It’s impossible for me to not get all excited at the prospect of a new HALLOWEEN film. With the recent announcement from the website HALLOWEENMOVIES.COM, it thrills me beyond belief that we are finally going to see Michael Myers once again terrorize the big screen. However, we as HALLOWEEN fans have suffered through a number of bad sequels as well as Rob Zombie’s divisive take so will we be ultimately disappointed? How can they make a new film that would satisfy old fans and new and still remain true to one of Haddonfield’s most infamous residents?
For starters, I happened to enjoy Rob Zombie’s original take, at least the first half of it. We had witnessed a seemingly normal kid go psycho and kill his sister Judith years before. So instead of doing a simple remake, Mr. Zombie took what we knew and added a mess of white trash suffering – as well as the song “Love Hurts” by Nazareth. The second half of the film however fell into a sort of “best of” the original film with a little brutality thrown in for good measure. There are certainly fans of these particular films that would like to see where they could continue from the last one, although what I want to know is what was up with that white horse in the sequel?
According to a recent Twitter post from Scout Taylor-Compton – who starred as Laurie Strode in Zombie’s two films – she “can’t wait to jump back into Laurie Strode’s mindset.” It’s far too early to say whether this is true or just wishful thinking on her part. The actress is an incredibly charming young woman but when it comes to HALLOWEEN, in my eyes she never felt like the right fit for Laurie. Her version of the character cussed like a sailor and was kinda bratty which I always found a little disconcerting. Maybe if another director took this material on, we could see a different side of the actress and that could be interesting. Yet this was simply a tweet that made news, which may mean not a damn thing when it comes to the direction in which the Weinstein Company is taking the franchise.
Another avenue that could be explored for the series is starting off from one of the previous installments pre-Zombie. It could be a continuation of HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION or maybe we can find out what is up with the “Curse of Thorn” from HALLOWEEN: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS. Or maybe we ignore all of that and take it from Laurie’s son and his gal pal in HALLOWEEN: H20. There are a number of HALLOWEEN fans that would probably be willing to forget all about Zombie’s films and take the story back a few years. Seemingly there is very little chance of this happening considering RESURRECTION is around twelve years old, and after H20 the previous mythology appears to mean very little to a modern movie going public.
One factor that Carpenter used so incredibly well aside from Myers, Strode and Dr. Loomis was a little place called Haddonfield. Something about the way the director brought it to life has yet to be matched. The one thing I’d really like to see is what has happened to this little town since the original film. We’ve already witnessed a remake, but what if whoever took on this project explored the Myers legend with new characters and a fresh start. To this day the original film offered a haunting menace that has mostly disappeared from the various takes on the Boogeyman. I’d love to see this once frightening figure return home to an unsuspecting group of victims unaware of the terror just outside the laundry room door. Is it at all possible to return to the simplicity of a masked man stalking unsuspecting victims on Halloween night?
Maybe it’s the booze talkin’, but we may be finally getting a new HALLOWEEN flick, so please just do it right. Instead of rushing into another bullshit sequel or overly convoluted story maybe we can return to what worked with this character. Michael Myers is still scary and he probably always will be, and perhaps he will be even more intimidating in rumored 3D. But to me, the HALLOWEEN films worked best as a simple tale of terror. Instead of trying to create a clever concept or reexamining the Myers legend in a quirky fashion, can we somehow put together a great script and characters we can care about with a truly spooky Myers? Is this too much to ask?