An icon’s terrifying return
Jamie Lee Curtis lifts ‘Halloween’ to new heights
Despite her best efforts for the past four decades, Jamie Lee Curtis has been living a life unbreakably interconnected with her role as Laurie Strode in the 1978 movie “Halloween.”
A solid career co-starring in huge action movies (“True Lies”) and holding her own with comedic geniuses (“Trading Places,” “A Fish Called Wanda”) has not changed the fact that the words “scream queen” and “Halloween” probably will make the first paragraph of her hopefully far-in-the-future obituary.
Curtis makes an all-in return to the Strode character, and the filmmaking team builds a
solid framework around her, in the propulsive and entertaining new “Halloween.”
The story slowly staggers its way into problems — most involving the logical absurdity of a 61-year-old knife-wielding killer, who never runs, escaping capture in the 21st century. But the new “Halloween” achieves the difficult task of matching the visual and audio fabric of the first movie while acknowledging the shorter attention spans of modern audiences.
The original “Halloween,” made by John Carpenter on a $300,000 budget, birthed the slasher film genre, influenced two generations of horror auteurs and created a new low-budget filmmaking template.
It also spawned innumerable sequels and reboots, some with Curtis’ participation, and all completely shunned for the purposes of the 2018 “Halloween.” The new film is a direct sequel to the first film, ignoring “Halloween II,” “Halloween H20,” the Rob Zombie ones, the one with killer Halloween masks powered by witchcraft from Stonehenge, and whatever “Halloween” sequels you were writing in your own head.
We’re introduced to Michael Myers in a psychiatric facility, about to board a ridiculously old and lightly guarded prison bus; it looks like an earlier model than the one Harrison Ford escaped from in “The Fugitive” in 1993.
Writer-director David Gordon Green and co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley make several inspired decisions early, including the introduction of a smug podcasting team; self-importance, not sexual promiscuity, is the key flaw of horror movie victims in this film.
But the new “Halloween” really starts to engage when we’re introduced to Strode, estranged from her family and hunkered down in her armed fortress — 100 percent convinced, as we are in the audience, that Myers will return for a final showdown.
It’s not a stretch to compare Curtis favorably to Sylvester Stallone’s Oscar-nominated return to character in the Rocky spin-off “Creed.” She portrays Strode with every wrinkle around her mouth in sharp relief, in a wardrobe suited for heavy gardening, barely on the edge of sanity.
But it’s a truly valiant role, and her performance is amplified by everyone in the crew — from the jarring and creative cinematography of Michael Simmonds to the production design team assigned to the details of Strode’s retrocool apocalypse bunker. Carpenter is in charge of the music again, adding a few notes to his all-time-classic “Halloween” score. Nick Castle, the original Michael Myers, returns as well.
As the body count rises, “Halloween” loses a lot of momentum. It becomes increasingly preposterous that we see no police helicopters, drones, K-9 units, National Guard or even much cellular phone usage. We’re expected to believe that just a few slowacting agents and one well-past-retirement-age sheriff’s deputy (Will Patton) are the only humans assigned to what would be the biggest non-Trump social media occurrence of the year.
Any yet every time a groan starts to surface in your throat, there’s a close-up on Curtis’ determined, weathered face that will bring you all in again.
Not all heroes wear capes. Some are 59-year-old women in men’s flannel hunting shirts who are ready to stare evil down and load another round.
Jamie Lee Curtis portrays Laurie Strode with every wrinkle around her mouth in sharp relief.