Directed
by: David Gordon Green, Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judie Greer, Andi Matichak. Horror. US 2018, 106mins, Cert 18.This review contains spoilers.
Following the opening credits, a couple of true-crime podcasters drive out to Laurie Strode’s fortified farmhouse on the outskirts of Haddonfield. Via intercom they try to persuade Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) to grant them an interview without success until they offer her money, at which point the barbed wire entry fence slides open. If ever there was a metaphor for this clunky cash-grab retcon then surely this scene is it.
Director David Gordon Green and fellow writers Danny McBride and Jeff
Fradley (who between them have zero previous genre experience) eschew everything
from the last minute of Carpenter’s original right through to all the insipid sequels
that followed in its wake. By doing so this allows them to ignore HALLOWEEN
II’s soap-opera reveal that Laurie was Michael’s sister. It also gives them a
free pass to drop HALLOWEEN 4’s lame take that Laurie died in an off-screen car
crash, and consign to fandom history Laurie’s (on-screen) death at the hands of
brother Mikey at the beginning of HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION. Not to mention HALLOWEEN
6’s cult of Thorn druid nonsense – so let’s not.
Instead, the revisionist premise is that Michael Myers, aka ‘The Shape’ (James
Jude Courtney), was taken into custody that night forty years ago and has been
incarcerated at Smith's Grove Sanitarium ever since. Michael’s psychiatrist Dr
Sartain (“the new Loomis” as dubbed by Laurie) grants two podcasters access to
try (unsuccessfully) to interview Myers - but not even producing his original aged
mask gets a rise from him – so instead they set off to interview Laurie Strode.
Still suffering from the trauma of the events of that fateful Halloween night,
Laurie is now an agoraphobic recluse, hiding behind surveillance cameras, barbed-wire
fences and a secret basement beneath her kitchen housing an arsenal of guns and
rifles even Sarah Connor would be impressed by. Two failed marriages have come and
gone in the intervening years, along with a visit from social services who
removed her daughter Karen (Judy Greer). Karen now has an unbearably annoying husband, Ray ( Toby
Huss), and a teenage daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). Allyson’s grandmother
has spent the last forty years waiting for Michael Myers return. Naturally, no
one buys into her obsession until the bus transporting Myers to another institution
crashes and the night Laurie has been preparing for arrives...
Of course it would be unreasonable to expect director Green and his writers
to be able to recapture the lightning in the bottle of John Carpenter’s seminal
slasher classic. But, if you have the temerity to call your film: HALLOWEEN,
not Halloween 2, not Halloween H20 etc, if you replicate the title card and
opening credits and you enlist Carpenter himself to not only re-score his
original themes but also wheel him out at press junkets to bestow his papal-like seal of approval, you should at least make a
decent stab (pun-intended) at honouring the original work you’re riding on the
coattails of.
The film fatally fails to generate a modicum of suspense until the
final showdown in Laurie’s fortress before granny, daughter and granddaughter
form a three-generational female musketeer tag-team to shoot, stab and burn up
Haddonfield’s bogeyman. Key scenes and potential moments are squandered and
fluffed by Green’s sloppy choreography and over-eagerness to rush to the next
damp squib of a set-piece. The credit sequence arrives inexplicably out of beat
after an underwhelming opening scene in the sanitarium recreational yard which
looked promising in the trailer but dissipates into an anti-climax.
A key-scene happens off-screen, Myer’s escape from the crashed asylum
bus, cheating us out of a pivotal narrative moment. I read somewhere test
audiences didn’t care for the original cut which had Laurie causing the crash
herself. Whilst I can’t substantiate this, it would have made more sense
psychologically that Laurie’s untreated PTSD ultimately resulted in a
self-fulfilling prophecy rather than the laughable left-field twist later on
with Dr Sartain. Three writers and that’s the best deus ex machina they can
come up with in order to set Myers free on his slaughterthon? Anyhow, the bus crashes, and a clumsily
blurred re-staging of Michael’s forcible acquisition of a vehicle unfolds,
featuring the logically unnecessary onscreen dispatching of a pre-teen child. The US right-wing media have cried hypocrisy for Curtis’ onscreen
utilisation of guns, but far from glorifying the weaponry or suggesting it’s a
legitimate method of self-defence, the NRA would do well to take note that guns
can’t kill The Shape. Further to which, randomly-written-rifle-toting-boy
only manages to accidentally shoot Dr. Sartain before being brutally dispatched
by Myers. It’s undoubtedly an initial jolt to the system
(major studio film folks!) – albeit hardly groundbreaking to true Carpenter
aficionados – but it’s clear Green is setting out his stall here and now. Given
the green (ahem) light for a hard ‘R’ rating, an over-reliance on violence and gore
will take precedence over even one well-crafted scare. Even then some of the
cartoonish over-the-top splatstick make-up effects feel uncharacteristically
off-kilter with The Shapes’ previous modus operandi.
Green and his writers then commit the cardinal sin of failing to write
sympathetic characterisations for any of Michael’s victims in this film.
Allyson’s boyfriend’s brief character arc takes an abrupt shift into full-on
dickhead mode at a party; solely it seems to service the plot by rendering her
mobile phone unusable and Allyson temporarily oblivious to Myers exploits downtown. Her ‘supportive’ friend Oscar walks her home and once again abruptly
switches to complete jerk-mode by making a move on her. This is also necessary
in order to isolate him from Allyson so Michael can impale him on a fence. And
then there’s Allyson’s dad - also a completely ignorant jerk: “I’ve got peanut
butter on my penis!” (these are the jokes folks by the way). His implausible
actions unsurprisingly result in his death; unfortunately, strangulation by
cow-bells wasn’t as karmically satisfying as I’d hoped for. And as for the cops
discussing the contents of their respective sandwich boxes – well words just
fail me.
But what of Michael himself? Apart from a brief cameo from Nick Castle, James
Jude Courtney dons the Captain Kirk mask for the majority of the running time.
The mask’s aged and weathered rendering is a visual reflection that Laurie is
facing an older nemesis. Courtney isn’t done any favours by director Green who
rather than keeping him in the shadows and corners of the ‘scope screen - which
was Carpenter’s masterstroke - instead stalks him by steadicam, at one point in
a continuous tracking shot which results in two random kills across two
households which are staged in such a matter of fact way it feels like we are participating
in a Halloween walk-through at Universal Studios. The closet scene is ruined by
virtue of the trailer, although it too looks like a haunted house gag at first.
Jamie Lee Curtis admitted in an interview with Variety that H20 “...ended up being a money gig...It talked about
alcoholism and trauma, but I just did it for the money”. I’d argue that H20
tackled the subject of PTSD in greater depth than HALLOWEEN (2018). There’s
little actual meat on the bone for her character Laurie besides recreating key
moments from the original by inverting those scenes whereby she’s now in Myer’s
place, e.g. watching her granddaughter in class from across the street, or
disappearing from the lawn after a fall when Michael peers over the balcony.
(Admittedly these are nice touches, although ultimately they just serve as callback reminders to confirm how vastly
superior the original was.) There’s only one actual glimpse of footage from
Carpenter’s 1978 film, the murder of Judith Myers by the young Michael.
Bizarrely, the writers have decided to big up the ‘facts’ by adding further
grisly details as to what Judith’s younger sibling supposedly did to her.
Narrated by podcaster Aaron, the footage (naturally) doesn’t bear any
resemblance to what he is actual describing. Now that’s retcon, with the
emphasis very much on ‘con’.
Carpenter’s revised and remixed score, in collaboration with son Cody
Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies is a fantastic pulsating celebration of
electronic menace which rocks, unlike the accompanying visuals which sadly do not.
As the final end credits roll and just before the Universal logo returns,
the sound of Michael’s breathing is introduced just in case anyone is in any
doubt that a sequel is on the cards. Given the remarkable box-office haul
already, I’d say it’s almost certain we’ll get another round with Michael and
Laurie. Will John Carpenter be involved again? To quote from a Den of Geek interview when asked about
sequels to any of his other films: “I don’t know, but I’m up for almost
anything that involves money.”
** (out of 5*)
Paul Worts
