When crafting a modern day horror movie...especially one from the "Slasher" genre, the recipe is fairly simple; take a bunch of clueless but quirky characters of varying ages and set the stage for these characters to interact in a definitive location like a suburban neighborhood, a weekend resort or an abandoned amusement park. Mix into this group of archetypes a troop of daredevil, sex starved teens who are ready to take their clothes off at the drop of a hat and face the devil himself just to get their rocks off. Of course some of these characters will be concerned parents who've left the house for the weekend and others will be the aimless cops who are so inept that they are practically tripping over dead bodies. Oh and of course...you have to create an enigmatic killer. The proverbial "Slasher".
One could say that Alfred Hitchcock treated American cinema to its first bonafide "slasher" in the character of Norman Bates in the seminal motion picture, PSYCHO. But Anthony Perkins schizophrenic mama's boy was more of a twisted mental patient with cross dressing tendencies. I believe when maverick indie film maker John Carpenter first set out to create the chilling backstory for Halloween he had something more sinister in mind...something that would provide the horror/moviegoing audience with a dark mythology that would keep us preoccupied for years.
In the original film Halloween, we are introduced to an eight year old suburban child named Michael Meyers who decides one night after his teenage sister has just finished having sex in her bedroom with her boyfriend...that he will plunge a gleaming butcher into her back and her heaving bosom multiple times until she falls to the ground...lifeless. He does all of this while dressed as a circus clown. As he leaves the scene of the crime, his parents pull up to the family home shocked and awed at the vision of their precious son and a lingering clue of what horrors wait for them inside the house. Michael is taken at that point by a state facility and declared mentally insane. He spends the rest of his formative years being examined and questioned by psychiatrists...none of them come close to breaking through his eerie silence that he legendarily maintains throughout his tenure at the asylum. He encounters one doctor who seems to initially have pity for him, Dr. Loomis, but who also ultimately becomes convinced that Michael is pure evil and has to be contained in solitary confinement at all costs. Unfortunately, due to a series of doomed events...there is a security breach at the hospital Michael is being held at. A number of inmates escape the asylum with Michael among them. Of course for purposes of this very scary story...Michael decides to return to his native Haddonfield, Illinois where he will continue his unholy yet random killing spree... on Halloween Night. His seemingly indifferent selection for human destruction leads him down a street populated that evening by teenage baby sitters and their horny boyfriends. It is at this point that Michael Meyers begins his classic hack and slash through more meat than your local butcher with zero compunction. Although his fateful odyssey of death brings him to a final confrontation with a young lady named Laurie Strode...a resourceful young woman who manages to outwit, outlast and survive Michael's night-stalking home invasion giving a slightly unhinged Dr. Loomis time enough to fill Michael with a fusillade of bullets. Yes, the nerdy...unwanted...and painfully awkward Laurie Strode defeats the "boogeyman" at the conclusion of Halloween...but at what cost?
This new Halloween film goes on to address this very interesting question and a few others too. It goes without saying that the first Halloween movie went on to become the template for American Horror movies and the "Slasher" became the new breed of Hollywood monster. There would be many woeful sequels and copy cat franchises over the years but none that ever quite captured the original impact of Carpenter's Halloween. The new producers, Blumhouse, have decided to scrap all continuity established by the moribund stream of sequels, and have said this is meant to be a direct follow up to the original. As a Halloween purist...I am happy with this direction and it allowed me to free my mind from the cumulative nonsense that cramped the style of this A-1 franchise with each successive cash grabbing sequel. They should have named this Halloween 2018...Halloween: The Revenge of Laurie Strode. Make no mistake....this is a straight up "revenge" flick. So much so that I could almost imagine them including James Brown's The big Payback in one of the opening scenes where Jamie Lee Curtis as Strode is partaking in a little target practice with her shot gun. As I was watching I saw shades of previous Cameron heroines like Ripley and Sarah Connor but it was never a blatant cut and paste from either of those works. Laurie Strode is a full bodied character who is on a mission to reclaim her own sanity by fantasizing about killing the person who took it from her. This movie is distinctly its own thing and the premise that our sleek but aging heroine has suffered most of her life from PTSD because of a vicious encounter with a serial killer 40 years ago is brilliant.
Halloween 2018 is a unique animal in today's horror culture because of its star power. Jamie Lee Curtis, David Gordon Green and Danny Mcbride sound like an odd trio for a horror movie but are committed and passionate disciples of the franchise. Curtis' taut tripwire performance is the meat and potatoes of this film and when she is on screen, she is riveting. There are all the recognizable beats, devices, tropes, twists and cliches that make this genuinely a "slasher" flick but Curtis lifts its pedigree. The same can be said for the well balanced writing of Mcbride and Green's voyeuristic camera. This film is filled with professionals using their artistry to tweak those gimmicks and and devices we've seen a million times to great effect...with the result being a rousing horror film that is not perfect but flirts with grandeur.
The story this time around pits the battle hardened Strode against a newly agitated Meyers who apparently is one of the luckiest serial killers in modern history being that he escapes his high security facility every twenty years around the end of October. We get a chance to see how Strode's fractured psyche has alienated her from almost everyone who gives a damn about her and there's some depth to most of the family scenes. I found myself wishing that Strode's daughter and son-in-law would get an up close and personal meeting with The Shape (Michael Meyers) because they were being so insensitive about her lingering trauma...but they soon get a taste of what they claim she should "get over" and it was very satisfying. There are a few senseless plot devices and twists that could have been eliminated...The High School Halloween dance and the heir apparent to Dr. Loomis but I have suffered worse in lesser films. The good part about what I have divulged is that these disappointing story turns actually lead in to very scary scenes or sequences. One particular scene involves a young couple walking home from the Halloween party and they have the tremendous misfortune of running into Michael. The way this scene was shot and blocked will chill you to the bone...as will other scenes of violence and horror stealth. This flick is very satisfying when it comes to straight scares. Michael is back to being a presence again and not just a lumbering, brainless vacuum with a butcher knife. He is scary as hell in this movie...as he should be, after all...he's the reason we buy the tickets.
The humor in this film is tasteful and for the most part gels perfectly with the otherwise dark elements...it's a palette cleanser that permits you to catch your breath between the scary bits. One sequence in particular involves a little kid who is wiser and more resourceful than the teenager who's been tasked with being his sitter for the evening. I truly laughed and was terrified at the same time during this scene. This flick does run the gamut of emotions and sensations. The movie's endgame takes place in Laurie's secluded, fortified big game trap of a house.!!!SPOILER!!! It's a creepy and nail biting game of cat and mouse which winds up kind of concluding with a whimper but it's a solid ending with hopefully no chance of spawning a sequel...at least one that includes Michael Meyers.
Rest in peace, Michael Meyers. You scared us well.
Rating: FUN and SCARY! Enjoy the Halloween season, grab some popcorn and a date and go see this film. Don't think about it too deeply...it's a slasher movie!
