RETURN TO FORM FOR PSYCHO SERIES
A FILM that’ll play you as masterfully as the Devil bows his fiddle, the new Halloween hurtles us through a twisted landscape of terrified teens, screams and slashes.
Though outrageously violent, this comeback for masked psycho Michael Myers is also strangely comforting – an old friend come back to town with some seasonally appropriate spookiness.
Forty years on from John Carpenter’s 1978 original, Halloween remains the gold standard for slasher flicks.
It’s a lean, mean, genre-defining classic that inspired legions of ropey copycat frighteners and a full franchise of its own – seven sequels and a two-film reboot, none of which managed to deliver the lunatic fun of the original.
Though Carpenter isn’t back as director, he served as executive producer, co-composer and creative consultant – a promising sign for fans of the original and a meaningful seal of approval for filmmaker David Gordon Green.
It was Green’s idea, along with co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, to celebrate the film’s anniversary with a direct follow-up that ignores the many Halloweens between the two.
As far as this new movie is concerned, nothing from 1981’s Halloween II, to 2009’s rebooted Halloween II, ever happened.
Which means Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie and the seemingly indestructible Michael aren’t brother and sister, a twist that never really made sense. More significantly, Laurie is still alive.
Though we saw Michael stab her, then throw her to her death in 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection, according to this new Halloween, that no longer happened!
So where is Laurie now, and what is she up to?
She lives in a fortified house on the outskirts of Haddonfield, the small hometown where she survived Michael’s stabby advances as a teenager.
It was an incident that ruined her life, leaving her with severe PTSD, an extreme emotional state that Jamie Lee Curtis does a fine job of conveying.
Laurie’s estranged daughter (Judy Greer) and her grandchild Allyson (Andi Matichak) both wish she would just get on with her life but Laurie wants closure, meaning a chance to confront Michael and then keep killing him until he’s properly dead.
As expected, Michael escapes again and makes a beeline for Laurie, butchering everyone who gets in his way, and indeed several people he actually has to go out of his way to kill.
An old school trick-or-treat with a topping of modern savvy, this new Halloween rewards fans of the original with lots of clever references and a stripped-down vibe that captures, more than any of the now-nulled sequels, the tone and spirit of the ’78 original.
True, it won’t scare you out of your skin, but it’s nerve-racking, smart, gleefully gory, and horribly entertaining.
It’s the best film since the first and should be essential Halloween viewing.