Solid ****ing horror movie. Admittedly though, the best moments for me were the family moments. Everything regarding Laurie and how her daughter and granddaughter both have different feelings towards her and why... the post traumatic stress disorder that Laurie experiences and how it impacts her family... that was all great and even made me tear up a couple times. It was effective as hell.
Everything else was solid too. A couple moments that felt shoehorned in for the sake of plot development and escalation
[Show spoiler](the cell phone toss and the doctor killing the sheriff)
but whatever. It was absolutely the best since the original.
Saw this this morning and I agree with the last part of your spoiler. I was very upset about that. Totally stupid and unnecessary. Rest of movie was solid. I do have a minor gripe with the casting, though. I dont like using the word "ugly", because I believe people can only be ugly on the inside. That being said, this was thee most unattractive cast in horror movie history. Most horror movies have pretty girls and good looking guys. This movie had neither. The only good looking girl in the whole movie was the chick(journalist) in the beginning. Its a damn good thing the acting was good. Another minor thing that the editors and writers screwd up was when the deputy calls out, "this is the Haddonfield Sheriff's Department." Warren County is the Sheriff's Department. The patch was on the deputies shoulder, lol. All in all, Ill buy this when it comes out.
Saw this this morning and I agree with the last part of your spoiler. I was very upset about that. Totally stupid and unnecessary. Rest of movie was solid. I do have a minor gripe with the casting, though. I dont like using the word "ugly", because I believe people can only be ugly on the inside. That being said, this was thee most unattractive cast in horror movie history. Most horror movies have pretty girls and good looking guys. This movie had neither. The only good looking girl in the whole movie was the chick(journalist) in the beginning. Its a damn good thing the acting was good. Another minor thing that the editors and writers screwd up was when the deputy calls out, "this is the Haddonfield Sheriff's Department." Warren County is the Sheriff's Department. The patch was on the deputies shoulder, lol. All in all, Ill buy this when it comes out.
That was weird all right.
[Show spoiler]Did we really need to reference Halloween 6? Was this intentional reaffirming how stupid anyone would be for trying to control Michael Myers?
Honestly one of the things, I loved about the film, was just how many of these characters kept assuming that there had to be more to Michael, some kind of explanation for his rampages, other than "He's pure evil!" and they all pay the price for their underestimation. Kind of meta in a way.
[Show spoiler]I just didn't care for the payoff to be Dr. Loomis clone going off the deep end, to end this storyarc. Watching his head get smashed like a rotten jack o' lantern was oh so satisfying though.
Not a spoiler. You’re supposed to go into this knowing that all of the sequels have been ignored and never happened. This is a direct sequel to the original and that’s it. There’s only two ‘cannon’ movies now. Halloween (1979) and Halloween (2018).
Wow ok.... interesting. I was kinda confused as to why it was said only a few people were killed when there have been so many movies.
Gotta hand it to the writers for deciding to screw with the title and just call it Halloween and not Halloween: (something) ...so there is like two Halloween movies with 2 at the end of it?
Wow ok.... interesting. I was kinda confused as to why it was said only a few people were killed when there have been so many movies.
Gotta hand it to the writers for deciding to screw with the title and just call it Halloween and not Halloween: (something) ...so there is like two Halloween movies with 2 at the end of it?
Producers didn't want to date it, by labeling it as a sequel, and risk losing the teenage audience, not interested in seeing a sequel to an old movie. Honestly the film works as both a direct sequel and a reboot (meaning you don't necessarily need to see the original to get everything that's happening here) so it can be seen as a standalone film. For a lot of people this will be their first Halloween film.
I was in a theater with two teenage girls, and they had never heard of this series prior to this one. Shocking I know, but I swear it is true, as a 31 year old being asked to show his ID at the box office to buy a ticket to this film, which also happened. You should have seen the young 17 year old's face when I flashed my license.
40 years after his gruesome murder spree in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, the legendary crazed killer, Michael Myers, is still confined to a sanitarium, where his chilling aura of mystery, thanks to his spending his entire imprisonment in silence, unsettles his caretakers, especially Dr. Ranbir Sartain, who has been studying him on a daily basis to no avail. Meanwhile, the sole survivor of Myers's 1978 rampage, Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is still haunted by extreme post-traumatic stress. After two failed marriages and the loss of custody of her daughter, she now lives a life of constant paranoia in her heavily-secured rural home, where she maintains a massive arsenal of firearms. Her adult daughter, played by Judy Greer, cannot forgive her mother for the emotional turmoil inflicted during childhood, but she and Laurie's teenage granddaughter, played by Andi Matichak, are still warily hopeful that Laurie will break out of her shell and have a normal relationship with her loved ones. Soon, these three people and an entire unsuspecting town will find out that the ever-present nightmares of one woman are grounded in a terrifying reality. On the night before October 31, a bus transferring Myers and other inmates to a maximum security facility crashes, and Myers escapes. After four decades, this relentlessly evil villain, with his unseen eyes staring from behind a blank mask, is finally coming home again.
The 2018 slasher film, Halloween, which was directed by David Gordon Green, is the 11th entry in a lucrative horror series that started with the 1978 independent cinema classic of the same title, which was brought to the screen with sparse immediacy by John Carpenter, who serves as an executive producer and composer this time around. This new installment, which thankfully jettisons everything that occurred in the post-1978 movies, is marketed as a direct sequel to the original film.
Like Jamie Lee Curtis's intense lead heroine, I approached this latest Halloween film with both barrels loaded, ready to open fire at what I expected to be the latest in a disappointing string of franchise features. I love the 1978 original Halloween, I love its slightly trashier 1981 successor, Halloween II, and I even hold the unjustly maligned 1982 third sequel, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, in cherished esteem, although it does not feature Michael Myers. I quite enjoyed the 1988 fourth film, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, but I am of the opinion that the series has suffered a speedy downward trajectory since then, ultimately crashing and burning with the two entries that were directed with Rob Zombie, who took it upon himself to over-explain the origins of our silent knife-wielding killer. This afternoon, I walked into the mostly empty theater with an irritable disposition, thanks to a severe common cold that I'm toughing my way through, sat down as far away from other patrons as possible, and proceeded to watch this new story unfold with low expectations.
Much to my surprise and joy, this 2018 Halloween story works, and, for the most part, it works wonderfully well. This one captures the spirit of Carpenter's taut original film notably better than any of the sequels that were released in the interim. Nick Castle briefly reprises his menacingly iconic turn as Michael Myers (“The Shape”) in the 1978 movie, although actor James Jude Courtney helms the role for the most part. Both of them hit the nail on the head (or stab the victim in the heart, I should probably say) with regard to this character. For the first time in decades, my pulse quickened and my blood grew cold whenever the murderer was onscreen. Jamie Lee Curtis, who has lost none of her character's inner steel with age, effectively conveys the years of paralyzing fear that have taken a toll and inflicted her with a heartbreakingly dysfunctional existence. John Carpenter, his son, and others also succeed in updating the universally recognizable music score from the first film in a dread-inducing and more emotionally fractured way.
Through it all, this new Halloween never forgets that slasher movies, above everything else, are supposed to be wildly fun. The sheer offbeat euphoria that genre fans like me have always found in the rollercoaster ride experience of watching vulnerable characters find their hidden toughness and resolve in the face of unspeakably bloody mayhem is present and accounted for here. Although the events of the previous sequels have been tossed to the roadside, this movie relishes in throwing Easter eggs to loyal fans without letting them overwhelm the tension-filled plot at hand. One early diss to an origin story from Halloween II (1981) had me laughing out loud through my sniffling and sneezing today. There are a few storytelling curveballs here that may dismay other followers of the series, but, without revealing spoilers, I'll say that these surprises made sense to me.
I could nitpick at a few of this movie's shortcomings, of course. I believe that a focus on Laurie Strode's granddaughter at a high school dance is a sign of the filmmakers trying too hard to appeal to younger audiences. The basic tale of Laurie facing her longtime tormenter at long last did not need any subplots to diminish its impact. I also think that the unmistakable scent of fan service lingers over the proceedings here to mixed results, even if several of the visual callbacks to previous films in the franchise function well.
I have treasured the slasher genre since childhood, because I find the experience of watching ordinary people defeat evil and darkness to be therapeutically motivational, and I appreciate how the stories helped me counter insecurities in my younger years and various speed bumps in my adult life. The beauty of the more effective titles in this horror subgenre is that the actors who portray the likes of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and such understand that, when playing villains who are defeated by the goodness in the world, they have a responsibility to convey pure evil in an unsettlingly believable way. This 2018 Halloween, despite a hiccup or two, brings everything that I love about slasher cinema to the table.
The filmmakers here, God bless ‘em, even manage to throw creepy mannequins, one of my favorite horror movie stalwarts, into the recipe.
Last edited by The Great Owl; 10-20-2018 at 02:27 AM.
Did you even watch the original? That's Michael Myers. He is an unstoppable evil on two legs. That's why when he is stabbed, poked, and shot 6 times, he gets up and walks away. You cannot kill pure evil, it can only be made dormant. How anybody can watch that film, and not get that, despite the overwhelming evidence, I will never understand. When that
[Show spoiler] satchel is opened, revealing the mask inside, while the inmates scream in terror, guards stand at alert, alarms whail and dogs whine,
reinforces this evil now being re awakened, and set to cast a dark shadow over the small town of Haddonfield. It is the best metaphor for Pandora's Box opening that I've ever seen in a horror film. I thought that was a brilliant piece of symbolism, and shows exactly how David Gordon Green, and Danny McBride "got" this character and the overt themes of the original film.
Of course, he was stopped in the original (according to this new movie). I guess that’s what separates the figurative “evil” of the original Michael and the literal force of evil he became in each sequel. There is (or at least they're used to be) a lot of ambiguity in how things played out in Halloween and how to interpret its ending.
40 years after his gruesome murder spree in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, the legendary crazed killer, Michael Myers, is still confined to a sanitarium, where his chilling aura of mystery, thanks to his spending his entire imprisonment in silence, unsettles his caretakers, especially Dr. Ranbir Sartain, who has been studying him on a daily basis to no avail. Meanwhile, the sole survivor of Myers's 1978 rampage, Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is still haunted by extreme post-traumatic stress. After two failed marriages and the loss of custody of her daughter, she now lives a life of constant paranoia in her heavily-secured rural home, where she maintains a massive arsenal of firearms. Her adult daughter, played by Judy Greer, cannot forgive her mother for the emotional turmoil inflicted during childhood, but she and Laurie's teenage granddaughter, played by Andi Matichak, are still warily hopeful that Laurie will break out of her shell and have a normal relationship with her loved ones. Soon, these three people and an entire unsuspecting town will find out that the ever-present nightmares of one woman are grounded in a terrifying reality. On the night before October 31, a bus transferring Myers and other inmates to a maximum security facility crashes, and Myers escapes. After four decades, this relentlessly evil villain, with his unseen eyes staring from behind a blank mask, is finally coming home again.
The 2018 slasher film, Halloween, which was directed by David Gordon Green, is the 11th entry in a lucrative horror series that started with the 1978 independent cinema classic of the same title, which was brought to the screen with sparse immediacy by John Carpenter, who serves as an executive producer and composer this time around. This new installment, which thankfully jettisons everything that occurred in the post-1978 movies, is marketed as a direct sequel to the original film.
Like Jamie Lee Curtis's intense lead heroine, I approached this latest Halloween film with both barrels loaded, ready to open fire at what I expected to be the latest in a disappointing string of franchise features. I love the 1978 original Halloween, I love its slightly trashier 1981 successor, Halloween II, and I even hold the unjustly maligned 1982 third sequel, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, in cherished esteem, although it does not feature Michael Myers. I quite enjoyed the 1988 fourth film, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, but I am of the opinion that the series has suffered a speedy downward trajectory since then, ultimately crashing and burning with the two entries that were directed with Rob Zombie, who took it upon himself to over-explain the origins of our silent knife-wielding killer. This afternoon, I walked into the mostly empty theater with an irritable disposition, thanks to a severe common cold that I'm toughing my way through, sat down as far away from other patrons as possible, and proceeded to watch this new story unfold with low expectations.
Much to my surprise and joy, this 2018 Halloween story works, and, for the most part, it works wonderfully well. This one captures the spirit of Carpenter's taut original film notably better than any of the sequels that were released in the interim. Nick Castle reprises his menacingly iconic role as Michael Myers (“The Shape”) in the 1978 movie and hits the nail on the head (or stabs the victim in the heart, I should probably say) with regard to this character in every still frame. For the first time in decades, my pulse quickened and my blood grew cold whenever the murderer was onscreen. Jamie Lee Curtis, who has lost none of her character's inner steel with age, effectively conveys the years of paralyzing fear that have taken a toll and inflicted her with a heartbreakingly dysfunctional existence. John Carpenter, his son, and others also succeed in updating the universally recognizable music score from the first film in a dread-inducing and more emotionally fractured way.
Through it all, this new Halloween never forgets that slasher movies, above everything else, are supposed to be wildly fun. The sheer offbeat joy that genre fans like me have always found in the rollercoaster ride experience of watching vulnerable characters find their hidden toughness and resolve in the face of unspeakably bloody mayhem is present and accounted for here. Although the events of the previous sequels have been tossed to the roadside, this movie relishes in throwing Easter eggs to loyal fans without letting them overwhelm the tension-filled plot at hand. One early diss to an origin story from Halloween II (1981) had me laughing out loud through my sniffling and sneezing today. There are a few storytelling curveballs here that may dismay other serious fans, but, without revealing spoilers, I'll say that these surprises made sense to me.
I could nitpick at a few of this movie's shortcomings, of course. I believe that a focus on Laurie Strode's granddaughter at a high school dance is a sign of the filmmakers trying too hard to appeal to younger audiences. The basic tale of Laurie facing her longtime tormenter at long last did not need any subplots to diminish its impact. I also think that the unmistakable scent of fan service lingers over the proceedings here to mixed results, even if several of the visual callbacks to previous films in the franchise function well.
I have treasured the slasher genre since childhood, because I find the experience of watching ordinary people defeat evil and darkness to be therapeutically motivational, and I appreciate how the stories helped me counter insecurities in my younger years and various speed bumps in my adult life. The beauty of the more effective titles in this horror subgenre is that the characters who portray the likes of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and such understand that, when playing villains who are defeated by the goodness in the world, they have a responsibility to convey pure evil in an unsettlingly believable way. This 2018 Halloween, despite a hiccup or two, brings everything that I love about slasher cinema to the table.
The filmmakers here, God bless ‘em, even manage to throw creepy mannequins, one of my favorite horror movie stalwarts, into the recipe.
Owl, I so enjoy your reviews (they always make my day!), they are pleasantly entertaining/fresh insights that I do not have... are/were you a writer/drama teacher/avid reader?
Please continue w/your insightful reviews for us all!
I also saw Halloween 2018 today & thoroughly enjoyed it!!
[Show spoiler]Did we really need to reference Halloween 6? Was this intentional reaffirming how stupid anyone would be for trying to control Michael Myers?
Honestly one of the things, I loved about the film, was just how many of these characters kept assuming that there had to be more to Michael, some kind of explanation for his rampages, other than "He's pure evil!" and they all pay the price for their underestimation. Kind of meta in a way.
[Show spoiler]I just didn't care for the payoff to be Dr. Loomis clone going off the deep end, to end this storyarc. Watching his head get smashed like a rotten jack o' lantern was oh so satisfying though.
Yes....I do NOT want an explanation. Thats the whole point snd what makes him terrifying.
Thanks for the kind words! I've never been a drama teacher. I work in the environmental field inspecting landfills, erosion control measures at construction sites, and so on. I have no professional writing credits, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I am an avid reader, though, and I always have been.
40 years after his gruesome murder spree in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, the legendary crazed killer, Michael Myers, is still confined to a sanitarium, where his chilling aura of mystery, thanks to his spending his entire imprisonment in silence, unsettles his caretakers, especially Dr. Ranbir Sartain, who has been studying him on a daily basis to no avail. Meanwhile, the sole survivor of Myers's 1978 rampage, Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is still haunted by extreme post-traumatic stress. After two failed marriages and the loss of custody of her daughter, she now lives a life of constant paranoia in her heavily-secured rural home, where she maintains a massive arsenal of firearms. Her adult daughter, played by Judy Greer, cannot forgive her mother for the emotional turmoil inflicted during childhood, but she and Laurie's teenage granddaughter, played by Andi Matichak, are still warily hopeful that Laurie will break out of her shell and have a normal relationship with her loved ones. Soon, these three people and an entire unsuspecting town will find out that the ever-present nightmares of one woman are grounded in a terrifying reality. On the night before October 31, a bus transferring Myers and other inmates to a maximum security facility crashes, and Myers escapes. After four decades, this relentlessly evil villain, with his unseen eyes staring from behind a blank mask, is finally coming home again.
The 2018 slasher film, Halloween, which was directed by David Gordon Green, is the 11th entry in a lucrative horror series that started with the 1978 independent cinema classic of the same title, which was brought to the screen with sparse immediacy by John Carpenter, who serves as an executive producer and composer this time around. This new installment, which thankfully jettisons everything that occurred in the post-1978 movies, is marketed as a direct sequel to the original film.
Like Jamie Lee Curtis's intense lead heroine, I approached this latest Halloween film with both barrels loaded, ready to open fire at what I expected to be the latest in a disappointing string of franchise features. I love the 1978 original Halloween, I love its slightly trashier 1981 successor, Halloween II, and I even hold the unjustly maligned 1982 third sequel, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, in cherished esteem, although it does not feature Michael Myers. I quite enjoyed the 1988 fourth film, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, but I am of the opinion that the series has suffered a speedy downward trajectory since then, ultimately crashing and burning with the two entries that were directed with Rob Zombie, who took it upon himself to over-explain the origins of our silent knife-wielding killer. This afternoon, I walked into the mostly empty theater with an irritable disposition, thanks to a severe common cold that I'm toughing my way through, sat down as far away from other patrons as possible, and proceeded to watch this new story unfold with low expectations.
Much to my surprise and joy, this 2018 Halloween story works, and, for the most part, it works wonderfully well. This one captures the spirit of Carpenter's taut original film notably better than any of the sequels that were released in the interim. Nick Castle reprises his menacingly iconic role as Michael Myers (“The Shape”) in the 1978 movie and hits the nail on the head (or stabs the victim in the heart, I should probably say) with regard to this character in every still frame. For the first time in decades, my pulse quickened and my blood grew cold whenever the murderer was onscreen. Jamie Lee Curtis, who has lost none of her character's inner steel with age, effectively conveys the years of paralyzing fear that have taken a toll and inflicted her with a heartbreakingly dysfunctional existence. John Carpenter, his son, and others also succeed in updating the universally recognizable music score from the first film in a dread-inducing and more emotionally fractured way.
Through it all, this new Halloween never forgets that slasher movies, above everything else, are supposed to be wildly fun. The sheer offbeat euphoria that genre fans like me have always found in the rollercoaster ride experience of watching vulnerable characters find their hidden toughness and resolve in the face of unspeakably bloody mayhem is present and accounted for here. Although the events of the previous sequels have been tossed to the roadside, this movie relishes in throwing Easter eggs to loyal fans without letting them overwhelm the tension-filled plot at hand. One early diss to an origin story from Halloween II (1981) had me laughing out loud through my sniffling and sneezing today. There are a few storytelling curveballs here that may dismay other followers of the series, but, without revealing spoilers, I'll say that these surprises made sense to me.
I could nitpick at a few of this movie's shortcomings, of course. I believe that a focus on Laurie Strode's granddaughter at a high school dance is a sign of the filmmakers trying too hard to appeal to younger audiences. The basic tale of Laurie facing her longtime tormenter at long last did not need any subplots to diminish its impact. I also think that the unmistakable scent of fan service lingers over the proceedings here to mixed results, even if several of the visual callbacks to previous films in the franchise function well.
I have treasured the slasher genre since childhood, because I find the experience of watching ordinary people defeat evil and darkness to be therapeutically motivational, and I appreciate how the stories helped me counter insecurities in my younger years and various speed bumps in my adult life. The beauty of the more effective titles in this horror subgenre is that the actors who portray the likes of Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, and such understand that, when playing villains who are defeated by the goodness in the world, they have a responsibility to convey pure evil in an unsettlingly believable way. This 2018 Halloween, despite a hiccup or two, brings everything that I love about slasher cinema to the table.
The filmmakers here, God bless ‘em, even manage to throw creepy mannequins, one of my favorite horror movie stalwarts, into the recipe.
Great review. But James Jude Courtney played the Shape in 99% of the movie.
Great review. But James Jude Courtney played the Shape in 99% of the movie.
I would say 70%. The head shots without mask were all Nick Castle and he did don the mask in a couple scenes. My opinion, Castle should have played the whole thing. He was more than in shape(no pun intended, lol) for the role. Also didnt care for Courtney's walk. It was too robotic. Im glad there wasnt a lot of tracking shots with him. His kill scenes(violent) were very good, though.
Last edited by dianabol5mg; 10-20-2018 at 02:45 AM.
I would say 70%. The head shots without mask were all Nick Castle and he did don the mask in a couple scenes. My opinion, Castle should have played the whole thing. He was more than in shape(no pun intended, lol) for the role. Also didnt care for Courtney's walk. It was too robotic. Im glad there wasnt a lot of tracking shots with him. His kill scenes(violent) were very good, though.
Thanks for the kind words! I've never been a drama teacher. I work in the environmental field inspecting landfills, erosion control measures at construction sites, and so on. I have no professional writing credits, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
I am an avid reader, though, and I always have been.
I would say 70%. The head shots without mask were all Nick Castle and he did don the mask in a couple scenes. My opinion, Castle should have played the whole thing. He was more than in shape(no pun intended, lol) for the role. Also didnt care for Courtney's walk. It was too robotic. Im glad there wasnt a lot of tracking shots with him. His kill scenes(violent) were very good, though.
Courtney's cheeks are not as filled out as Castle's so any shot of the mask with those round cheeks are Castle's if I'm not mistaken. As for the walk, it looked like Courtney was instructed to do a hybrid walk Castle's glide in the original and Warlock's zombie like pacing. It certainly reminded me like a cross between the two.
I will never go watch a horror movie on a Friday night ever again. Probably the worst theater experience I've experienced in my life. Teens running up and down the aisles, looking at their phones and talking during the movie, people behind me crunching popcorn as loud as they could, rustling candy, and gulping their drink so loud it sounded like a horse drinking out of a trough. Despite all that going on I still gave the movie a 5. Loved it! Definitely my favorite after the original. Can't wait to see it again in a better environment.
I didn't have anything like that. but one thing I've seen recently and hated is people checking the phone/smart watch just to see what time it is. why even bother coming to the movie at that point? why not just walk out? you're obviously not enjoying it.
you know how long the movie is before you start. so what's the rush?
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