2018's Halloween: Hamfisted, But Effective

Two years ago, I watched the dismal Halloween Ends with some of the guys in my dorm, for what reason I cannot recall, and I think it tainted my perception of the entire trilogy in a way that may or may not be unfair to it as a whole. In fact, I'll eventually be rewatching it to get a more detailed picture of how it behaves critically so that I can pan it on my blog here to finish out a review series on this particular trilogy. You heard that right. I figured that the whole story might be great fun to watch, and so in the last two days, in between what has perhaps been the most demanding thirty-six hours of schoolwork at college so far, the ravenous movie critic in me somehow found the time to view and take notes on the opening chapter of Blumhouse's Halloween trilogy, which is aptly, creatively, and amazingly titled nothing less than Halloween. And so, now that I've seen the first movie, I must say that while a lot of elementary and obviously inexperienced filmmaking techniques rose to the surface throughout, by the time the credits rolled, I counted my expectations, though they weren't all that high to begin with, easily surpassed by the efforts of director David Gordon Green and Co. No, the film's not perfect, and there are a lot of things I didn't like about it, but this article is actually going to be a lot more positive than I figured it would be before I started this movie. Let's get into this.

2018's Halloween, which somehow fits into the convoluted Halloween canon in a way I'm not even going to try to explain, follows an aging, paranoid, and isolationist Laurie Strode as she tries to coexist with family members who just don't understand the fact that she can't let her terrifying past with Michael Myers go, even though he's been incarcerated at a mental institute for a long time. It's not like he could ever escape, right?

Right?

Right off the bat, from the very first scene, this movie does something that I appreciate. It makes us understand that we should fear Michel Myers, and plays off of our knowledge of him as well as his mysterious and intimidating presence to do a classic horror villain nothing short of terrifying justice. He acts differently from anyone else in the film, even the rest of the sporadic crazies that we see sprinkled throughout the runtime, and even though a lot of the visual tactics this movie uses to portray this message aren't delivered in the most graceful or subtle or intellectually satisfying ways, they are still delivered, and to be frank, I wasn't exactly looking for touches of subtlety from this film. The fact that a lot of the content in this movie even surpasses my estimations and expectations of it was enough for me. As for the film's portrayal of a paranoid Laurie, it's once again far from subtle, but her survivalist turn was interesting, and the fast-cutting editing of some of the sequences of her training for if Michael, should ever come back, were really well done and stood out from the rest of the film. The cinematography isn't bad, but I mostly felt really indifferent to the film's visual style, with the exception of its occasional long takes, some of which feature the camera being bolted onto the hood of a vehicle. These particular shots were strokes of expertise by the director of photography and added an extra layer to the visuals without ever getting overused to the point where they became monotonous or ineffective. To discuss the visual element in greater length, I must say that the atmosphere of the film often left a lot to be desired. The film sometimes lacked a distinctive feel to any of its scenes, and at times was in danger of becoming tasteless. It never veered completely into this undesirable territory and always managed to fall back on its strong aspects to make up for this shortcoming, but the occasional lack of a fleshed-out atmosphere did bother me more than I would have cared it to.

On the level of the film's plot, this is probably its highlight. Sure, the narrative is nothing special, but I was pleasantly surprised at how simple and strong the pacing of Halloween was. This movie's momentum is quite good, and it always seems to be working toward Laurie and Michael's inevitable, climactic rematch without ever really diverting into any major and meaningless subplots or tangents. Speaking of which, that final showdown between Michael and Laurie is smartly quiet and very methodical. It's obvious that the filmmakers really thought it's every detail through, even adding some fun callbacks to the original film. On the subject of callbacks, be they in the film's score or in the film's visuals, they are present, but they're always fun and subtle, and never stifling or annoying, which made me happy because I'm generally not the biggest fan of self-referential pieces, due to their bad habit of tending to become self-indulgent. As for the characters that inhabit the story, this is probably the movie's weakest link. All of the classic characters are interesting, as they should be. Michael Myers is intimidating as ever, and Laurie Strode is a dynamic enough character, if somewhat predictable and one-dimensional. However, the new faces in the cast are really forgettable and tend to blend together, lacking majorly in any real character development. Not once did I ever find myself worrying about their fates or being affected by any of their eventual demises. But that said, this film was pretty scary and used even the less effective players to great effect in making any scenes with Michael in it pretty dang frightening and even occasionally intelligent in regard to setpieces.

To sum it all up, I liked Halloween a lot more than I thought I would. Pacing-wise, it's extremely similar to the original movie, but hey, I wasn't exactly dying to see originality on this movie's part, and ultimately, its plotting and pacing were a win when it comes to overall quality. Sticking to a tried-and-true formula did allow the film's narrative to stay on the rails and move us effectively toward a well-staged climax, and this particular aspect was probably the high point of Halloween. As I mentioned, the characters other than Laurie and Michael felt one-dimensional, and this did detract from the film in some pretty significant ways. The number of characters in this film that were relegated to the role of cannon (knife?) fodder for Michael felt lazy on the part of the writers, and there's really not much to write home about when it comes to them. You'll notice that I didn't even name them in this review, and honestly, that doesn't make a huge difference to me. But at the end of the day, the pros of this movie definitely outweighed the cons, and I can give this movie a tentative thumbs-up from a critical point of view. Content-wise, this movie contains some very graphic deaths, which is to be expected from a medium such as this, as well as occasional strong language, some sexual dialogue, and the infamous point-of-view scene from the original Halloween, where Michael's sister brushes her hair in front of her vanity topless. So take those things how you will, but ultimately, I'm not here to convince concerned parents to let their kids watch this movie or not to let them watch it. I'm here to review it because I've already watched it, and as for my consensus? Halloween is imperfect but surprisingly good, and I can't wait to see this pleasant surprise ruined by its sequels. Just saying.

Halloween (2018) - 7/10

1 Corinthians 15:26