make an even better match-up this time around and the whole thing is directed with enough chills, laughs and gore to stand on its own feet as a great Halloween movie.
8/10