Just saw it and didn't care for it one bit.
The most disappointing aspect of Halloween is it falls victim to everything so many of the previous sequels could never quite understand or capture about the original film.
It seemed clear that Halloween had nothing but good things going for it: its two producing partners wanted to take the series back to its roots and understood (so we thought) what made the original work. The movie was ignoring the long and complicated canon established by an almost exhaustive string of sequels. Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter return -- with the added bonus of Mr. Carpenter doing the film's music. All the right ingredients were there to deliver, what looked to be, a worthy sequel, but the souffle never rose.
The original was made on the cheap for 300k, filmed in twenty days, and was just Carpenter and his buddies making a scary movie that they hoped people would see and enjoy. They didn't set out to set a trend for horror movies or attempt to change the genre. They were, as Carpenter said, "a bunch of kids making a movie."
And that's the problem I see with this new one; it's a terribly over-engineered, too-carefully crafted film that thinks it's above the previous sequels to say, "No, guys, we got this. THIS is the Halloween sequel you've wanted."
And one would think, since this film erases every sequel after the original -- all of which by the way did nothing but add a terribly corny and uninteresting mythology -- that this "back to basics" approach would simplify things and allow this movie to build suspense.
But it does not.
Instead, Halloween is an extremely uneven and frustrating experience which lacks any kind of focus and only seems to get by with its occasionally satisfying bursts of nostalgia.
Halloween H20 handled this plot in a much more believable way. Similarly Laurie is traumatized by the event all those years ago, but it's a far more rewarding experience to see her stop, turn, and finally confront this demon that has haunted her since 1978.
Here she's preparing for it, but the opportunity only presents itself because the characters lead Michael to her by accident. Michael is not pursuing Laurie. Instead, he kills anyone around him, but, not to reach Laurie, because he's out "in the wild." If Michael escaped three states over, he wouldn't be making his way back to Laurie to finish what he started forty years ago.
And at no point does Halloween take full advantage of its somewhat unique circumstances and try to bring this series to a satisfying conclusion.
There is some good news, however and that is that Halloween is one of the better sequels to come along in the franchise. But, understand that it is a fairly low bar.
The most disappointing aspect of Halloween is it falls victim to everything so many of the previous sequels could never quite understand or capture about the original film.
It seemed clear that Halloween had nothing but good things going for it: its two producing partners wanted to take the series back to its roots and understood (so we thought) what made the original work. The movie was ignoring the long and complicated canon established by an almost exhaustive string of sequels. Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter return -- with the added bonus of Mr. Carpenter doing the film's music. All the right ingredients were there to deliver, what looked to be, a worthy sequel, but the souffle never rose.
The original was made on the cheap for 300k, filmed in twenty days, and was just Carpenter and his buddies making a scary movie that they hoped people would see and enjoy. They didn't set out to set a trend for horror movies or attempt to change the genre. They were, as Carpenter said, "a bunch of kids making a movie."
And that's the problem I see with this new one; it's a terribly over-engineered, too-carefully crafted film that thinks it's above the previous sequels to say, "No, guys, we got this. THIS is the Halloween sequel you've wanted."
And one would think, since this film erases every sequel after the original -- all of which by the way did nothing but add a terribly corny and uninteresting mythology -- that this "back to basics" approach would simplify things and allow this movie to build suspense.
But it does not.
Instead, Halloween is an extremely uneven and frustrating experience which lacks any kind of focus and only seems to get by with its occasionally satisfying bursts of nostalgia.
Halloween H20 handled this plot in a much more believable way. Similarly Laurie is traumatized by the event all those years ago, but it's a far more rewarding experience to see her stop, turn, and finally confront this demon that has haunted her since 1978.
Here she's preparing for it, but the opportunity only presents itself because the characters lead Michael to her by accident. Michael is not pursuing Laurie. Instead, he kills anyone around him, but, not to reach Laurie, because he's out "in the wild." If Michael escaped three states over, he wouldn't be making his way back to Laurie to finish what he started forty years ago.
And at no point does Halloween take full advantage of its somewhat unique circumstances and try to bring this series to a satisfying conclusion.
There is some good news, however and that is that Halloween is one of the better sequels to come along in the franchise. But, understand that it is a fairly low bar.
