Two stars. Rated R, for strong violence, gore, profanity, brief drug use and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.19.18
You can’t go home again … but boy, the Hollywood sausage-grinders do keep trying.
Hollywood has unleashed 10 sequels, remakes or re-boots of John Carpenter’s modest — but undeniably ground-breaking — 1978 chiller, and not oneof them has anywhere near the original’s intensity or suspense. Instead, they’ve all succumbed to the ever-increasing gore quotient much more reminiscent of the deliberately disgusting Friday the 13th series that kicked off two years later.
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| As Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has just discovered, not even a heavily fortified home can stop a homicidal maniac crafty enough to punch through a window. |
This one’s no exception.
The butchery here adheres to the usual formula: exercises solely designed to challenge the imaginations of make-up and special effects crewmembers. Of particular delight is the carving knife thwocked into the back of a woman’s skull, the blade’s front emerging between her agonized eyes; and the head that gets stomped into hamburger beneath a heavy boot. Tasty.
Carpenter must be of two minds. On the one hand, he’s likely pleased that every one of these misbegotten offspring have made his first film look ever better with time. On the other hand, he’s gotta be dismayed by what that film has wrought, and how it keeps getting blamed — unfairly — for all the gruesome “doomed teenager” franchises that have erupted in its wake.
The saddest part is that director/co-scripter David Gordon Green hasn’t even tried to make this new film halfway decent. He and co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley merely introduce a sizable stable of one-dimensional doofus characters who exist solely to be slaughtered. I mean, really: With almost no exception, these are numbskulls who’d wander into night-time freeway traffic, in order to marvel at all the pretty headlights.
Factor in the first resort of lazy horror-franchise filmmakers — the idiot plot, which lurches forward only because each and every individual behaves like an idiot at all times — and there’s very little to recommend this early Thanksgiving turkey.
Green and his cohorts probably would argue that such behavior is expected of the characters in horror flicks, and that this adds a desired note of dark humor. In the first place, that’s nonsense; in the second, I’m not willing to credit them with that much insight. This is hack work, plain and simple.
This Halloween rebelliously insists that none of the other franchise entries existed, save Carpenter’s first film. (That’s somewhat essential, since Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode was killed toward the beginning of 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, and yet here she is again.)
Forty years have passed — as actually is the case — during which the homicidal Michael Myers has been locked up in a reasonably comfortable mental facility, where he has been carefully studied by psychiatrist Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer, standing in for Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Sam Loomis, in the first film). Michael hasn’t spoken a word the entire time.
Outside interest in his notorious “babysitter murders” hasn’t waned. (Five killings was considered sufficiently heinous, back in the day.) The newest acolytes are condescending British vloggers Dane (Rhian Rees) and Aaron (Jefferson Hall), who should win some sort of award, as the most arrogant, tone-deaf characters ever conceived. Dr. Sartain allows them to see Michael in the facility exercise yard; Aaron provocatively taunts the chained killer with the mask he wore that night, 40 years ago.
At which point we figure, well, they’ll be among the first to go.
Mention must be made of production designer Richard A. Wright’s marvelously creepy, checkerboard-style set for this initial encounter with Michael: one of the few times Green is able to work up an atmosphere of actual dread.
Meanwhile…
Laurie Strode has become the ultimate urban survivalist, barricaded within a heavily fortified home in the woods just outside the cheerfully ordinary community of Haddonfield. She’s long estranged from her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and son-in-law Ray (Toby Huss), both of whom have grown weary of her “paranoid” insistence that they must be ready for anything.
Teenage granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) is more inclined toward sympathy, even if she also doesn’t buy into Laurie’s fears. Mostly, Allyson has her mind on the following evening’s high school Halloween dance, which she discusses avidly with boyfriend Cameron (Dylan Arnold), best friend Vicky (Virginia Gardner) and nerdy hanger-on Oscar (Drew Scheid).
Official government interest in Michael Myers finally having waned, he’s to be transferred to a much grimmer high-security prison. Naturally, the transfer goes awry, and he’s once again on the loose. In Haddonfield. On Halloween night.
The bodies immediately pile up: so rapidly, randomly and pointlessly, that it’d take a sharp-eyed accountant with a large tote board to keep track.
And mean-spiritedly. A little boy? Seriously?
One cannot ignore Green’s decidedly nasty streak, which surfaces much too often.
To her credit, Curtis works hard to anchor this deplorable exercise. She’s one of the few persuasively real people here: a grimly determined mother bear who will sacrifice anything — even her family’s love — in order to protect them. Matichak is equally solid as Allyson: a thoughtful, open-minded young woman willing to meet her grandmother halfway, if that’s what it takes to have a relationship. Curtis and Matichak work well together.
Jibrail Nantambu is a hoot as Julian, a hilariously precocious little guy being babysat by Vicky, while her friends are at the high school dance.
Greer is another bright spot. Karen isn’t evil or unkind; she’s simply an adult who never experienced horror first-hand, and who blames her mother for a fractured childhood dominated by weapons training and hand-to-hand combat skills. Will Patton, finally, is a breath of fresh air as coolly capable Haddonfield police officer Hawkins, who was a young cop the night Michael Myers was taken into custody 40 years earlier.
(Except that he wasn’t, of course, as fans of the first film recall. Myers simply vanished at the end, prompting teenage Laurie’s tearful final line: “It was the boogeyman.” To which an obviously shocked Loomis replied, “As a matter of fact, it was.”)
Green gets points here, for this film’s clever nod to that iconic moment.
(To save you running to IMDB, Patton wasn’t in the first film. Although it would’ve been nifty if he had been.)
But I digress…
This series always has played fast and loose with whether Michael is decidedly supernatural, or a powerfully hulking and pain-tolerant — but mortal — human being jacked up on adrenaline or psychopathic glee. Green & Co. seem to favor the latter theory, but they leave a touch of ambiguity.
Best of all, Green wisely brought Carpenter along to resurrect his infamous title theme, with an assist from soundtrack collaborators Cody Carpenter (his son) and Daniel Davies. There’s no denying the creepy intensity of this hypnotically repetitive, keyboard-driven melody, which gets some of its unsettling frisson from its 5/4 time signature.
But none of these modest qualities make this Halloween any easier to endure. It’s a boring slog, particularly during the insufferably protracted third act. Green isn’t even smart enough to make his film tough, taut and tight; at 106 minutes, it’s at least 15 minutes too long.
If most of the characters in a horror film don’t deserve our respect, the result is no tension, and no suspense. You’ll get more emotional involvement watching the balls drop in a pinball machine.
C’mon, Jamie Lee. Haven’t you had enough of this overworked franchise?
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