This is a sorry, tawdry excuse for a movie.
Producer Malek Akkad, whose family has owned the Halloween franchise since the first one back in 1978, obviously believes his property is bullet-proof.
 |
| Although Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) initially feels sorry for Corey (Rohan Campbell), because they're both social outcasts, she soon begins to see something troubling in his eyes ... something very, very dark. |
This pathetic entry’s writers — Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and director David Gordon Green — deserve some sort of award, because their so-called storyline makes no sense, and is populated by numb-nuts characters who never once behave in a credible manner.
This is another textbook example of the “idiot plot” … which lurches forward, from one eye-rolling moment to the next, only because each and every character behaves like an idiot at all times.
The sole bright note — and the only reason this misbegotten junk gets even one star — is the gently flirty relationship, during the rare calmer moments, between franchise stalwarts Jamie Lee Curtis and Will Patton, as long-beleaguered Laurie Strode and protective Officer Hawkins. These moments feel real, and heartfelt.
The film opens with a brief prologue in 2019, as 21-year-old Corey Cunningham (Rohan Campbell) is hired to babysit the brat from hell. The evening doesn’t end well, effectively ruining Corey’s life.
Flash-forward to the present day, as we peer over Laurie’s shoulder, busily typing her magnum opus memoir of Life With The Boogeyman (a subplot that goes nowhere, I hasten to add).
Corey, equal parts taunted and haunted, has become a pariah in the long-beleaguered Illinois community of Haddonfield; he works part-time at the mechanic and wrecking shop owned by his sympathetic stepfather (Rick Moose). Corey is immediately targeted by a quartet of local bullies — two guys, two gals — led by Terry (Michael Barbieri); Laurie, knowing what it feels like to be an outsider, comes to Corey’s rescue.
Elsewhere, Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) — who, over the course of several films, lost her mother, father and then-boyfriend to the knife-wielding Michael Myers — attempts to build a new life as a nurse at Haddonfield’s hospital. Alas, getting ahead has become unlikely, due to the behavior of her jerkwad supervisor, Doctor Mathis (Michael O’Leary).
Ah, but when she treats a nasty hand wound Corey suffered during his encounter with the young thugs, it’s Love At First Sight.
Okay, I suppose; they’re both damaged goods, and might be helpful to each other.
But it soon becomes blindingly obvious, as the next few days pass, that Corey has succumbed to an ominously violent Dark Side.
Why?
Because he was seized — and spared — by Michael Myers, currently hiding out in a cobwebby underground lair, accessed via a culvert beneath an overhead highway.
This film’s writers also have modified the raison d’être for Michael’s renewed killing spree, which traditionally targeted (mostly) innocents. This time, he goes after people who deserve to die … and this saga is littered with them.
Michael Myers, as a revenge avatar? With an acolyte at his side?
Puh-leaze.
Matichak can’t begin to pull off the vast emotional shifts this misbegotten script demands of Allyson, and she gets no help from Green’s ham-fisted directing. Most of the sidebar players in this mess overact atrociously, none worse than Joanne Baron, as Corey’s shrill, hectoring mother (whose interest in her son, in a bizarre third-act twist, is decidedly unhealthy).
Keraun Harris isn’t much better, as a local radio DJ who spins shrieking rock songs that seem to be goading Michael to return. (One wonders why Haddonfield’s nervous citizens haven’t run him out of town on a rail.)
Curtis, thankfully, is enough of an actress to surmount Green’s ineptness. Laurie Strode is, as always, a resourceful, fully fleshed rock among her community’s one-dimensional wimps. But she’s also vulnerable, subject to deep wounds when random neighbors accuse her — by virtue of her ongoing presence — of attracting Michael to Haddonfield. Curtis’ features reflect genuine pain, at such moments.
Curtis must have set some sort of record, having playing the same character seven times over the course of 44 years.
(A bit of research reveals that Hong Kong actor Kwan Tak-hing played the martial arts folk hero Wong Fei-hung at least 77 times, from 1949’s Story of Huang Feihong Part 1, through 1981’s Dreadnaught: a record unlikely to be broken. But that’s only a span of 32 years, so Curtis wins on longevity.)
John Carpenter’s eerily iconic title theme makes a welcome return, as does the man himself, composing the score for this entry alongside son Cody and Daniel Davies. Sadly, their spooky horror-synth cues too frequently are buried beneath the aforementioned shock-rock tunes.
Actually, the title credits are this film’s best moment, as Carpenter’s chilling 1978 theme plays against a series of increasingly malevolent carved pumpkins “swallowing” themselves.
After which, it’s all downhill.
No comments:
Post a Comment