'Halloween' (2018) Review and a Brief History of the Franchise

David Gordon Green's Halloween is now the third film in the series to have the same title and also not the first film in the franchise to disregard direct sequels as well, but before we get to the new film we need a short recap on the film's history.

John Carpenters 1978 original Halloween is widely recognised as a genre classic and rightly so, but because of the phenomenal success, its spawned a legion of sequels, none of which lived up to the quality of the original.

The 2018 version is the eleventh film in the franchise and technically the third second sequel if that makes sense! It took three years for Rick Rosenthal's sequel that continued on minutes after the ending of the first movie, still starring Jamie Lee Curtis's 'Laurie Strode.' Many poor sequels followed the tried to expand Michael Myers mythology and tie in the main characters loose family connections with him. Indeed despite it making not an ounce of sense, Myers & Strode were revealed to be brother and sister in the 1981s Halloween 2.

Curtis returned for Halloween H20, the franchise's 20 year anniversary film, which disregarded the original Halloween 2 (1981) and pitched itself as a direct sequel to Halloween. The film ends with Strode decapitating Michael with an axe but due to H20's box office success another direct sequel was commissioned with Halloween Resurrection (2002).

Most People's Reaction to 'Halloween Resurrection'

The film was a flop with fans and critics alike and largely derided as the worst of all the Halloween films, the writers explained away the ending of the last film by claiming Strode had killed the wrong man and that Myers was still on the loose. This placed Strode in a mental home where Myers immediately attacks and kills her early on in the movie, fans were not pleased to say the least.

The relative failure of Resurrection meant the franchise laid dormant for five years until Rob Zombie made a reboot/prequel Halloween in 2007, again largely derided by critics. This reset the film and characters with new actors playing the iconic roles with much more gore and attempts at understanding Michael. Though the film was a modest success especially due to its low budget and Zombie returned for the sequel Halloween 2 in 2009.

Again the film was poorly received by the critics but had decent box office success and Zombie has always shown flashes of brilliance as a director but never quite yet put it all together in one film.

We now entered one of the longest periods without a Halloween film, and it would be nine years before director David Gordon Green along with co-writers Jeff Fradeley & Danny Mcbride. Green is an interesting choice as director as he has a varied career starting out with indie dramas like George Washington & Undertow before making more of an impact with stoner comedies like Pineapple Express & Your Highness.

As I have mentioned Green's film is a direct sequel to Carpenter's original, we see that the trauma of that night has affected Laurie Strode for years and has impacted every facet of her life. She has two failed marriages, a strained relationship with her daughter and granddaughter, and rarely leaves her fortresslike house always preparing for the day Michael will return.

In this iteration Michael was caught, arrested and placed in an insane asylum where he has been for the last forty years without uttering a single word. Two British podcasters take his weathered, original mask to try and provoke a reaction from him but to no effect.

Of course a prisoner transfer is about to take place on Halloween night (because nothing bad is going to happen there right?), Michael escapes and heads home to Haddonfield.

I'm really torn on this film as it has moments of brilliance involving Curtis's performance and moments of lazy writing and typical horror movie stupidity by the characters later on. You can almost see the filmmakers trying to serve two masters here, they want to make a tight tense horror film that serves as a continuation from the original in tone and style but its like the studio has also said, "you need to include winks and references to the other movies and of course feature a bunch of annoying teenager characters to kill as is expected in every horror film."

There is a jarring tone between the self awareness of modern horror films and its comedic elements and the original primal horror of Carpenter's original. The film starts well enough with Myers early rampaging having effective and brutal kills, there are great nods to the floating camera of the original where Myers stalks through a neighbourhood walking into houses and killing people at random.

It as in this scene where I had my first minor issue, Myers is an unstoppable killing machine with no reason or remorse. So after one of his kills he hears a screaming baby and walks into the room, but then we still hear the baby and Myers walks out. Now I'm not advocating gruesome onscreen baby murder but I thought why has Myers left it alive? He could have simply walked into the room and the baby stops crying and then we see him walking out, the implication there would be terrifying but the filmmakers pulled back from going really dark here.

There is a great scene where one of Strode's granddaughter's friends is babysitting in a homage to the original and there is great back and forth between babysitter Vicky and the kid she's sitting Julian. This scene got the best reaction of all my screening with Julian almost stealing the film right here, the issue is it felt like we were watching a scene from a Scream movie, not Halloween.

There is a terrible plot line involving the granddaughter Allyson and a school dance thats goes absolutely nowhere, we introduce the douchebag boyfriend and then he just disappears from the rest of the film. If you're going to have a cheating idiot boyfriend in a horror film, he is clearly there to be murdered horribly.

Without detailing the whole plot Allyson escapes from an encounter with Myers and flees into the woods where eventually she makes it to somehow to Laurie's fortified house where her mother is already waiting for her with Laurie.

From Curtis's recent interviews about the film, its clear that she returned because of the core idea of three generations of woman from the same family uniting to take on the male horror that is Myers. And I can see why the filmmakers go this way but I just wish the stakes had been higher and they had been ballsier.

When Allyson is running through the woods I was fully expecting for her to fall at some point and Myers to catch her, even better would have been for her to make it to the house and Myers to catch her right before she got to safety.

Instead, once we get to the fortress Strode, with it's massively weapon stocked bunker, the film really lost me with the poor scripting. Once Laurie and her daughter are in her bunker, sensible horror movie characters would wait until he breaks in and hit him with a barrage of gunfire.

Laurie goes Sarah Conner.

But no Strode decides to leave the safety of the bunker and try to take on Michael herself, and I get why the filmmakers do this, it is so they can flip the original ending and have her hunt Michael through the house almost shot for shot at some points. My question is, if you've spent 40 years preparing for the one night, would you not be a little more prepared?

Walking through a house with the lights off and checking every cupboard for Michael is frankly a bit of a shit plan if that's all you could have come up with? We of course have to do the fake-out where Laurie is thrown from the roof and vanishes in an inversion of the original, while Michael looks for her. Then pointless granddaughter arrives just in time to rundown into the death cellar with her mother, while Michael finally attacks them just with enough time for mother and daughter to both attack Michael and trap him in their incinerator basement; where, once all three generations of the Strode's get to safety, they burn the place to the ground with Myers inside.

If you've spent forty years for this moment, wouldn't you want to wait to make sure he is dead? Instead of jumping into the nearest pickup truck and going god knows where? I'm guessing the filmmakers are hoping for a sequel once again.

Overall Halloween is a mixed bag for me, I feel like the filmmakers wanted to make a film about a grandmother with PTSD slowly waiting for the day she faces her nemesis, but instead we get flashes of that mixed in with pointless teen scenes that go nowhere narratively and are only there to increase the bodycount. If the filmmakers had been able to make the film more a study of a woman alone, traumatised by her past, it would have been braver and exceptional.

There are the odd few great lines where the writers get to expunge some of the franchises missteps such as Strode and Myers no longer being brother and sister which was added in the original Halloween 2 (1981). My favourite line is from near the beginning when a throwaway teen mentions thats all Myers is 'is some guy killed five people with a knife 40 years ago.' Much worse has happened in the real world and framing this story against it shows how outdated the idea is in the modern age.