REVIEW: ‘Halloween’ (2018)
Photo: Halloween, featuring the iconic movie monster Michael Myers, has been rebooted, with Jamie Lee Curtis playing Laurie Strode again. Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment / Provided by ThinkJam with permission.
Halloween, the horror reboot starring Jamie Lee Curtis, is now available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD. The 2018 scare-fest tore up the October box office and returned some dignity to a franchise that had started so strong and then fell into sequel hell.
The new movie, which is oddly named Halloween just like the original, follows Laurie Strode (Curtis) several decades after that fateful Halloween when Michael Myers wreaked havoc on Haddonfield, Illinois. Back then, Laurie was a babysitter who needed to survive against this madman who broke out of a mental health facility. He was serving time for stabbing his sister when he was but a boy.
The story of Halloween is old hat at this point, and audiences should expect this new film to disregard all of the sequels that came after (no II, Season of the Witch, Return, Revenge, Curse, H20, Resurrection or the Rob Zombie reboots). Any horror fan worth their salt has likely seen the John Carpenter-directed original a dozen or more times. It still stands up 40 years later, mostly because of the suburban menace the director was able to capture and the believable performance of Curtis as a survivor of horrible violence.
This time around, director David Gordon Green (Joe, Pineapple Express) focuses on Laurie as a reclusive mother and grandmother who has boobytrapped her country house, just in case Myers breaks out again. She is a gun-toting vigilante who has distanced herself from her family because of her extreme views on the art of defense.
By casting Laurie as a survivor who turns to firearms for safety, Green and company have essentially made the Halloween tale a topical one, a commentary on the Second Amendment and the power (and difficulty) of surviving violence. The 180 on the central character is startling to behold because this Laurie seems so different than the high school student the audience experienced in the original; however, because of Curtis’ powerful performance, any suspension of disbelief is quickly ushered aside.
Judy Greer plays Laure’s daughter, a woman who is upset by her mother’s fixation on Myers and categorizes it as a mental illness. This also causes a strain between Laure and her granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak).
Of course, the inevitable occurs: Myers breaks out of his facility (more like a prison this time), and he decides to “go home” and hunt down Laurie. This is when Green and his writing partners, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, trip up in the storytelling. They bifurcate the drama by focusing as much on Allyson and her high school shenanigans as they do on Laurie’s Home Alone-esque booby traps. This means there are large chunks of screen time when Curtis is absent, and that’s a downer.
In some ways, one can expect a high school thread to be present. After all, this is Halloween, which essentially created the idea of high school horror in the late 1970s, but Green and company are never able to bring these elements soundly together.
However, this should not detract from the riveting final sequences in Laurie’s maze of a house. The scenes are expertly directed and acted, and serve as the best 15-20 minutes of the entire film.
The scares are quality and well earned, although they do not rise to the frights in Insidious or The Conjuring. That’s likely because Myers is a cultural icon at this point, someone who has become the face of an American holiday. And even though he’s a homicidal maniac, he’s a known quantity, and that defuses his terror.
Halloween is a healthy reboot, another winner from the mind of producer Jason Blum and his influential Blumhouse studio. It’s an interesting, unique trip down memory lane.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Halloween, directed by David Gordon Green and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, is now available on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray and DVD. Written by Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley. Also starring Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton and Virginia Gardner. Click here for more information. Rating: 
