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 Grade: B+ Directed By: David Gordon Green Release Date: October 19, 2018 Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Andi Matichak, Nick Castle Related: In Defense Of: "Halloween II" (1981) and "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" (1982) Ask me what my favorite horror films of all time are and John Carpenter's Halloween will be one of my answers, if not the very first. Aside from the fact that it's just a perfect little engine of a movie, Michael Myers is, as an icon, my favorite face of the slasher genre. I love the franchise Carpenter's film spawned, as you can see in my recent defenses of Halloween II and the Myers-less Halloween III, save for entries like 2002's disastrous Halloween: Resurrection and Rob Zombie's two reboot films, and it would be an understatement to say that I've merely been looking forward to Michael's return to the big screen with David Gordon Green's Halloween.
It's also not bold to say that the legacy of the franchise, as much as I love it, is kind of a mess. Halloween II was meant to serve as an end for Michael, which opened the door for the standalone Halloween III to move the franchise into anthology territory. The poor reception to that film at the time of its release in 1982, however, put a stopper in that plan, and Michael returned in 1988's Halloween 4, a film that spawned two further sequels in 1989 and 1995. In 1998, Halloween H20 brought Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode back to the franchise for the first time since Halloween II, wiping away the continuity of the previous three films in order to Laurie and Michael against each other one last time. Of course, that didn't stick, and Michael was back four years after that with the aforementioned Resurrection, the outright failure of which sent the franchise into a coma until Rob Zombie attempted to reboot it all in 2007 and 2009, something that also didn't stick in the long run. And now here we are in 2018, nearly a decade since audiences last saw any version of Michael Myers, with a new film that has chosen to do away with all of the franchise's baggage, including Halloween II and the revelation that Michael and Laurie were siblings, to serve as a direct sequel exclusively to Carpenter's original film, with Carpenter himself returning to the franchise for the first time since Halloween III in order to produce and score the sequel. In the new film, which Green co-wrote with Danny McBride, Michael (Nick Castle, reprising his role from the original film, in conjunction with James Jude Courtney) has been incarcerated ever since that fateful night back in 1978, having been captured shortly after the original Halloween ended. Though so much time has passed, Laurie Strode – now both a mother and grandmother – remains haunted by her encounter with Michael and the unspeakable horror he brought to the quiet town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on perpetual alert that one day he will escape. She's become a survivalist to the extreme, to the point that her seeming paranoia has ruined past marriages and cost her a healthy relationship with her daughter, but when Michael finally escapes from a prison transfer bus and returns to doing what he does best, all of Laurie's planning is put to the test as she finally decides to confront her trauma head on and put Michael down for good. |
