– 7.5/10
It has been 40 years since that night where Micheal Myers struck for the first time now the time has come for him and his previously escaped victim Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to resume their dangerous feud. This film is a direct sequel to the first movie created by John Carpenter that released all the way back in 1978. Admittedly I didn’t quite know what to expect coming into this motion picture, but I certainly was not disappointed. Instead of an hour and 44 minutes of Myers going around leaving blood and gore wherever he goes, the movie seems to be more sophisticated than that. Director, David Gordon Green doesn’t play it safe which was a fear of minegoing into the film. I can say now that this movie benefited from being independent of the other sequels.
A lot has changed since we saw both Myers and Strode on the big screen. Myers has been locked in an Institution for 40 years, but when a bus transfer goes haywire he’s on the loose once again. Strode has been preparing herself for this moment for a long time and she’s finally ready to face her fear and kill the masked murderer.
As mentioned previously the movie doesn’t begin with blood everywhere, in fact, it’s the second half of the film that gets all of the action. I cannot complain about the way Green went about pacing the first act though. We meet all of the important characters of the film early on and get a sense of what they’re like. The most interesting in my opinion is Strode. Being attacked by Myers changed her life forever and she is living in constant fear. While watching this film I believe that she is ready to deal with her demon, but she’s fearful. She wants Myers out of her life for good and she is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve that goal.
As much as I would like to praise this film the dumb horror tropes are something to be frowned upon in this suspenseful sequel. I won’t get into specifics, but the classic questions pop into viewers heads while watching this film: “Why did he go in there?” “How did she trip?” “Why aren’t they running?”. It’s very frustrating because not all of the scenes are like that. Sometimes characters don’t deserve to die because they did something stupid they died because the antagonist was smarter than them. At the end of the day though I can’t really forgive the ways some particular characters lost their lives.
As horror movies have evolved they generally have one thing in common and that’s jump scares. They are the fart jokes of comedy movies, just so expected and disappointing to see in a large abundance. While watching this film I didn’t think it was scary none of the scenes made me jump in terror. However, that’s fine I normally don’t react to most horror films. Ultimately though I think this movie could’ve been scarier if they didn’t rely on so many jump scares. The only thing worse than a jump scare is a jump scare everyone in the audience saw coming. In most horror movies that manage to scare their audiences the people watching most of the time didn’t expect what actually scared them to occur at the time it did. For example, if someone slowly opens a closet and the murderer is behind that door no one gets surprised. I don’t know if the director meant for this to be a terrifying film, but if that was his goal he did not achieve it.
In Conclusion, Halloween (2018) is just the change that this series needed. Rebooting after some terrible sequels sometimes are the perfect way to launch your series back into the limelight. Strode is the reason why I enjoy this movie as much as I do. She really holds the film together even at the slower parts of the film. This movie admittedly could’ve been scarier and there are some scenes that will upset you with a character’s actions. However, at the end of the day, I think this movie achieved its goal of bringing the Halloween series to a new generation, but also leaving enough for the audiences who saw where it all began.
Brad Miller
Film Addict 