Halloween (2018)

After 40 years of sequels we get… another Halloween Sequel, this one cleverly named… Halloween. Yeah. I put on my William Shatner mask and strode down to the theater to see if the boogeyman was real, or if this is just another slasher flick.

It’s just another slasher flick. Albeit a very good one, in the only series that has truly earned some room to play with the tropes.

Here’s what you need to know. 40 years to the DAY after the Babysitter Murders – Michael Meyers escapes a mental patient transport and is loose again in Haddonfield, Illinois on Halloween night to continue his murderous work. We are introduced back into the world of Laurie Strode (a returning Jamie Lee Curtis) and Micheal Meyers by a pair of investigative journalist podcasters, which I thought was a very clever device, sadly that is probably the most clever device in the movie. What follows is what you’d expect – cheap jumpscares followed by some gory dispatches by Mike. This sequel ignores every other Halloween movie, including part 2 (which was a continuation of the same first night), largely this is one of its strengths, even going as far as to give some strolling teens some expositionary dialogue that explains away the brother/sister relationship between Laurie and Michael and thus most of the sequels mythology. I honestly think they went a little TOO far humanizing Micheal Meyers, robbing him of some of his borderline supernatural mystique. I was less afraid of this Micheal Meyers than say the Rob Zombie version.

Where the film gets truly interesting is in the 3rd act when Laurie Strode, her daughter, and granddaughter are all in one house together with the enemy… I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say the script is flipped and it becomes a great girl power moment in horror history. I dug that.

Overall, this is a very fun slasher movie just in time for the holiday. It is not nearly as special as the first one, but then again, how could it be?