Halloween Retrospective: Halloween (2018)

Halloween Retrospective | #11 | Halloween (2018)

It’s been about a month since I last penned one of these reviews, and during that time I’ve had a lot going on in my personal life that kept me from sitting down and watching the next Halloween film. That being said, though I couldn’t finish this before or even close to Halloween, I’m still bent on finishing it. Today, we’ll talk about the third major reboot of the Halloween franchise; 2018’s Halloween.

To say Rob Zombie’s Halloween films, particularly Halloween II, were divisive would be an understatement. Despite the highly conclusive ending to Halloween II, a third film was initially planned, billed as a 3D threequel that retconned the ending of the previous film, but due to diminishing returns critically and commercially, this was eventually scrapped, and the franchise lay dormant for nearly a decade until, in the mid 2010’s, Malek Akkad began work on a new reboot. This new reboot went through a few forms before finally breaking with Dimension Pictures and producing under Blumhouse Pictures, directed by David Gordon Green and written by Green and Danny McBride (yes, that Danny McBride). It’s also notably the first film since Halloween III: Season of the Witch to feature the involvement of John Carpenter himself.

The story of this reboot revisits previously tread ground, recasting Jamie Lee Curtis as an older, more hardened Laurie Strode who’s been haunted by her encounter with Michael Myers. Decades have past, and Laurie Strode has tried to move on, but the past won’t let her go. Despite its significant similarities to the plot of Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, its execution of these ideas is incredibly different. In H20, Laurie Strode had perfected the art of putting on a strong, steadfast exterior that allowed her to become incredibly successful in life, but was in reality hiding a fracturing psyche that insisted that Michael was still after her no matter how much evidence to the contrary piled up. In contrast, 2018’s Halloween takes place 40 years after the event. Laurie Strode is a hermit living in a remote house in the woods, which she has effectively turned into a twisted bomb shelter. She practices her aim daily, obsesses over security, and prays for the day Michael Myers escapes from the high security facility he’s locked in so she can finally kill him.

At its core, Halloween 2018 is a story about trauma and how it spreads from generation to generation. It’s a family story, but not in the way that any other Halloween film is. It erases all sequels and remakes from the continuity except the original, making it the first film aside from the original to not operate under the pretense that Michael Myers is Laurie Strode’s brother. Instead, the main family dynamics are between Laurie, her daughter Karen and her grandaughter Alison. Laurie’s trauma has shoved a wedge between her and her family, causing her daughter to despise her due to her flawed parenting. Alison, on the other hand, wants to help her and be a part of her life, but things are complicated between them.

The final thirty minutes of this film understand this, and cut out anything that isn’t explicitly about this family coming together to help Laurie Strode – and by extension themselves – overcome the powerful forces that torment her. This final confrontation between the Strode family and Michael Myers is simply sublime. It is, without hyperbole, a franchise highlight. The tension is ratcheted up to incredible heights, with the tricks both Michael and Laurie pull out calling into crystal clear focus how much of her life Laurie has spent preparing for this moment; to make the hunter the hunted. It makes for an incredible game of cat and mouse that goes both ways – Laurie isn’t helpless anymore, and that makes things interesting, but she could still have the tables turned on her at any moment, and she still has weaknesses in her attachments to her family. Weaknesses that ultimately turn out to be strengths as well.

This final sequence is everything a reboot should be. It pays homage to the original in ways that are smart instead of excessive. Shots and situations are mimicked in ways that cleverly subvert their meaning. Similar style is used, but it’s smartly adapted to modern sensibilities without adding sacrificing the trademark Halloween minimalism too much. And the final shot of Michael Myers staring up from the trap the Strode family has sprung for him, waiting emotionlessly to be burned alive, without a hint of any thoughts or feelings except maybe whatever the audience wants to project onto him – to me it’s perhaps a mixture of fury, desperation, and resignation – is both chilling and among the most powerful images in the franchise.

It’s really a goddamn shame that this film isn’t just it’s final 30 minutes.

I sincerely mean everything I said about this film’s ending, but it’s shocking to me how good it was considering the rest of the film is a giant mess. The story is muddled and unfocused, introducing tons of side characters that ultimately only exist to increase the body count, and multiple side plots that go nowhere. There’s a dumb twist with Michael’s ex-psychiatrist, a first act following two podcasters that I never cared about who end up being among the first to die, a whole score of teenagers who don’t matter and a whole lot of scenes that don’t have anything to do with Laurie Strode or her family. There’s also countless homages and references to earlier films, with almost everything being some sort of callback tosome element done better in previous films.

It isn’t devoid of quality. The title sequence is excellent, the music is good, and the film is competently made with style that is effective and not distracting (looking at you Resurrections). When she’s given a moment to shine, Jamie Lee Curtis brings both rock hard stoicism and genuine vulnerability and pathos to Laurie Strode’s character that exceed even her performance in H20. There are countless interactions between her and her family that hint at a far more interesting story buried in all the unnecessary fluff that the film just doesn’t really explore much. We’re told that Karen had a rough childhood with Laurie, but the effects are never really shown beyond the tension between them and an eventual apology from Laurie. This in turn makes it harder to really parse through the complications of Laurie’s relationship with Alison, and the complications that makes on Alison’s relationship with Karen. It’s all there and it’s all interesting but it’s not allowed to thrive naturally because there’s just too much else going on.

Michael Myers is the anti-thesis to this; whenever he’s on screen doing his thing it’s great. The film is gory and brutal in a way that almost rivals the Rob Zombie films, but not to the point where it’s more grueling than it is fun. Myers really feels like a force of nature tearing its way through Haddonfield, slipping in and out of suburban homes and butchering their inhabitants before anyone even has the time to notice. It doesn’t feel as incomprehensibly intentional as the character in the original does, but perhaps that’s the result of decades of pent up energy from being trapped in an institution. That being said, it’s also excessive to the point where it detracts from the actual story of the film. If this were just another knock off sequel that’d be fine, but this is an attempt to make Halloween Good again, and it just doesn’t really work all that well with the story they’re trying to tell.

The thematic content of Halloween is just as confused and scattered as the surface level content. I’ve already given my reading of what I think the film was trying to be based on what worked best about its ending, but there’s all sorts of other tidbits of commentary that just didn’t really amount to much. The podcaster angle seemed to be going for a sort of critique of the true-crime sensationalism of the podcast age, but that lasts about twenty minutes. Alison has a boyfriend who cheats on her and is ultimately proven toxic as a partner, but while that plays into the idea of women being accosted by harmful male figures it doesn’t really feel the slightest bit important (none of her friends do, really). There’s a large focus on the idea that Michael Myers shouldn’t have been allowed to live that feels sensible in a vacuum but in context with the film’s focus on trauma and victimization feels sort of like pro-death penalty apologia that isn’t even well thought out as it too is dropped by the halfway point.

I supposed I can understand why this of all Halloween films is the one people have latched onto as being a return to form for the series. I think people really wanted to love Halloween again, and this is a safe entry that also has some legitimately good stuff in it. The final thirty minutes are the closest the series has come to matching the quality of the original while also feeling faithful to it, and it gives the franchise perhaps its most effective ending point yet. That’s why I’m extra skeptical of the fact that two sequels have been announced for it, with the first coming out this year (that will be the next and final stop on our tour of the Halloween franchise).

Overall, though, Halloween 2018 is just too much of a mess for me to fully endorse it. It’s far from the worst in the series and has some great moments – particularly, but not limited to, its stellar conclusion – but there aren’t enough pieces that come together well, and too many pieces that are completely irrelevant. This really should have been workshopped more than it was before it was put into production, but at least it isn’t terrible, and had the franchise ended here, it would have been a decent final note.