After
deciding to resurrect the Halloween franchise, director David Gordon Green and writer Danny McBride expressed
concern that they might embarrass themselves, that their efforts might not do
justice to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic. Upon seeing their film —
imaginatively titled Halloween —
it’s obvious they weren’t using the original as a template for their effort,
but all of the subpar sequels that followed it.
Ironically, you’re supposed to
imagine that the seven sequels, as well as the Rob Zombie reboot and its
follow-up, didn’t happen, as this 11th entry in the franchise picks
up some 40 years after that fateful night in Haddonfield, Illinois, where Michael
Myers went on his babysitter-killing rampage. The only survivor of that
massacre, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), has been nursing an untreated case
of PTSD for four decades and it’s hardly made for a healthy life. Living alone
in the woods in a fortified compound, she’s taught herself how to be a crack-shot
with a variety of firearms, has floodlights festooned around the property, and
happens to have a concrete panic room below her kitchen. And yet … she doesn’t
feel safe as she knows Michael will return to finish his handiwork one day. A
transfer to a new facility and a very convenient bus accident allows just that
to happen, and before you know it, Myers is cutting a bloody path towards
Haddonfield to take care of unfinished business.
Halloween proves to be the most frustrating of movie exercises. There’s so much talent in
front of and behind the camera that expectations can’t help but be high, and
when they’re not realized, it’s all the more disappointing. Some of Green’s
compositions are arresting and at times absolutely chilling in their
implications. Our first look at Myers finds him in a recreational area made to
look like a chess board, implying that his antics are all a game to him; the
wrecked bus and its escapees wandering about in an eerie, hazy blue light. Myers
stumbles upon a front porch with the American flag to his right and a myriad of
innocent children prancing in front of him; all of these moments and a few
others combine to create a stylized sense of dread that proves to be the film’s
strong suit.
Unfortunately, it becomes obvious
that Green and McBride really have no idea what made Carpenter’s film so
unique. The original’s sense of restraint, its power of suggestion and the
rules it adhered to are nowhere to be found in this gory exercise. The body
count quickly hits double figures with far too many of the killings being
random and without reason. Myers killed with intent and purpose — albeit, a
very skewed sense of intent and purpose — in Carpenter’s film, suggesting that
there was a bit of humanity driving him, that in some way he could be
understood. Here he’s a void, simply an engine of chaos that kills to satisfy
the filmmakers and audience’s bloodlust. When Myers kills a young boy early, on
it’s obvious that Green and McBride have no firm understanding of Carpenter’s
work, and the result is a tawdry piece of exploitation made to capitalize on
the franchise’s history.
The requisite amount of stupidity
needed to move these affairs along is on full display in the third act as smart
characters suddenly become dumb as posts, allowing Myers to continue his
rampage so that the film can reach an adequate running time. Curtis is very
good in the iconic role, a worthy heroine for the #MeToo generation, yet she
too is required to pull a bonehead move or two so that Myers can continue to
stalk. By the time the slaughter came to an end, Halloween succeeded in doing nothing more than leave a bad taste in
my mouth.
For a review of The Sisters Brothers, go to the Cinemascoping blog at http://illinoistimes.com.
This article appears in Oct 25-31, 2018.
