HALLOWEEN

head-bashing, head-squishing) to satisfy the target demographic.

And, for the rest of us, there’s Jamie Lee Curtis, revisiting the role of babysitter Laurie Strode — in which she made her screen debut 40 years ago.

“Fan service” doesn’t mean every “Halloween” aficionado will love Green’s take on things.

I came to this sequel — one that disregards all the torturous narrative developments of the previous nine sequels or reboots — a medium fan of director John Carpenter’s 1978 original.

What’s good about it now is exactly what was good about it back then, before all the crummy “Halloween” imitators: the gliding long takes; the hilariously direct correlation between sexual activity and imminent slaughter, heightened by the later, fourth-rate “Friday the 13th” universe; the persistent, three-note,

Directed by David Gordon Green. MPAA rating: R (for horror violence and bloody images, language, brief drug use and nudity) Running time: 1:49 Now showing at the Columbus 10 at Westpointe, Crosswoods, Dublin Village 18, Easton 30, Gateway, Georgesville Square, Grandview, Grove City 14, Lennox 24, Movies 11 Mil Run, Movies 12 Carriage Place, Movies 16 Gahanna, Pickerington, Polaris 18, River Valley, Strand and Studio 35 theaters and the South Drive-In

musical theme co-written by Carpenter himself, signaling the methodical insidiousness of serial killer Michael Myers, the man in the latex William Shatner mask (no joke) with the eerily enlarged eye-holes.

This was always the appeal of Myers as bogeyman. The man who, as a boy, fatally stabbed his neglectful sister, took his cue from George A. Romeo’s great, grimy “Night of the Living Dead” of a decade earlier.

Myers still plays around with spatial “gotchas,” appearing suddenly, but he doesn’t run; he walks. (The actors taking turns behind the mask are Nick Castle, returning from the original, and James Jude Courtney.) Also, at one point in Green’s film, Myers executes a robotic and alarming sit-up — a nod to the 1978 movie, as is Curtis’ wordless appearance outside the high school, standing in Myers’ old spot.

Laurie has lived with the traumatic baggage of the “babysitter murders” (the film’s original title) through failed marriages and a drinking problem. She has spent her adult life in fear — and resolve — transforming her home into a booby-trapped wonder of justifiable paranoia. Her grown daughter (Judy Greer), semi-estranged, doesn’t get why mom can’t just move on.

Meanwhile, it’s Halloween again, and the Greer character’s daughter (Andi Matichak, shrewdly cast and a welcome presence) is dealing with a straying boyfriend and a sense that the jolly holiday won’t go as planned.

Green’s tense, no-b.s. madhouse prologue — a tense, very 1970s overture in style and approach — makes that clear enough. By the time someone says “we have a 10-50” on a police transmitter, it’s clear that 10-50 translates to “we have a bus full of psychos wandering around by an overturned transport vehicle on a dark highway, and the big one has his own horror franchise.”

This “Halloween” is Curtis’ fifth in the franchise. She’s a tough presence, and pushing Strode into Sarah Connor “Terminator” territory brings out the the actress’s edge.

The script — by Green, Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride — never quite figures out the right mixture of gristle and wisecracks. Audiences, I suspect, will forgive and forget all that, simply because the big finish delivers a big finish.

Nothing unites American movie audiences in every corner of this fractured nation like a home-invasion premise requiring a large arsenal of firearms.

Throw in a psycho, and it’s like Christmas in July.

“Halloween.”