The UnPopular Opinion: Halloween (2018)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

THE UNPOPULAR OPINION is an ongoing column featuring different takes on films that either the writer HATED, but that the majority of film fans LOVED, or that the writer LOVED, but that most others LOATHED. We're hoping this column will promote constructive and geek fueled discussion. Enjoy!

****SOME SPOILERS ENSUE****

In our current age of nostalgia, films from the 1970s and 1980s have been regularly getting the sequel treatment with varying degrees of success. One highly anticipated sequel was 2018's HALLOWEEN from director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride. Despite that odd pairing for a horror movie, John Carpenter gave the project his seal of approval and even composed a new score for the triumphant return of Michael Myers. Even though the film made a nice amount of money at the box office and garnered critical and fan acclaim, the newest iteration of HALLOWEEN struck me as hollow and no better than most sequels we get on a regular basis. In fact, while I enjoyed HALLOWEEN as a throwback to the original film, it's eschewing of everything that came before it left me feeling a bit underwhelmed. Plus, it wasn't scary at all.

The original HALLOWEEN invented the slasher genre before falling prey to the cliches that it innovated. For years, the series became repetitive and redundant and needed to top itself with more outlandish and gruesome kills. With the nostalgiac HALLOWEEN H20, Jamie Lee Curtis returned to her iconic role more to hand off the baton to a new generation of characters. With Rob Zombie's white trash reboot, the character of Laurie Strode became troubled like Michael Myers himself. With this new HALLOWEEN, Green and McBride managed to bridge both of those styles by making Curtis a broken character who still functons much like Luke Skywalker in STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI to transition to a new cast in the fight against Myers.

The problem is that it is all pointless. Sure, we see Laurie Strode more like Sarah Connor from TERMINATOR 2, but everything that occurs in the film is predicated on repeating the same mistakes from the original. In Carpenter's film, Michael Myers escapes and goes on a killing spree just as he is being prepped to be moved to another location. Forty years later, a prison bus with a couple of guards is all that is supplied to transport Michael yet again. The convenience factor in this narrative is beyond lazy. Then there is the fact that Michael dons the exact same costume as he did before and replicates his same modus operandi that failed in 1978. It just doesn't make sense, but that is just the beginning of the fallacies in this tale.

Then there is the removal of HALLOWEEN II's reveal that Laurie Strode is actually Michael Myers sister. Giving Michael a reason for hunting Laurie down was something that John Carpenter claims he was never a fan of, but it gave a focus and a direction for Michael's madness. If he is truly just The Shape now and content to kill mindlessly because he is insane and evil, why does he seek out Laurie again? An argument could be made that circumstance puts her back in his path, but by taking the sole motivating factor away from the story leaves this continuation of HALLOWEEN entirely predicated on coincidence. At no point did I buy that Michael Myers would selectively kill and not kill as we see him do in this film if he did not have a mission. It therefore makes this movie come off as nothing more than a rehash of the original without a true explanation for why he does what he does.

The biggest failure of this HALLOWEEN is the lack of any emotional stakes of any kind. For the first two acts, the film moves forward on the promise of the showdown between Michael Myers and Laurie Strode and yet there is zero energy to carry us to that point. All of the kills are uninspired and generic on top of the fact that all of the characters are bland and don't matter. Aside from Jamie Lee Curtis, every speaking role here could have been shifted between the actors to one another and it would have made no difference. Only the great Judy Greer brings any dimension to her character but it all feels forced until the final sequence of the movie. There are glimmers of creativity, exemplified by the very out of place scene where two cops discuss their meal, but it feels like it belongs in another movie.

The most interesting element of this HALLOWEEN is the fact that it is trying to show how a character can deal with PTSD within the confines of a horror film. The problem is that it is never truly fleshed out enough to matter. Instead, HALLOWEEN falls prey to the same beats as the classic film but never capitalizes on the tone of dread and menace that John Carpenter imbued it with. Yes, Carpenter's new score is great and immerses you in the story as if four decades did not pass, but it is not enough to elevate the rest of the movie from more than a basic homage to the first film in the franchise.

HALLOWEEN in 2018 proves that HALLOWEEN in 1978 could never be replicated. If this movie had been made without nine sequels in between, we would be talking about it as nothing more than a satisfactory continuation but one that doesn't deliver much in terms of originality. Yes, HALLOWEEN shows that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride share a reverence for John Carpenter's classic but do not bring anything new or vital to make this a story worth telling. By eschewing everything since the original, this movie needed to be more than a visual step up. This film is technically well executed and there is nothing inherently wrong with it as a relaxed viewing experience, but HALLOWEEN deserved to be so much more. While the ending serves as a nice conclusion to the story, the all but impossible to avoid sequel will begin the cycle anew and give us another forty year wait to see if a satisfactory entry in this franchise can be made.