Review #94: Halloween (2018)

This review was originally written in October 2020.

October Movie Review #11- Halloween (2018)

Alright, here we are- the final of the Halloween movies (for now, anyway). I saw this one in theater when it came out, and my thoughts on it are the same now as when I saw it then. I thought I might have more (or less) of an appreciation for it after having seen everything that led up to it, but I'd say it's about the same.

First things first: I think this is an excellent movie. It's very important that I get that right out here, because I am about to complain a LOT about this film and I need you to understand that ultimately this movie is still great and 100% worth watching no matter what else I say about it. The action is incredible, the characters are all believable and likable, the cinematography is great and everything that happens feels like it has the appropriate weight. I kind of wish this was intentionally made to be the end of the series because it would be such a good ending; however, at the moment they've already got release dates planned for two (!) more movies, which is disappointing. This movie was fantastic on its own and I think every slasher fan should go see it.

However...

...I say it's fantastic on its own, and that's true. But as the part of the series it's written as, it's kind of awful in a meta-sense. What I mean is, this movie takes great pains to make it clear that this is meant to be a sequel to the original Halloween from 1976, and nothing else is canon. So no Curse of Thorn, no Jamie or John, and certainly no Silver Shamrock- and most importantly (as I'm sure was a huge part of the decision in the first place) no little sister to Michael Myers. For the purposes of this movie's story, Michael Myers killed his only sister Judith, spent fifteen years in Smith's Grove Sanitarium, broke out and killed three teens and a cop, and then was apprehended and has spent the following forty years back at Smith's Grove.

And that's fine. A little annoying that they insist on cutting chunks out of the continuity AGAIN, but fine, whatever.

The problem is that this movie SO DESPERATELY still wants you to have seen all those other films. It wants to have its cake and eat it too- it wants you to remember all of the tension and scares and cultural cache of the Halloween series, but wants you to forget the parts of the continuity that make storytelling hard. Their target audience is NOT someone who watched the original movie and then skipped all the rest, even though that's the storyline they're advertising. If you had only ever seen the original and then this one, there are SO many parts of this movie that would have you scratching your head.

First I'll talk about Laurie. I understand that grief and trauma are going to hit different people in different ways. I'm not saying that it's impossible for someone who went through what she did forty years ago to end up like the character in this film. However, I do not think for a second the writers wrote this character as a person who, forty years ago, was attacked by a madman who then immediately got put in jail and has been there ever since. The way she acts in this film is much more like a person whose attempted murderer has repeatedly broken free, who has been attacked on multiple occasions, who has probably had to change her name and address in order to feel remotely safe. When I watched Halloween H20, THAT was the Laurie Strode that I thought felt appropriate to that character; in this movie she has spent her entire life in fear despite the fact that at no point has Michael Myers ever gotten free, at no point has he ever stalked her again, at no point has he ever been a threat. At any given point for the last forty years, she knew exactly where he was, and where he wasn't. He wasn't an elusive, unstoppable killer- they stopped him, he's in jail, he's not going anywhere. Again, it's not IMPOSSIBLE for her to end up like this, but if you'd only ever seen the original film and then you learned this character spent the following forty years in constant fear and vigilance, you'd wonder why.

Next up is Michael himself. He kills so easily and effortlessly in this film- remember, in this movie's continuity, Michael has only ever killed five people- his sister (55 years ago), a cop and three teenagers (40 years ago) and nobody else. He's in his 60s now, he's been nowhere near a lethal weapon in four decades, and yet when he gets out of the sanitarium he's pulling teeth with his bare hands, he's sneaking into houses like he'd been doing it his whole life, he's using every opportunity to grab weapons and stab and crush people and even making a show of their stashed bodies. He kills more people in his first two scenes than he killed in the entirety of the first movie, and it's not even a big deal. Again, if you'd never seen any Halloween movie except the original, you'd be asking, "Did someone replace Michael Myers with a terminator or something?" It makes more sense if you've seen all of the movies and you've watched his kill count balloon over the years, but again, this isn't the Michael Myers who's broken out of captivity numerous times. This is a guy who has been sitting in a sanitarium for 55 years since he was six years old (except that one time he got out for a day).

And much more important is the public's perception of Michael Myers. Again- I keep having to repeat this because the movie keeps forgetting- Michael killed five people total (with a fifteen year gap between the first and second) and yet the people in this world act like he goes on a killing spree every few years. From the (utterly idiotic and cringeworthy) opening scene where those podcasters taunt him with his mask, to the doctor talking about his "dormant periods" and "active periods" in regards to murder, to people on the street talking about the rumors that Laurie Strode was his sister (inserted simply to remind the audience about the break in continuity of course), this movie just can't waste an opportunity to rake in that cultural cache of the mythos surrounding Michael Myers, even though they also make it very clear that he's done nothing except sit silently in the sanitarium. (This could very easily be remedied- just throw in a couple lines of dialogue about escapes in the past, possibly even other murders that have taken place, and boom, you have all of the clout that the movie wants but with no responsibility to the other films. But instead, they stress several times that he's only committed the original five murders, and has been imprisoned for forty years since.)

Like, the doctor has some ridiculous dialogue while driving to Laurie's house where he says that Michael has "dormant and active states- he will kill again" and "pursuing Laurie is what's been keeping him alive all these years"- despite the fact that by this movie's own events neither of those statements could have any in-universe basis. He's never had an "active state" because he's never been out of prison after the first time, and he has never done anything resembling "pursuing Laurie" because, again, this is the first time he's been in a position to pursue her after the first time they met (where he only pursued her because she just happened to be nearby). Scenes like that one make me wonder if this movie was originally planned to include other movies in its continuity, and they changed it very late in production? That's the only thing I can think of (beyond abject laziness from the writers) that would explain lines like this.

If this movie had some lines of dialogue explaining that Michael HAS escaped in the past it would make Laurie's constant vigilance WAY more understandable. If Michael had killed more people while wearing his signature mask it would make more sense for those podcasters to show up and insist that he has some sort of psychic connection to it- because as it is, there's no reason to assume Myers has any more of a psychic connection with the mask as he does with his boiler suit or boots, because he spent the same amount of time wearing those! (Imagine if, when Ted Bundy was still alive, people showed up at the prison with the fake cast he used to wear, and screamed at him to admit that he could "feel the cast's presence". That's how stupid this scene felt to me.) But again, this movie wants you to remember that Michael's been wearing that mask for like ten movies, even if it wants the benefit of ignoring all of the canon that it doesn't like.

It really bothers me that this facet of the film was handled so sloppily, because as I said at the beginning, I think this film is GREAT. Jamie Lee Curtis' character was so good, the moment at the end where Karen fires the rifle was SO badass, and the doctor's role in Michael's escape was a great twist and took me by complete surprise (even if I have issues with his reasoning, as I said before). The ending does bother me- this version of Laurie would never just walk away from the fire and say, "Yeah, Michael's probably dead now, we can rest easy" just like Loomis wouldn't have done the same back in Halloween 4, and I also feel like considering how much this movie so desperately wants the viewer to have seen all ten previous movies, they somehow also want us to feel some sense of closure with that ending (even if we didn't know that two more movies were in the works). Because when I saw this in the theater (after having only seen a couple of the others) even I knew with 100% certainty that Michael was going to turn out to still be alive whenever the inevitable sequel came out.

So I very much like this movie, but I hate how entitled it feels and I wish it was written to be the final movie in the series. But obviously it wasn't.

Overall Rating: 8/10 Sexy Guacamole Ways

Favorite Character: Julian, obviously, who stole the show