And as the original celebrates its fortieth anniversary, Universal Studios and Blumhouse have teamed up to give us a sequel to it that's practically a fresh start for the whole franchise. Gone is the cult of Thorn in the middle sequels, gone is the '90s flair stolen from Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Gone is the seven-foot-tall beast from a white trash family that Rob Zombie gave us. This new entry in the saga of Michael Myers is a direct follow-up to the very first movie that eschews everything that followed it, and it's one hell of a ride.
Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) has spent the forty years since his brutal killing spree incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, and is soon to be transferred to a maximum-security prison. Or at least, that's the plan. Instead, Michael escapes when the bus transporting him crashes and he makes a beeline for his old stomping grounds of Haddonfield.
But waiting for him is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), who has lived in unending fear that she might cross paths with Michael again one day. She lives alone in the middle of nowhere in a heavily fortified house. There are bars and tons of locks on all the windows and doors, security cameras and giant floodlights surround her property, and there's a panic room full of guns in her basement.
Laurie's inability to overcome her traumatic past, however, has heavily soured her relationship with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who forbids her own daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) from interacting with her grandmother. But once word gets out that Michael has returned to Haddonfield and has started adding numbers to his body count, Laurie heads back into town herself to protect her family and kill the monster that has haunted her for so long once and for all.
I'll admit that I've never really been a fan of the Halloween franchise. I just never really latched onto them growing up the same way I did the Friday the 13th movies. That said, I went into the theater hoping that at the very least, this new incarnation of Michael Myers would wash the taste of those godawful abominations that Rob Zombie directed out of my mouth. And you know what? This new Halloween kicks ass. It's a genuinely scary movie that I'd honestly call probably the best of all the franchise's sequels. (Or at least my favorite of the sequels with Michael Myers, because I do love me some Halloween III.)
While director David Gordon Green might sound like an odd choice to helm a movie like this due to his past work being a long list of comedies, he proves here than he can make one hell of a horror movie. Green does an amazing job actually building to scary moments rather than just trying to startle the audience with cheap jump scares. Take, for example, a scene at a gas station early in the movie. Michael ever so subtly moves in the background, just slightly out of focus. You might not even really notice him at first, depending on what part of the screen you're paying attention to. But then you start noticing just what Michael has been doing. And just as we begin to realize just how much trouble the characters are in, Michael strikes and takes tension to full-blown terror.
Green also doesn't hold back when it comes to showing just how much of a monster Michael is. The character almost seems like a blend of the cold, focused boogeyman from the 1978 original and the brutal animal from the 2007 remake. Roughly halfway through the movie, there is a three-minute sequence that is one unbroken shot of Michael walking down a street surrounded by trick-or-treaters. The camera follows Michael as he sneaks into different houses at random and kills the occupants inside. It's terrifying in its utter senselessness. Michael has absolutely no reason to do this, no greater purpose for it beyond pure sadism and malice. Green making this one unbroken shot gives us no escape; we're following a monster in a white mask as he cuts a bloody swath through a small town for no reason other than because he can, and there is no stopping him.
I also thought the movie benefitted from a strong script, written by Green, Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBride. (Yes, the same Danny McBride from Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, and Eastbound & Down.) I thought Halloween H20 was bold to remove the fourth, fifth, and sixth movies from continuity, but Green, Fradley, and McBride go as far as to ignore all the sequels, evidenced when Allyson dismisses the idea of Michael and Laurie being siblings as a bunch of malarkey thought up by a sensationalistic press. Much like H20, it streamlines things for people approaching the franchise for the first time, since you don't have to worry about having missed anything beyond one movie. And even then, you don't need to have seen the original to understand this one. They fill in enough of the gaps that you more than likely won't feel lost if you're new to the Halloween movies.
That said, what I felt made the movie so strong was not only its fresh take on the franchise, but in how Green, Fradley, and McBride depict Laurie Strode. This Laurie is so different from the one we saw in H20. She's not trying to hide from her past at the bottom of a liquor bottle and keep it a secret from the world with a new name. This Laurie has suffered all kinds of trauma, so much so that it has left her an utterly miserable person even decades later. She can't let herself move on because the psychological wounds are too deep to heal. Sure, Laurie was messed up mentally in H20 (so much so that Jamie Lee Curtis's cameo as the character in Resurrection was set in a mental institution) and in Rob Zombie's second movie, but it feels more believable, more real here.
But I'll also say that I didn't think the script was perfect either. And it's for one reason: the Dr. Sartain character. I got the feeling that Green, Fradley, and McBride wanted to put a Dr. Loomis kind of character in the movie but didn't have the heart to recast the role, so they came up with Dr. Sartain instead. Dr. Sartain has none of the gravitas of Dr. Loomis, and a stupid third act twist does the character no favors either.
And then there's the cast, the glorious cast. The supporting actors are fun (I especially liked Jibrail Nantambu in his small role as a smart-aleck kid being babysat by one of Allyson's friends), and Judy Greer is quite good as Laurie's estranged daughter. Greer especially gets to show off once her character is stuck facing her unhappy childhood once Michael starts coming for her family.
James Jude Courtney, meanwhile, is terrifying as Michael Myers. Nick Castle plays Michael in a handful of scenes, reprising the role he played back in 1978, but it's mostly Courtney we see on-screen. Courtney has an aura to him that makes Michael scary to even just look at when he's standing still. I never really got why Michael was always called "The Shape" before, but now I think I do. Courtney's Michael is the shape of evil, the shape of what goes bump in the night. And honestly, this is probably the scariest depiction of Michael I've seen since the original movie.
And I can't talk about the cast without discussing Jamie Lee Curtis. Some people might be seeing this movie just for Michael, but Curtis as Laurie is just as important. Her depiction of Laurie here is of a woman not to be trifled with. She reminds me somewhat of Linda Hamilton's performance in Terminator 2, how she'd transformed from naive young woman to hardened warrior. The difference between them, though, is that Laurie feels much more raw. Her pain, worry, and paranoia are much more palpable, and Curtis plays the role with an intensity that keeps your eyes on her. If Michael Myers is the shape of evil, then Curtis makes Laurie Strode the shape of unprocessed rage caused by trauma and a desire to make sure nobody hurts like she does.
The opening credits of the 2018 version of Halloween are a montage of names next to a rotten, destroyed pumpkin. But as the names flicker by and John Carpenter's iconic theme reaches is crescendo, the worn-out pumpkin rebuilds itself into a vibrant jack-o'-lantern. It seems rather fitting, as if it represented the Halloween franchise as a whole. Michael Myers hasn't had it easy through his last few movies, but this new one is the perfect way to remind us why Michael and the Halloween name are so important to the horror genre. And I can't wait to see where the franchise goes from here.
Final Rating: ****
