Bent Out Of Shape

Year: 2021

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Wow. It's been a while since I've had reason to review a current movie on the blog proper (I do still do that occasionally over at Alternate Ending, when I watch bullshit that Tim doesn't want to cover). But we can't just sit with our thumbs up our asses when there's a new Halloween movie out in theaters and also everybody's favorite streaming service Peacock! The film's release (and the subsequent release of the trilogy capper Halloween Ends) was delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so let's see if time has muted by ambivalence toward 2018's Halloween.

Spoiler alert: It hasn't.

Halloween Ends picks up on the same night as Halloween 2018. Well, it spends about eight seconds there before launching into a wholly unnecessary flashback to the events of Halloween night 1978 which both serve as a revision to Halloween II which was erased out of continuity and delivers absolutely no material that is interesting in the slightest, though where would we be if we didn't have a dead-eyed doppelgänger of Donald Pleasence's Dr. Sam Loomis (Tom Jones Jr. in creepily accurate prosthetic makeup, with a spectacularly unconvincing vocal imitation by Colin Mahan)? Talk about a Halloween: Resurrection!

After that flashback gives us insight into two characters who have no major bearing on the plot, we again pick up in 2018. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is being rushed to the hospital by her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). Having smugly and gleefully erased Halloween II from the continuity, the screenwriters can now recreate it themselves by sidelining Laurie into a hospital bed for literally the entire film.

The killer Michael Myers (Nick Castle for the legacy value, but James Jude Courtney for anything that requires physical effort that they can't ask of a 74-year-old man, which is almost everything Michael does in the movie) was left for dead in Laurie's burning basement. Guess how that goes? He emerges and begins his rampage through Haddonfield anew. A mob gathers to take him down once and for all, led by survivors of his original 1978 rampage: babysittees Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall, taking over from Brian Andrews and Paul Rudd) and Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), pisspants coward Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet, taking over for whoever the hell played that kid who Donald Pleasence hilariously scares away from entering the Myers house by shouting "Get your ass away from there!"), nurse and "Dr. Loomis' best friend even though I'm pretty sure they met for the first time that night in 1978" Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), and former sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), whose daughter Annie was killed by Michael 40 years ago.

I know filming was wrapped before the pandemic shut down productions, but Dylan Arnolds cheekbones seem three years more prominent, so I'm not sure what happened.

Can you tell I hated the screenplay for Halloween Kills? I cannot stress enough how richly hypocritical it is that the 2018 film drooled all over itself for retconning the Michael Myers-Laurie Strode sibling relationship that many fans disliked and then proceeded to repeat the much worse mistakes of many other films in the franchise, almost beat for beat. I've already mentioned Laurie getting Halloween II-ed (this is also a result of this being the middle film in a trilogy, but could we not have gotten Laurie and Michael together in one shot, even?), but this film also emulates Rob Zombie's Halloween in presenting Haddonfield as a low rent white trash haven where every word out of a body count character's mouth is shrill and vexing. And no specific spoilers on this, but it has a Myers backstory that's nearly as bad as Halloween 6, to boot.

There is not a single returning character who is treated with anything resembling respect. Not that I necessarily need the film to respect Lonnie Fucking Elam, but this reboot series has consistently failed to recognize any of the actual ways human beings react to trauma or even remember things from 40 years ago. Laurie has always born the brunt of this instinct, being twisted into an unrecognizable gremlin of a woman, but Tommy Doyle doesn't so much go from 0 to 60 as start as 60 and rampage through every scene like Michael Chiklis playing a rabid caveman. It doesn't even do justice to the characters we just met, running Allyson through an absolutely inscrutable arc that doesn't square with anything we know of her from the 2018 film. And dear lord, at one point, Charles Cyphers even gets to trot out his classic "one good scare" line even though he has no reason to recall something he said offhand to a teen girl 40 years ago 12 hours before anything memorable happened that day - honestly it would have had more creative integrity if he had said "It's Halloween. Everyone is entitled to one good scare... motherfucker."

Now don't misunderstand me. I don't mind that some of these characters become bad people or have bad things happen to them. I'm not particularly devoted to the lady who drove Dr. Loomis to Smith's Grove 40 years ago. It's just that every line of dialogue is stiff and unnatural, every action is ill-motivated, and while every character is packed with personality traits rather than being one-note body count fodder, none of these traits resemble anything a person would actually do or say, dunking the audience into a surreal morass of nonsense that's impossible to claw your way out of. There's a gay couple in the film that I have heard criticized for being offensive stereotypes, but I take umbrage with that interpretation considering that you can't be a stereotype if you're not performing a recognizable human behavior.

Also these films have an asshole problem. In that every character is one. 

But here's the thing. I don't hate this movie. I would, I really would, if it weren't for two things. First, the kills are generally pretty damn solid. They're a little too brutal to call "fun," but in terms of squeamish slasher movie joy, they deliver on all fronts, more than a typical Halloween outing. The creative weaponry is more Jason's milieu, but in this film, any object in Michael Myers' hands can become a deadly weapon, whether it's a light bulb, a car door, a stairwell, or his own thumbs. There are also some unique angles to the proceedings (when's the last time you saw someone get stabbed in the armpit?). The effects are terrific, the sequences are visceral and gut-jangling, and while they fail to capture the elegance of the violence of the Carpenter original, that is something I am fully willing to forgive for the 12th movie in a slasher franchise. I'm not a monster.

Also, the score is straight-up terrific. John Carpenter, his son Cody, and his godson Daniel Davies have assembled a superb collection of variations on the original electronic score. They have let themselves off the leash this time, no longer tying themselves to amplified versions of the classic Halloween themes, but really creating a minor key fantasia on what Halloween might have sounded like with several more million dollars and the piano was on fucking fire. Nothing reaches the heights of "The Shape Hunts Allyson," which was the standout track of the 2018 film (and is brought back in such a way that the filmmakers clearly figured out what they had after tossing it off in a 50-second scene the first time around). However, this score would have a much harder time giving us a standout, because every new composition is a bone-vibrating success.

Good music and good kills really do elevate a slasher movie. Hell, those two things are the only reasons Friday the 13th is remembered fondly. It doesn't make the horrible script that actively avoids having a plot or accomplishing anything satisfying with even a single character any less crushing. But it is somewhat of a balm for the pain of sitting through the worst scenes of the film, which are largely relegated to anything in the hospital or involving Tommy Doyle (AKA most of the scenes).

TL;DR: Halloween Kills is a sequel that learns all the wrong lessons from the franchise it's attempting to resurrect.

Rating: 4/10

Word Count: 1401

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)

Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)

Halloween (Zombie, 2007)

Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)

Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

The Shape Of Things To Come

Year: 2018

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

I've already done some revisiting of previous franchise marathon entries this October, so it's only appropriate that the fun should continue with an actual movie in theaters! What a treat! We haven't seen good ole Michael Myers on this blog since we concluded our marathon with Rob Zombie's Halloween II a year late in 2016 because I could not convince myself to watch that one. And we haven't seen that pale blank face in theaters since the very same film when it was released in 2009, almost a full decade ago.

Well, here we are at a new entry that has already made so much money I wouldn't be surprised if the sequel is being rushed into theaters next weekend. That is unequivocally good, because if there's one thing I love it's a sprawling horror franchise. But as for the movie itself? Well, let's take a look.

At the very least, I'm glad Michael and Laurie are getting in on the ABBA craze.

It's Halloween, 2018. It's the only Halloween that matters other than the one back in 1978, when Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was stalked by masked murderer Michael Myers (Nick Castle) while she and her friends were babysitting. Nothing else happened in between then and now, we promise.

Laurie Strode is now a reclusive shut-in at her survivalist compound in the sticks of Haddonfield, IL. Her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) has gone ahead and had her own daughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak). But having a teenage child in Haddonfield is never a good idea, because Michael escapes imprisonment while being transferred to a different facility (which he's already done twice before, once in this very timeline) and immediately begins stalking around town in his good ol' Shatner mask mowing down as many passersby as he can in the process.

Laurie, Karen, the cops, and Michael's new caretaker Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) run around Haddonfield in a state of general distress while Michael wreaks as much havoc as one might expect after being cooped up for so many years.

Oh, how we've missed the big lug.

So, this is the third film in forty years to be titled Halloween. Those are some big shoes to fill, but at least the presence of Rob Zombie's remake means that it could never be the worst one. Unfortunately, this entry barely rises to the middle of the franchise ranking at large.

Halloween has certain good ideas it's working with, but it doesn't seem to have found its own personality. It's actually a lot like Halloween H20, which is now as old as the original Halloween was when it was released: We finally have Jamie Lee Curtis back to play one of her most iconic roles, but this is still a Halloween movie and we need a slate of nubile teens to be offed in the background while she does her thing. H20 very clearly had two different plot threads like this, but it wove them together with reasonable success and cemented the whole thing with a heavy dose of Kevin Williamson snark. 

In Halloween, unfortunately, the threads just unravel before your eyes. The movie can barely maintain its focus on Allyson, let alone her slate of friends, who exist in disjointed scene fragments usually in pairs but never all together. This slasher movie is really missing a unifying element, and the Halloween dance setpiece they feature early on completely fails to be that. The cast splinters off into a series of stalker vignettes which don't tie together at all, or really make much sense as to how Michael managed to get himself between them. Instead of making a mosaic, these scenes just seem like a bunch of shattered glass littered on the ground at random.

Pictured: The screenwriting process.

Even more unfortunately, none of these fragments are pulled together under a unifyied tone. We get some action hero set pieces with random shards of comic relief sprinkled in (these tend to work, actually, thanks to David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride's familiarity with comedy filmmaking, though one horny teen character in particular gets a monologue that I think is supposed to be funny but it completely odious and made me want him to die all the more), and it occasionally cuts to horror sequences of the most brutal and unrelenting variety.

To that end, I will say that this is certainly the goriest Halloween film ever made, and a lot of the kills are incredibly well-realized. As a bit of a gorehound myself, it was nice to see Michael making a play to join the big boys of gruesome slasher killing (usually he's a bit of a bore, going with a couple swipes of the kitchen knife and not much else), but the murders here seem unusually mean-spirited and difficult to watch. Slasher films are supposed to be fun, especially when the other scenes are as silly or high-octane as they are attempting to be. Halloween is kind of miserable at times, making choices that do up the full-tilt horror, but feel more in tune with Rob Zombie's take on the material. Which I hardly expect anyone was actually asking for.

A la carte, though, I can accept the gore for being a very good example of the form. And John Carpenter's new original score is full of bangers, especially the droning alarm bell of his most frequently used new theme. And I'll never complain when Jamie Lee Curtis or Judy Greer are onscreen, even though the former is stuck in a retread of a character she already pulled off twenty years ago in H20. This is the rare example of a horror movie that actually gets better as it goes along, as it pares down its cast so we can focus on three generations of Strode women, all well-performed, and all kicking ass, fighting for their lives in solidarity with one another. 

And wearing wigs like the dickens.

If the whole movie was just a home invasion with the three of them squaring off against Michael Myers, it might have been the best in the entire franchise, including the first. Unfortunately, there is far too much fat on this one, and the filmmakers - especially in the first act - seem focused on delivering scenes that are quite self-evidently shaky ideas, like tremendously misguided pre-credits sequence. 

It's one I'll almost certainly visit again at some point and re-evaluate, unlike the previous two modern entries in the franchise, but there are a lot of other ones I'd prioritize for a rewatch over it. I will be first in line for any and all sequels that Halloween spawns (and it certainly will, if that record breaking box office weekend has anything to say about it), because I think there's a good movie in there, or even a lot of good movies. This one just doesn't happen to quite hit the nail on the head, and that's fine. Almost is better than nothing, and "nothing" is what we've gotten for too long.

TL;DR: Halloween is a middling entry in the franchise with many decent highs and some tremendous lows.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 1211

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1988)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

The Night HE Came Home

Year: 2009

Director: Rob Zombie

Cast: Scout Taylor-Compton, Tyler Mane, Malcolm McDowell

Run Time: 1 hour 45 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Trick or treat, mother f**kers! It may have taken a year longer than it was supposed to, but my All Hallow’s Eve present for you all is the final entry in our Halloween marathon! To be completely honest, I would have gotten to it sooner, but I’ve seen Rob Zombie’s Halloween II before and knew better than to approach it unarmed. It took me so long to psychologically prepare that it was almost the next October, so I decided to save it up to use as an endcap to my all-too brief Exorcist marathon.

[EN: For the record, this review is of the Director’s Cut, which seems to be the version that’s most readily available these days.]

So, Halloween II. Back in the days when a remake could actually get a theatrical sequel, not that it happened much anyway. The only one I can recall is the prequel Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and then a handful of DTV follow-ups to Fright Night and I Spit On Your Grave for some reason. I can see why Rob Zombie’s Halloween was one of the lucky few. As shrill and mean-spirited as it is, it struck a chord with the edgier youth demographic. It’s popular with a small but rabid group, and it’s the prerogative of the Akkad family to keep pumping these films out as long as there are wallets to receive them. But boy do I wish they hadn’t made Halloween II, because that story had nowhere to go and it does exactly that.

At least there’s no Ken Foree diarrhea scene.

In Halloween II, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is living with the only other survivor of the Michal Myers (Tyler Mane) rampage two years ago – Annie (Danielle Harris) – and her dad, Sheriff Brackett (Brad Dourif). Still dealing with the trauma of that fateful Halloween night and newly reeling from the revelation in fame-hungry Dr. Loomis’ (Malcolm McDowell) tell-all book that she’s Michael Myers’ sister, Laurie goes through life vaulting between the equally pleasant poles of Nasal Shouting and Complete Emotional Breakdown. 

She’s plagued by nightmares, and of course Michael picks this moment to show up again, emerging from the backwoods looking beardy, filthy, and uncannily like Rob Zombie himself. He wreaks havoc by killing her new friends whose names I didn’t bother to learn, as well as some amusingly random townsfolk. So yeah, Michael is haunted by visions of his mom (Sheri Moon Zombie), who’s convincing him to kill people, kidnap his sister, and also hang with a dream horse, because hey- Rob Zombie had to fit his wife in there somewhere, I guess.

And she needed an excuse to dress like she was going to a Fleetwood Mac concert.

One thing I will say about Halloween II is that it improves greatly upon its predecessor, though that bar is so low you could crawl over it. But in attempting to craft his twisted new mythology for the Myers siblings, Zombie finally lets go of the alit vestiges of John Carpenter’s property, freeing himself from slavishly copying the original film, only with more Annoying. The unsettlingly brutal kills are toned down, as is the lewd clowning of every single character. In fact, everything is toned down, because Halloween II is barely a movie.

Once you get through the 25-minute dream sequence that opens the movie (it’s supposed to be jarring, but it’s mostly just an excuse to replace exposition with chase sequences and give Octavia Spencer one of her final sassy Black Coworker roles before she starred in The Help – this scene is so obviously not trying that her character is actually named “Octavia”), you’re stuck on a rockabilly merry-go-round for an hour, cycling endlessly between any of these three scenes:

1) Dr. Loomis is a giant, throbbing asshole to his publicist while on tour for his book, simultaneously adding nothing to the narrative and demolishing his character from the ground up.

2) Laurie Strode shrieks/cries/vomits at/on her friends/therapist/self.

3) Somebody around town does vulgar, despicable things for 2 ½ minutes, then Michael Myers teleports in and murders them.

The actual plot, insofar as this shattered pile of unfathomable motivations can be called a “plot,” doesn’t kick in until the final 20 minutes. It’s actually pretty reminiscent of the dire Halloween 5, down to the detail that the characters go to a pointless barn dance in the beginning of Act 3, only to lazily drift over to the true location of the finale. And then it’s just… over.

I guess I should thank it for not sticking around.

Although Halloween II is less grating overall than Halloween 2007, that doesn’t mean Zombie’s not up to his usual “Tobe Hooper turned up to 11” tricks. Every single cluttered, dingy set either looks like a punk club’s bathroom or an episode of Atlanta Trailer Park Hoarders. And every single character is an unlikeable fountain of vitriol, whether they’re facing a serial killer or eating pizza at the kitchen table. People in Halloween II don’t talk. They either shout or they whine or they die. There’s no in between, no calm before the storm. Everything is just storm.

It certainly doesn’t help that the ensemble has less of a grip on the material this time around. Harris and Taylor-Compton can’t find the shreds of humanity they clung to in their roles last time, because there aren’t any. And Malcolm McDowell is completely wasted in a role that violates continuity to resurrect him, only to have him do nothing useful at all (to be fair, that’s  pretty much what they did with Donald Pleasance the last three times). Then there’s Sheri Moon Zombie, who talks to her onscreen son like he’s a girlfriend she ran into a Starbucks. Even the infallible Brad Dourif can’t find his footing and serves up a huge tray of ham during a supposedly heartfelt moment.

While I could go on and on about the obvious metaphors, the mask that makes Myers look like Sideshow Bob, or the ultimate violation of the character by having him speak, and any number of vicious complaints, let’s end the review on an uncharacteristically positive note, shall we? Rob Zombie really does know how to shoot moonlit streets at night, and Halloween II is chock full of beautiful suburban imagery with pristine, almost elegant lighting. So that’s nice, I guess. It certainly helps in making this sequel much more bearable It’s undoubtedly a bad movie, but its bisected narrative helps it fly by and the jagged tonal edges are at least sanded down a little bit. ¡Viva Halloween II!

Killer: Michael Myers (Tyler Mane)

Final Girl: Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton)

Best Kill: Michael Myers dies, meaning we won’t have to deal with this incarnation of him anymore.

Sign of the Times: The fact that this remake sequel even exists is a pretty clear sign it’s the 2000’s.

Scariest Moment: After a car crash, a paramedic spits blood from his mouth and shouts the F word for approximately five minutes, and you realize this is how the movie is gonna be the whole time.

Weirdest Moment: Weird Al Yankovic has a cameo in this movie

Champion Dialogue: “Bad taste is the petrol that drives the American dream.”

Body Count: 19

1. Coroner Hooks dies in a car crash.
2. Gary Scott is decapitated with a glass shard.
3. Nurse Octavia is stabbed to death.
4. Nurse has her eyes gouged out offscreen.
5. Buddy is axed in the back.
6. Floyd is impaled on antlers.
7. Sherman is stabbed to death.
8. Jazlean is stabbed to death. 
9. Howard has his face stamped in.
10. Lou has his head smashed into a wall.
11. Misty Dawn is repeatedly mashed into a glass case.
12. Wolfie is stabbed in the back.
13. Harley is strangled.
14. Deputy Neale has his neck snapped.
15. Annie is stabbed to death.
16. Mya is stabbed in the stomach.
17. Becks is thrown through a windshield.
18. Dr. Loomis is stabbed in the gut.
19. Michael Myers is shot to death.

TL;DR: Halloween II is boring, vulgar, and mishandled, but at least it's better than the last one.

Rating: 3/10

Word Count: 1366
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

You Can't Kill The Boogeyman

Year: 2007

Director: Rob Zombie

Cast: Scout Taylor-Compton, Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane

Run Time: 1 hour 49 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Steady breathing helped me through Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers. During Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, I bit the bullet so hard that I blew off my lower jaw. But if there’s a franchise film waiting for me that is somehow more unendurably agonizing than Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween, I’d rather slit my own throat with a steak knife like Kellan Lutz in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010 than put it in my eyes.

I actually tried to approach this one with an open mind, considering that I knew it was inevitable in my marathon and that my opinion may have changed in the six years since I saw this film. Guess what? It didn’t. It makes me physically ill to think about the fact that I own this film, curse my completionist compulsions. Well, might as well get this review over with, so I never have to think about this film ever again.

Let the healing process begin.

Halloween tells the sordid tale of masked murderer Michael Myers (Tyler Mane) and his pursuit of Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) and her friends Annie (Danielle Harris, who played seven-year-old Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4 and 5) and Lynda (Kristina Klebe) one fateful Halloween night in Haddonfield, Illinois. Oh, but first let’s give that faceless cypher of pure evil a backstory – because we saw Halloween but didn’t actually understand it. Could it even be possible that Dr. Loomis didn’t monologue hard enough on that topic?

Cue 45 minutes of pointless shrieking and bloodshed, where young Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) deals with his stripper mom, his abusive stepdad, his skanky sister, and school bullies while trying to care for his baby sister Laurie. Yep, of all the things to grab from the Halloween sequels, they picked that little nugget. Why not just throw in Paul Rudd and the Cult of Thorn for good measure? I could accept this meaningless diversion as a new, if unappealing, take on an iconic character except for the fact that, halfway through, the film abruptly slams into a Cliff’s Notes speedthrough of John Carpenter’s Halloween.

Laurie Strode’s greatest hits play out, careening from scene to scene with exact shot matching and dialogue quotations. This crude summation of the source material completely undermines the opening sequence. It’s difficult to imply that your serial killer has a dark backstory when you’re carbon copying a story that requires none at all. The film’s absurd sympathy for its central psychopath utterly obliterates the character of Dr. Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), who is yoked to the psychological damage perspective of the material yet forced to contort into the Donald Pleasance mold of frantic harbinger of doom. It’s an embarrassing mess too keen on paying grubby homage to the original to properly tend to its own machinations.

I guess it’s too much to ask that one of these marathons end on a high note.

To say that this film tarnishes the legacy of the original is to merely scratch the surface of its film-disintegrating flaws. Rob Zombie extends every sequence to a punishing length, attempting to drive his points home via sheer quantity. This is a relatively streamlined slasher tale that takes 110 grueling minutes to tell, all because Zombie can’t throttle his self-indulgent excess. Halloween is a monument to the director’s inflated ego, and I didn’t even watch the extended cut, many scenes of which are actually necessary to understand the chopped-up storyline, but which sours the pot with an unnecessary, ugly rape sequence. Also, it’s not like I’m champing at the bit to spend more time with this flick. It’s sweltering this far up Rob Zombie’s ass.

The experience of watching Halloween is just brutal. Not in a Last House on the Left “show me violence to abhor violence” way, but in a pointlessly mean attempt at shoving the series over the top. Michael’s relentless pounding (he traffics in Costco kills – you might only need one stab or head slam, but you’re gonna get twenty) pushes and pushes until it’s just a dull, monotonous roar that ceases to be unsettling or even recognizable as distinct action. Of course, this is a damn sight preferable to the actual roar of noise that accompanies the film, a ceaseless cacophony of demented shouting, sirens, screaming, screeching, and thumping that will takes twelve Advils and a lifetime of therapy to forget.

It’s – quite literally in some cases – overkill.

Of course, this all plays into Rob Zombie’s deranged redneck aesthetic. In his world, every human being is either a lewd, angry lowlife or a lewd, shrieking harpy. His M.O. seems to be “do exactly the same thing as before, only more vulgar.” We get a wholly arbitrary scene of Michael’s mom stripping, implied incest, a sweatily extended topless sequence of almost every female character (including Danielle Harris, who is definitely not seven years old anymore), and a heaping pile of F-bombs thrown at innocuous scenes – including the “grave is missing” and “get me a beer” sequences, inexplicably. 

Some lines seem to be constructed entirely by spinning  wheel of vulgarities, like the sublimely nonsensical [NSFW “That’s some deep-ass serious faggoty-ass shit.”] Even virginal Laurie is a shrill wretch who likes to joke about molestation and mock her babysittee Tommy Doyal (who is also a little turd, though his screen time is far shorter). They even manage to muck up offscreen sweetheart Ben Traemer. It’s heartbreaking.

Unfortunately, Zombie’s attempt to create a Tobe Hooper-esque atmosphere of cultural depravity merely fosters an environment where the evil of Michael Myers utterly fails to stand out. Among this leering, lecherous bunch, Michael is about as provocative as Mr. Bean. And with Laurie off pretending to bang Annie in front of some third graders, there’s no force of good to root for either. Halloween is completely rudderless.

It’s downright repugnant, but worst of all, it’s graceless. I could handle a nasty flick with dirty intentions, but the thing isn’t even made particularly well at most levels. The script is a bludgeoning tool, slamming the audience with exposition like Laurie telling Tommy, “I’m your babysitter.” The documentary-like shooting style only surfaces when it will most wrench you out of the movie (sometimes obscuring entire scenes behind irrelevant foreground objects). And it has the sheer gall to drag Carpenter’s score into this mess, lifting entire tracks in a futile attempt to polish the turd. 

The film’s wretched devotion to the original even forces the young actresses to use corded phones, which are about as foreign to 2007 as the cotton gin. I don’t know which is worse, the blatant copying or the tactless additions. Every second you watch this movie without turning it off, the devil’s fist grips your soul a little tighter.

They even disembowel “Mr. Sandman” when you least expect it. RIP.

OK, now’s the time where my shriveled heart grows three sizes and I scrape up some reluctant praise. Occasionally, Zombie will compose a shot that doesn’t repel the eye – including my favorite, a frozen-in-time shot of the paramedics arriving at the Myers house. Though of course it is deflated by a finale that sees young Michael turn directly to the camera like he’s Kevin Spacey in House of Cards. And I must admit there’s some pretty decent acting going on. 

Taylor-Compton has enough charisma to garner a modicum of sympathy for her plight (though she isn’t even in the same dimension as Jamie Lee Curtis), Danielle Harris throws herself full tilt into the physicality of her role so well that she earned an unscripted survival for her character, and Malcolm McDowell does what he can to keep the Loomis character from totally splitting in two, and delivers one of the film’s funniest lines with an excellent, off-the-cuff earnestness. Of course, he butchers the iconic Boogeyman line. Though let it be know that I blame absolutely none of the actors for any deficiencies in bringing this putrid, inhuman script to life.

OK, I’m calming down. The one unequivocally good element of the film is Michael Myers’ design and stature. Tyler Mane is a staggering hulk of a man and his sheer size provides intimidation that the scrip can only reach in its wet dreams. Honestly, the scariest thing about the film is that Mane is actually that size in real life. 

I’d hate to have been on his high school basketball team. 

And the mask itself is a pretty slick design, with an edgy decayed look that actually helps me understand what Rob Zombie was attempting to accomplish when he set out on his project. Then there's the rest of the film, which just makes me want to rage vomit. 

So there you have it, Michael Myers has been pulled into the modern age, however unsuccessfully it may be. I’d be celebrating the end of another successful marathon, but of course this puddle of donkey milk was so lucrative, they went ahead and asked Rob Zombie to shoot a sequel.

Scratch what I said. Pure evil is real.

Killer: Michael Myers (Tyler Mane)

Final Girl: Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton)

Best Kill: About five seconds in, the spirit of John Carpenter’s Halloween is eviscerated.

Sign of the Times: Awful remakes were pretty much the cinematic currency of the mid to late 2000’s.

Scariest Moment: Right when it seems to end, you realize there’s 20 minutes left.

Weirdest Moment: Michael performs his first murder in a KISS T-shirt.

Champion Dialogue: “I got a Taco Deluxe Supreme talkin’ back at me, so I’m gonna be a while.”

Body Count: (Before reading this number, remember that high body counts are usually a sign of desperation and that the original Halloween boasts a measly 5) 21, not including 2 bloody attempted murders.

1. Wesley is beaten to death with a tree branch.
2. Ronnie gets his throat slit.
3. Steven is beaten to death with a bat.
4. Judith is stabbed in the gut and slashed to death.
5. Nurse has her throat slashed.
6. Mrs. Myers shoots herself.
7. Security Guard #1 is smashed with a chain.
8. Security Guard #2 is smashed with a chain.
9. Security Guard #3 has his head smashed into a wall.
10. Security Guard #4 is shot.
11. Security Guard #5 has her throat slit.
12. Gloria has her throat slit.
13. Ismael is downed and has a TV slammed onto his head.
14. Joe Grizzly is stabbed in the gut.
15. Bob is pinned to a wall through the chest.
16. Lynda is strangled.
17. Mr. Strode is punched in the face with a knife.
18. Mrs. Strode has her neck snapped.
19. Paul is stabbed to death.
20. Cop #1 is stabbed in the back.
21. Cop #2 is stabbed to death.

TL;DR: Halloween is a vicious, inept film that destroys every last bit of goodwill the franchise had left, which wasn't much to begin with.

Rating: 2/10

Word Count: 1818
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Dangertainment

Year: 2002

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Cast: Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Jamie Lee Curtis

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

It’s been a wild and rocky ride through the world of Haddonfield’s Finest, but here in the safe haven of 2002, we arrive at the final Halloween picture (Rob Zombie? Never heard of him). Though the back half of the franchise pretty much stinks like Michael Myers’ jumpsuit (He might have the scratch to spruce up his mask every time, but has anyone ever seen him launder his Lucky Murder Overalls?). Halloween H20 was a beautiful fresh start for the series, leaving the air clear for a follow-up to glide smoothly in.

Of course, that’s not what happened. This is one of my franchise marathons, after all. Things can always get worse. Halloween: Resurrection cannonballed in, gnarled and spitting, after four long years of radio silence. It’s far from the worst of the franchise (I lied – I’ve heard of Rob Zombie and those remakes are trundling down the trash chute right at us), but it’s a massive step down from the oasis of H20 in the barren Halloween desert.

Please take a moment to pay respect to that killer pun.

Halloween: Resurrection took one look at the calendar and thought, “What can I do to make sure that nobody ever forgets I was made in 2002?” The answer is this: The plot centers around Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes), the host of a spooktacular reality TV web series known as Dangertainment. This Halloween, he will be sending a host of sexy college students with webcams into the notorious Myers house to see if they can find evidence of the serial killer’s upbringing. The film’s understanding of psychology begins and ends at a single paragraph clipped from a Carl Jung book, so an intimately detailed portrait it ain’t.

The Meat he packs into the house includes Jen (Katee Sackhoff of Oculus), a fame whore with the energy of a rabid chipmunk; Rudy (Sean Patrick Thomas), a chef in training who thinks that Michael’s rage stems from a poor diet – who invited this guy?; Sara (Bianca Kajlich), a good student who is in an online relationship with Deckard (Ryan Merriman of Final Destination 3 and The Ring Two), a freshman who sneaks away from a party to watch her show; Jim (Luke Kirby), a horny music major; Donna (Daisy McCrackin), a pretentious asshole who thinks she’s smarter than everyone else because she read that Jung paragraph; and Bill (Thomas Ian Nicholas, Kevin from American Pie), who might actually be hornier than his hapless Pie character,

Naturally, Michael Myers (Brad Loree) arrives for his close-up, fresh from finally offing Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, who wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be asked back for any more sequels). His one mission in life complete, he does what any recent retiree would do – immediately attempt to recapture the glory days.

I suppose a model train set is out of the question.

Halloween: Resurrection is the cinematic equivalent of the absurdly confident freshman who just took a PSYCH 101 class and gleefully analyses their friends from on high. It’s clearly an attempt to dredge up some latent themes from the original Halloween about how the boogeyman represents the darkness inside all of us. However, this topic loses some of its luster when addressed by annoying clods who correct each other’s grammar, scoff at phallic imagery before being penetrated by sharp objects, and have the sheer pedantic audacity to call Michael Myers the “great white shark of our unconscious.”

However, I have been forever inoculated against annoying characters thanks to Tina from Halloween 5. Though Resurrection’s slate of characters is universally obnoxious, they’re hardly more obnoxious than all of us under 30 were back in 2002. The real beauty (if you can call it that) of Halloween: Resurrection is that it’s an unabashed time capsule of the strangest, most embarrassing trends and behaviors of the new millennium. Many film fans find dated movies to be abhorrent, but my secret joy lies in exploring the unearthed rends of a decade not too far removed from our own, yet as distant from the context of 2015 as Mars.

Thus, in my eyes, Halloween: resurrection is a totally adequate stupid slasher. There’s no part of the film that could conceivably be called “good,” but nearly every minute is a haphazard good time.

Kind of like a Ryan Murphy show.

OK, we all know Halloween: Resurrection is crappy. But as a self-professed kinda sorta fan, I feel that it is my duty to start with some positive comments before we rummage through the barrel of well-worm mockery. First and foremost, the mask is actually sort of decent. Or, at least it’s kept in shadow enough that it’s given the opportunity to be creepy. It’s the best Michael Myers couture since Halloween II, at any rate. My favorite element of the mask is that, when it emerges from the darkness, it looks angry. Now obviously that flies in the face of the idea that he is a faceless force of evil, but I feel like on this side of the Thorn trilogy, we’re a smidge past the point of fussing over subtextual minutiae.

And one should never underestimate the value of an evenly parsed-out platter of Meat. We meet our core three one at a time before we’re dumped in with the rest, so we’re given a moment to breathe and get a bead on who’s who. I don’t particularly want to get to know any of these paper-thin archetypes from Aristotle’s thesis on Irritating Drama, but I appreciate the fact that we’re given the opportunity.

Finally, as dated as the film’s premise and technology might be, it has some fun with it. Director Rick Rosenthal (returning from Halloween II, having helmed the classic The Birds II: Land’s End in the meantime) still doesn’t quite know how to frame a shot when he’s not quoting John Carpenter (as a matter of fact, he doesn’t quite know how to frame a shot when he is quoting John carpenter), but there are some clever editing moments involving the POV of the webcams, especially when they’re attached to teen corpses or rolling down the stairs on a severed head. 

Plus, the presence of Deckard and an increasing crowd of partygoers watching the show allows us to be a part of the game, getting real time audience reactions as the horror ensues. This all culminates in a sequence where Deckard must act as Sara’s eyes because only he can see where Michael is hiding in the house thanks to the cameras. It’s not exactly fraught with tension, but it squeezes some blood from the stone that the franchise had become.

Oh, and there’s a handful of pretty cool kill sequences that are baroquely gooey in the classic slasher tradition, including a blood tracheotomy that hearkens back to 1960’s Peeping Tom.

Rosenthal’s motto is “If it ain’t broke, steal it.”

I do recognize that a film that requires this much defending isn’t exactly Wizard of Oz, but Halloween: Resurrection is just fun. Spectacularly dumb fun, but fun just the same. There’s a lot to hate in the film and many scores of people have found it, but at least for me it’s all part of the ineffable experience. Sure, the actual webcam footage is pixelated enough to abrade your corneas, the Final Girl is next to useless, and a climactic scene involves young Rudy throwing fennel in Michael’s eyes. But it wants so badly to entertain and I for one feel that it does.

Resurrection’s piece de resistance (and an accurate gauge of if this movie is for you) is without a doubt Busta Rhymes. He is far from a good actor, but his singularly arresting energy is far more compelling than the herd of halter tops that surround him. His performance style follows two steps incessantly and unfailingly: 1) Cock head at a physically impossible angle that makes people fear for your health, and 2) Just keep talking until you get to something that feels like the line you were supposed to say.

His copious monologuing puts even the loquacious Dr. Loomis to shame. And although Donald Pleasance has chewed up mountains majesty of purple dialogue, I’m not sure even he would relish calling Michael Myers a “killer shark with baggy-ass overalls.” Busta just lets loose and goes for it, performing every act with supreme commitment, whether it be wooing Tyra Banks (who is in this, did I mention that?), kung fu kicking the Boogeyman, or merely sitting on his couch at home. His performance is pure, magnetic lunacy, a perfect centerpiece for this unflappably deranged sequel.

Whatever. I like Halloween: Resurrection. Sue me.

Killer: Michael Myers (Brad Loree)

Final Girl: Sara (Bianca Kajlich)

Best Kill: Jim’s head is crushed and he cries tears of blood.

Sign of the Times: Deckard meets Sarah through a Yahoo! Chat room and they keep in contact using their Palm pilots.

Scariest Moment: Sara has to climb down the stairs over Bill’s dead body.

Weirdest Moment: Busta Rhymes does kung fu alone in his apartment.

Champion Dialogue: "Screwing a music major would be tantamount to lesbianism.”

Body Count: 10; not including the decapitated “paramedic” shown in H20 flashback footage.

1. Security Guard is decapitated.
2. Willy has his throat slit.
3. Laurie Strode is stabbed in the back and falls to her death.
4. Charlie is stabbed in the throat with a tripod.
5. Bill is stabbed in the head.
6. Donna is impaled on an iron spike.
7. Jen is decapitated.
8. Jim has his head crushed. 
9. Rudy is triple stabbed and pinned to a door.
10. Nora is stabbed and hung offscreen.

TL;DR: Halloween: Resurrection is an immensely stupid but vastly entertaining time capsule.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1634

Reviews In This Series

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)

Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)

Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)

Halloween (Zombie, 2007)

Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)

Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)

Die Hydrogen Monoxide

Year: 1988

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin

Run Time: 1 hour 26 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Let’s not pull any punches here. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later is the single most asinine title ever inflicted upon an innocent horror movie. The core concept makes sense (this – the seventh film in the franchise – was released twenty years after the original and brings back many of its characters and themes), but the execution is downright execrable. This film has nothing to do with water, and the needlessly hip, hopelessly confusing title is just another outgrowth of the pop postmodern horror flicks that sprouted like kudzu in the years following the success of Scream.

Yes, we’ve finally reached that fabled genre-savvy period of the late 90’s, where slashers could be slashers and teens could be overwritten. While I’m on the subject, let’s take a moment to appreciate how much the Halloween franchise adheres directly to the historical development of the genre as a whole. It’s uncanny, really. The whole thing is like a road map of the dominant trends of each era. Halloween exemplifies the proto-slashers of the 70s, Halloween II the gory killfests of 1981, Halloween 4 the quasi-supernatural bent of the post-Nightmare period, Halloween 5 the soul-sucking crappiness of 1989, and Halloween 6 the bleak desperation of franchise filmmaking in the early 90’s. Then it would move on into the no-man’s land of the early 2000’s slashers and stand at the forefront of the remake boom, but that’s a story for another time.

Halloween H20 upholds the tradition, providing a textbook example of the self-reflexive slasher. Normally this wouldn’t bode well, considering that it’s in the company of mediocre films like I Still Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend, but the film was assigned a dream team of slasher bruisers, including many veterans of Scream itself. Along with the guidance of Screamsmith Kevin Williamson (who isn’t credited with the script, but according to the hot Hollywood gos, probably should be), we have Scream editor and composer Patrick Lussier and Marco Beltrami, as well as Friday the 13th Part 2 director Steve Miner. The cherry on top, naturally, is the return of reigning Scream Queen Jamie Lee of House Curtis.

Long may she kick ass.

Of course, there’s the nasty little wrinkle of Laurie Strode having been killed off in Part 4, but that’s nothing a little ignoring the last three sequels can’t solve. H20 is a direct continuation of Halloween II: Keri Tate (Jamie Lee Curtis) is the headmistress of a prestigious Southern California boarding school, but she has a secret. Back in 1978, her brother (yeah, that’s still a thing) Michael Myers (Chris Durand) killed a lot of her friends, then vanished in a hospital explosion, presumed dead. After that she faked her death and changed her name, living constantly under the fear that Michael will return once more.

This paranoia has led to some glam alcoholism (there’s nothing like shotgunning chardonnay in a chic cream sweater) and damaged her relationships with her son John (Josh Hartnett) and her boyfriend, guidance counselor Will Brennan (Adam Arkin). On Halloween night 1998 (helpfully proclaimed by a condescending title card that reads “October 31st – Halloween”), John ditches out on a school field trip in a rebellion against his overprotective mother, throwing a party with some Meat friends. He, his girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams), and their horny mates Sarah (Jodi Lyn O’Keefe) and Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd) sneak into the school building for some illicit merriment.

Of course, a little thing like an exploding hospital can’t stop Michael Myers, and he shows up to wreak havoc once more, though he must have lost his mask at some point over the years and had to make do with a Sideshow Bob wig.

You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to replicate the original mold, but you would be wrong.

The thing about Halloween H20 is that there’s a character named Brennan, and I only allow my namesake to be used by good films (for the record, there’s a Dr. Brennan in The Exorcist). Ergo, Halloween H20 turns out to be the best sequel of the entire franchise, in a close race with 4. Some might argue that bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back pretty much earns the movie a free pass, but some probably haven’t seen Halloween: Resurrection.

Halloween H20 is short and sweet. It gets in, does its job, and books the hell out of there, and I greatly admire it for that. The story it tells is simple and taut. A trauma victim must survive one more trial to wipe her slate clean and get her life back on track. It’s surprisingly poignant, and the return of characters we actually give a flying hoot about bumps up the scare factor something fierce.

Obviously, H20 couldn’t dream of matching the elemental terror of the original. Steve Miner is a competent workhorse at best, not a Carpenter-esque auteur. But after a couple dozen years in the business, you learn how to stage a scene, and he certainly horses his work. Scenes like the opening kill, where the police are called to one house while the murder occurs next door, are genuinely thrilling. It’s the first actually tense Halloween in a decade. In the later scenes especially, the film uses parallels with the original film to crate expectations and repeatedly thwart them.

It is in these moments that Halloween H20 truly works as a self-referential piece. There are several not so subtle nods to other films (like Curtis’ actual mother Janet Leigh being cast as her assistant whose every line is a veiled Psycho reference), but the canny Williamson humor doesn’t quite strike up a meaningful relationship with the narrative. In the Scream films, the characters are aware that they’re living out a horror film, hence the references, but when our H20 teens pop on a DVD of Scream 2, it’s only a leering pat on the back. Their knowledge of horror doesn’t influence events in any way. Most of the humor is totally acceptable and amusing (especially LL Cool J as a security guard/budding romance novelist), but a lot of it just sort of aimlessly drifts across the screen like an errant balloon at a Fourth of July picnic.

One day I’m going to gather up all these magnificent similes and write the great American novel.

While we’re on the complain train, I have one last grievance to air, which is again the fault of one Kevin Williamson. He certainly does adore writings teens who speak like overly trendy mini Rhodes scholars, and the non-Strode kiddos are irritating as balls. Or, as K-Dubs would say, more painful than Titus Andronicus’ tongue piercing. Sarah especially is a one woman quip machine, with a groan-worthy line constantly at the ready for any situation (“Inconsiderate, party of one!”). This archetype is what really dates this movie, even more so than Josh Hartnett’s haircut, which looks like it was chewed into shape by a rabid dog.

But lo and behold, H20 leaps those hurdles like it was born to do it. The most irritating parts are hardly onscreen longer than you can say “ixnay on the ipsquay.” This is a movie that has Laurie Goddamn Strode in it, and she isn’t about to let no pockmarked whippets ruin it for her. Jamie Lee Curtis is just as subtle and illuminating as ever, bringing her natural charm to the far meatier role of a Girl Next Door gone sour. She’s a vodka-pickled, snarling survivor with a plastic smile that’s all bared teeth and hard edges. Her performance really picks up on the nuances of a genuinely good girl closed off to the world, and it reinforces the strong emotional throughline that the film boasts.

A little loopy but always fun, a little gritty but always exciting, H20 is a massively entertaining entry in the franchise. Coming hot on the heels of the atrocious Parts 5 and 6, this was a much-needed breath of fair to allow me to regroup and keep on plowing full steam ahead. On to 2002 and the film that completely undermines this one’s climax! Hooray!

Killer: Michael Myers (Chris Durand)

Final Girl: Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis)

Best Kill: Joseph Gordon-Levitt gets an ice skate buried in his face.

Sign of the Times: John’s shirt is about fifteen sizes too big for him.

Scariest Moment: Charlie drops a corkscrew in the garbage disposal and reaches in to get it.

Weirdest Moment: Another Halloween tradition this film follows is that the local kids go trick or treating absurdly early. They can be seen wandering the streets at the explicitly mentioned time of 1 PM.

Champion Dialogue: “I’d rather have my eyes pierced.”

Body Count: 6; not counting Michael Myers (whose head is chopped off), who always seems to find his way back home.

1. Jimmy is stabbed in the face with an ice skate.
2. Allegre is stabbed in the back.
3. Nurse Chambers has her throat slit.
4. Charlie has his throat slashed.
5. Sarah is stabbed to death.
6. Mr. Brennan is stabbed in the back.

TL;DR: Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later is a brilliant rejuvenation of the franchise through the lens of the post-Scream era.

Rating: 8/10

Word Count: 1547
Reviews In This Series
Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
Halloween II (Rosenthal, 1981)
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (Wallace, 1982)
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (Little, 1988)
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (Othenin-Girard, 1989)
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (Chappelle, 1995)
Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (Miner, 1998)
Halloween: Resurrection (Rosenthal, 2002)
Halloween (Zombie, 2007)
Halloween II (Zombie, 2009)
Halloween (Green, 2018)

Halloween Kills (Green, 2021)