New Halloween offers few treats
While perhaps not the best ever example of parenting, I’ll never forget the night my 10-year-old self sat down to watch the original Halloween on TV with my dad.
I was absolutely transfixed and terrified by the crazed antics of masked serial killer Michael Myers — the haunting, low-budget flick stayed with me and multiple repeat viewings over the years see it rank as my favourite horror movie.
Since then, the Halloween series has seen its fair share of ups and downs — mainly the latter — through a series of sequels and reboots containing everything from Busta Rhymes martial arts and mysterious cults to the absence of Michael himself.
This 11th film in the franchise ignores every follow-up and picks up 40 years on from the events of the 1978 original as Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) continues to be haunted by Myers’ killing spree.
David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) was far from an obvious choice to resurrect the series, but the director has the blessing of orginal creator John Carpenter, who also returns to co-score and executive produce.
Inevitably, this first Halloween outing in nine years can’t hold a kitchen knife to the seminal original, although it is one of the better sequels.
Right from the familiar opening credits, there are several nods to its new timeline predecessor, including clever reversals of some of the classic’s iconic scenes. Cool tracking and tightly-framed shots greet Michael’s return to Haddonfield as he creepily makes his way around the neighbourhood among oblivious trick-or-treaters.
While not consistently terrifying, Gordon Green will have you gripping on to your chair — or the person next to you — during a tense, vehicle headlight-illuminated bus escape and the showdown in Laurie’s ‘panic house’.
Curtis makes a welcome series return and it’s interesting to see her transformation into a combination of traumatised survivor and Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2-esque action heroine.
Sadly Michael himself loses a lot of what made him such a terrifying, enigmatic presence in the 1978 flick. His spine-snapping, toothremoving, face-battering brute is more in keeping with Rob Zombie’s take on the killer.
Most of the best scares were given away in the film’s trailers and while the additions to the Strode family add new layers, other fresh characters are pure cannon fodder, while Haluk Bilginer’s Dr Sartain is a pale imitation of Donald Pleasance’s memorable Dr Loomis.
Given his comedic background, it’s little surprise Green and cowriters Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley inject humour and though some jokes work, others fall flat.
A late twist is surprising but dumb and the ending straddles the line between decisive and sequelbaiting.
But for this Halloween fan, given this wellmeaning-but-flawed effort, I think it’s time to let Michael Myers rest.