Halloween (2018) Review

"You don't believe in the boogeyman?"

-Laurie Strode 

40 years after the events of the original Halloween, Michael Myers (Nick Castle) has been locked away in a sanitarium, while Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has locked herself away.  She lives alone in the woods, preparing for the return of Michael Meyers, and has an strained relationship with the rest of her family.  While being transferred to a new institution, Michael manages to escape and returns to Haddonfield to continue his slaying and face off against Laurie once again, only this time she is ready for him.

I will be getting into some spoilers up ahead, so stop reading and go see this movie for yourself.  It's by far the best Halloween sequel and nearly as good as the original movie.  Drop what you're doing and go see this in theaters immediately, if not sooner. 

What Works:

This is the fifth time Jamie Lee Curtis has played Laurie Strode in the Halloween series and this is honestly her best performance.  Laurie has changed drastically in the 40 years since the first film, and this movie pretends none of the sequels exist, so we get a vastly different character.  She reminds me a bit of Burt Gummer from Tremors.  Laurie has become a paranoid nut-job with a ton of guns, but is the only person prepared when danger comes.  I love how dangerous Laurie has become and she has shades of Michael Myers ingrained in her.  It's a really fun and different performance for Jamie Lee Curtis and is one of the best parts of the film.

The 3rd act of the movie is utterly incredible.  Instead of watching Michael hunt people down or a terrified teenager hiding out from the killer, we get to watch Laurie hunt Michael.  It's a great twist on the story and it's really fun to see a character so prepared for this confrontation.  Laurie's house is rigged with traps designed to keep Michael contained and it's an extremely exiting sequence.  I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.  I was terrified the film was going to misstep somewhere in the 3rd act, but it never does and the whole thing is extremely satisfying and better than any of us could have possibly hoped for.

A lot of times with movies like this, there are way too many on-the-nose references to the original film or earlier movies in the series.  I don't mind a little bit of fan service, but it has to be done well and not be overly distracting.  Halloween nails this and gives us plenty of fun callbacks to the original film, but all of them are done with a twist, usually by switching Laurie and Michael's roles around.  By far the best one is after Michael throws Laurie off a balcony only for her to disappear moments later.  They were a lot of fun and actually added something to the narrative.  The point of this movie is to show how similar Michael and Laurie have become and by doing these callbacks we get to see their similarities in a visual manner.

I really appreciate the level of gore in this film.  It isn't 1978 anymore, this film wouldn't be able to get by on the kills from the original film and we definitely see the blood factor incensed and we get a few really awesome kills, but it never goes to the extremes the Rob Zombie movies did, which was pretty excessive and uncomfortable at times.  This movie strikes a healthy balance in the gore category and did about as well as it could have.

There were a couple of fun supporting characters.  The best was a young kid named Julian (Jibrail Nantambu) who is being babysat on Halloween.  Julian steals every scene he is in and is by far the funniest part of the movie.  His babysitter, Vicky (Virginia Gardner), is also really good and the two of them have fantastic chemistry.  It's a shame the two of them don't get more screen-time because I could honestly watch a whole movie of the two of them taking on Michael Myers.

Finally, I have to mention the score.  The director of the original movie, John Carpenter, who also composed the score for the first movie, came back to compose for this new one and he does a phenomenal job.  It's the best score I've heard so far this year and is extremely memorable.  We get plenty of the classic stuff, but the new stuff is just as good, with my favorite track occurring in a scene where Laurie's granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), is getting chased by Michael down a street.  It's a haunting sound that will stick with me for a long time.

What Sucks:

Probably the biggest problem Halloween has is a pretty common one among slasher films in that the supporting characters are underdeveloped.  It honestly felt like there were a few scenes missing here and there, especially in terms of the teenage characters and Officer Hawkins (Will Patton).  Another scene or two with these characters would have helped us get a better feel for them and made us care more when they met their untimely demise.  But even though we didn't get enough from these characters, the acting was solid all around and none of them felt like stereotypes, which is a step up from most slasher sequels.

My only other complaint comes from one scene in particular.  After Laurie hears about the bus crash and Michael's escape, she immediately goes over to her daughter's house to bring her family to safety.  Her daughter. Karen (Judy Greer) and son-in-law, Ray (Toby Huss), are understandably resistant to going with her.  Laurie tells them the bus crashed, but does not go into any further detail about what is going on or why they should go with her.  Karen and Ray end up kicking Laurie out of the house.  I found this scene very frustrating because with one more line of dialogue the conflict would have been solved.  This sort of writing is simply lazy, but this is the only scene where this is a problem.  

Verdict:

Halloween is the best of the 10 sequels and nearly as good as the original.  In some ways, it actually enhances the original.  Sure, some of the characters could have been better developed and there is one scene with very lazy writing, but the kills are solid, the score is amazing, Jamie Lee Curtis gives her best performance of the series, and the 3rd act is better than anything I could have imagined.  Without a doubt, Halloween has got it going on.

 8/10: Really Good