Trick or Trailers: Halloween (2018) & Halloween Kills (2021)

Even though there'd been many times over the years when it looked like Halloween had as much life left in it as a rotting jack o'lantern, it was probably inevitable that in time the franchise would land in the hands of horror fans turned pros who would be primed to fulfill the series' promise in a way that previous filmmakers hadn't, that eventually Halloween wouldn't just be lurching clumsily from one film to the next. 

By rights, Dimension Films should have been an ideal home for Michael Myers but in the end it ended up yielding the usual uneven stretch of films, some of them the most reviled of the series. For all the bad luck the franchise has suffered over the years, you'd think its namesake holiday was Friday the 13th. But in 2016 it looked like things might finally turn around once it was announced that the next Halloween would involve genre powerhouse Blumhouse Productions. 

In time for the series' 40th anniversary, Halloween continuity would once again be rewritten, with the new film now stemming solely from the events of the original Halloween, discarding everything afterward, finally untethering Halloween from its first sequel. 

For years, II was piggybacked onto Halloween, due to its storyline picking up immediately from the end of the original. The two were seen as one seamless story, detailing the events of Halloween night, 1978. And because of that, every sequel had to contend with the misguided reveal in II that Michael and Laurie were siblings. Now, the series was free to forge a new direction that wasn't about Michael obsessed with killing his other sister and the rest of his bloodline. 

And with Jamie Lee Curtis back again as Laurie, there was a fresh chance for her to give the character a more fitting final bow than she received in Resurrection. 

The trailer was about as good as you could possibly ask for:

   

Right off the bat this looked like the best return for Michael since H20 and upon its release, the consensus was that, yeah, for the most part they nailed it. Director and screenwriter David Gordon Green and his co-writers Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride and the rest of their Blumhouse collaborators relaunched Halloween in style, complete with a new score from John Carpenter and his son Cody. 

And now we have the just released Halloween Kills, the second chapter in Green's Halloween trilogy, originally meant to hit theaters in 2020 but delayed until this year due to Covid. 

When the trailer hit, it looked well worth the wait:

  

Woo, that looked like it was gonna be brutal! And as it turns out, it was! Some trailers promise a lot and the movies don't deliver but Kills gave me everything the trailer set me up for. Namely, a massive body count. Even for this jaded slasher buff, the kills in Kills were insane.  

These films are way too new to say for certain how they'll stand up over time, especially as we still have yet to see how the trilogy ends, but as time has softened my views of even the shittiest Halloween sequels, I feel confident that these movies will age just fine. At this point, even if the last film tanks, I'll be happy with the two we got. 

I know Kills rubbed some fans wrong but from my perspective it rocked. Not only did it rock, it fixed my issues with the previous film. 

Even though Halloween '18 established that Laurie and Michael weren't related, the movie still turned on the idea that it was all about Laurie vs. Michael and it felt like the plot shoehorned that confrontation in, facilitated by an out of left field plot twist involving Michael's psychiatrist. 

At a certain point in Halloween '18, there was that need to physically transport Michael from point A to point B so that big confrontation between he and Laurie could play out but the plot mechanism to make that happen was so awkward and it seemed that if that was where the movie was obviously going, if Michael's mission was always to get to Laurie, why couldn't it have been done in a smoother way? 

However, in Kills, it is established that Michael never gave a shit about facing Laurie again. Bringing Michael and Laurie together again was all to do with his psychiatrist's obsession and for all the preparing that Laurie did in her certainty that Michael would one day come back to finish the job, we understand now that he didn't care at all. 

He would have been perfectly fine never seeing Laurie again. His impulse is simply to kill. The scenes in '18 where he is just going into random houses and killing people felt like filler to me at the time, just scenes to pad out the body count, spinning wheels until the movie could get us to that big final act with Laurie and Michael. Now, in light of Kills, those scenes feel right to me. That was what Michael cared about. It was only his psychiatrist that forced him off course. 

As fans we've been as conditioned as Laurie to believe that Michael has a special, singular obsession for her, even if they weren't related. This movie makes it absolutely clear that, no, Laurie is not special to Michael.  

You could say that Halloween '18 already did that but we don't fully feel it there because that movie is so rooted in Laurie's perspective.  

Laurie believes that Michael is coming for her and, because of the history of the franchise, we believe it too. If anything, I thought it was a weakness of '18 that Michael was so passive about getting back to Laurie, that he was manipulated into facing her again rather than choosing to go after her. As it turns out, that was the whole point. 

Laurie's belief that Michael was planning to come for her was given superficial credence by the actions of Michael's psychiatrist but that was his machinations, not Michael's. 

For Laurie, and us, to realize that killing her is no more important to Michael than murdering the next ten random people he encounters is a major corrective move. It liberates the series from the bad baggage it's been carrying since 1981. 

Since Halloween II, the sequels have been trying to explain Michael. 

It is the single biggest mistake the series made. It instantly put the sequels on the wrong foot, and, until now, the subsequent films acted as though they were obliged to forever perpetuate that mistake. 

It's ok for us to get where Jason is coming from. He's protecting his turf, he's avenging his mother, he's punishing misbehavior. Whatever. 

All of that is fine. It doesn't take away from the fun of the character to know all that. The fun of Jason and the scariness of him is knowing that if you set foot in his territory, he's going to get you. 

And with Freddy it's also not detrimental for us to have the full picture on him. He was a sick fuck, the parents of his victims got themselves some street justice and the children have to pay for the sins of the parents. But Michael is a character that works best when we have no idea why he does what he does, when he is a blank.  

There's a lot of overripe dialogue in Kills from both Laurie Strode and Tommy Doyle concerning Michael. I think that's fine and fully in line with Halloween tradition. They're referring to Michael in the same kind of hyperbolic terms that Loomis used to. Some may roll their eyes when Tommy urgently tells a crowd that Michael is an "apex predator" but I love it. That's some prime Halloween shit right there. 

Past all the talk about evil and transcending, though, Kills has the single best line of dialogue spoken about Michael in the whole series, save for the classic Loomis lines from the original. When Robert Longstreet as Lonnie says about Michael that "he creeps, he kills, he goes home," it's a statement so unsettling in its utter plainness. It describes Micheal in the simplest terms but rather than reduce him, it only affirms his essential sense of mystery. "He creeps, he kills, he goes home" should be the mantra that any future caretakers of Michael Myers should be guided by once Green and co. are done.  

Given how well Kills addressed my issues with Halloween '18, I hope that's reason to believe that Green has had a solid final chapter mapped out from the start. Right now, they're two for two in my opinion. A kick ass third film would be pure Halloween heaven. 

Trick or Trailers: Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Oddly for a major franchise, the Halloween series has never had what you'd call a hot streak. Until arguably the current incarnation of the series, for the bulk of its existence the Halloween films never had a point where they, even briefly, hit their stride. With both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series, they had points where they were undeniably at their peak, where they had at least a two or three film stretch where they were on a roll, commercially and creatively. You might say that having just two good movies back to back isn't much of an actual "roll" but it's more than Halloween had. 

The pattern that the Halloween series followed throughout most of its existence is that a back to basics entry will connect with fans and audiences and right the ship only for the very next installment to tank the franchise all over again. There was no instance of Halloween sequels improving from one to the next or even just holding ground from one to the next. It was always a hit, followed by a train wreck. 

Which brings us to Halloween: Resurrection. 1998's H20 had been well received by critics, fans, and general audiences. It scrapped off the narrative barnacles that had accumulated on the series over the years and seemed to be the big "fix" that the series sorely needed. 

It also ended on a very definitive note. It looked like Laurie Strode and Michael had finally fought their last battle and that Laurie had permanently vanquished the boogeyman. 

Now, I don't think any hardcore Halloween fans truly believed the series was done, no matter how things looked at the end of H20, but the question was just one of "ok, how do you go forward after that ending?" A full reboot would have probably been the smart way to go, allowing H20's ending to stand within that continuity. Or, if not that, then to have evil - or Evil! - re-manifest itself in some creative way. 

But to have the finale of H20 be exposed as a cheap fake-out and just carry on from there...hmm, not great. 

When H20's trailer was released, it was met with a universal cry of "Yeah, Halloween's back!" That was not how the Resurrection trailer was received. From the jump, it looked like this was gonna be rough. Although, from the vantage point of 2021, I'm really loving the cheesy early '00's vibes here.  

 

Sometimes when a movie makes so many stunningly wrong choices, it perversely earns my respect. That's the case here. I will not try and make a convincing case that Resurrection is actually good. However, I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy it. How is that even possible, you ask? I don't know. This is just a fun one for me. One thing I love in horror movies is when they try too hard to be of their time and jump on then-current trends. It makes them look hilariously dated as soon as they hit theaters and that is what Resurrection is. 

Resurrection is such a early '00's time capsule with its reality show premise and heavy use of the internet and cell phones as they were then. Everybody's rocking old-timey flip phones. And when they text, it's in full sentences, with proper punctuation! No abbreviations, no emojis! The original Halloween still manages to feel timeless while Resurrection, being so locked into its era, looks absolutely ancient. 

The biggest problem that most people had with Resurrection is with the head of Dangertainment himself, Freddie Harris, played by rapper Busta Rhymes. This is an area in which I will strongly disagree with the haters and say that I genuinely love Busta in this movie. He brings a completely different type of energy to the series. He may be loud and obnoxious and abrasive to some but I'm all for it. And he ends up delivering one of my favorite lines regarding Michael, describing him as a "killer shark in baggy ass overalls." And of course, the immortal "Trick or Treat, motherfucker!" is all him. Freddie rules. If only he and Loomis could have met. Inject that movie into my fucking veins! 

Like Curse, Resurrection came at a low point for the genre, just before horror enjoyed a fresh resurgence. The early '00's were a time when the post-Scream horror boom had ebbed and the genre was floundering in the new decade, with filmmakers not quite knowing what audiences wanted. The genre wasn't quite down and out but it was definitely waiting for the next big wave to happen. Even the Resurrection poster looked like a relic from the fading Scream era. 

The whole movie had a "last nail in the coffin" vibe, not just for Halloween but for the slasher sub-genre. It all felt played out. 

Although no one knew it at the time, Resurrection would mark the second time that a line of Halloween continuity would be brought to an ignominious close. 

Personally I wish they would have continued on from the end of Resurrection. Not only would I have loved to see more of Freddie Harris (really!) but given that, for the first time, the series would have had to carry on without any of its familiar touchstones like Laurie, Loomis, or even the Myers house, it would have been cool to see what the next Halloween might have been like. But, of course, no one wanted to bother with that. Rather than the resurrection its title promised, this Halloween felt more like a funeral, or a kiss good bye. 

Trick or Trailers: Halloween H20 (1998)

With horror franchises, there's always another chance to get it right. Even if those chances are continually, routinely squandered they're still there. So just because the Dimension Films era for Halloween got off to a less than spectacular start with Curse of Michael Myers, it didn't mean that the franchise couldn't thrive under their banner. It wasn't time to give up. No, it was just time for another sequel and this time it was going to be everything the fans were clamoring for!  

After all, since Curse's release, Dimension had re-ignited the horror genre with the success of Scream in 1996. Horror, specifically teen slashers, was hot again so the prospects for a new Halloween were looking considerably better than they had when Curse came out. 

Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson had a hand in developing the script for H20, reliable genre director Steve Miner was behind the camera, and Jamie Lee Curtis was making her big return to the series. Halloween was going to celebrate its twentieth anniversary by staging a major comeback. Or at least that's how it looked on paper. 

In reality, when H20 was released in August of '98, it was something of a dud. Yes, it did great business but the movie itself was a pretty limp affair. 

But to look at the trailer, you would have never believed that:

  

The classic Halloween vibes are strong here! Despite the fact that within the course of this trailer, Michael wears about three different masks and the design on all of them raises a concerned eyebrow, this just looks like a Halloween movie that's going to fire on all cylinders. 

It looks fun, right down to the cameo from Janet Leigh. Whenever I watch this trailer, it makes me want to watch H20 again and give it another chance. But I've done that enough times to know that I always just end up remembering what a letdown this movie is. 

I wouldn't say that H20 is the bottom of the barrel but it isn't good, either. If anything, I prefer some of the crummier Halloween's to this just because they have a little more energy and quirkiness to them. They're legit junk, occasionally interesting for their flaws, rather than just being a dull, straight down the middle entry like H20. 

The most notable aspect of H20 is not just that Jamie Lee Curtis is back but that her return triggered the first of the franchise's do overs. While H20 was conceived with the initial idea of keeping the previous films in continuity, in the end it was meant to be regarded as a direct sequel to Halloween II, with the events of 4, 5, and 6 having never happened. After H20, whenever the series reached a dead end, rather than course correct within continuity, the storylines of the previous films would be scrapped in favor of a fresh start. 

4 had been a back to basics movie but it had continued with the established continuity. Here, seven movies in - or technically six Myers-themed movies in - it was deemed easier, and just plain wiser, to abandon the convoluted mythology that the Thorn Trilogy had created and get back to a streamlined Halloween experience. 

You had Michael, you had Laurie, you had a group of teens to be terrorized. Done. Cue the Halloween theme. Somehow, though, freeing the franchise of its accumulated baggage didn't make H20 a better film. 

H20's big moment, of course, is the shocking finality of Laurie and Michael's climatic confrontation. Boogeyman or no, it's hard to come back after a decapitation. Any genre fan, though, could have told you as soon as the credits rolled on H20 that there was no way they were going to just leave it at that. More resilient than the boogeyman is the golden goose. Many may roll their eyes at the cynicism of filming such a definitive end while having zero intention of letting it stand but I'm fine with it. I mean, come on. These things never just end. 

Had H20 been better, I might have been more irate at undoing its most memorable moment but as it stands I would not have wanted this to be the end of Michael. He deserved a better final bow than to limp his way through a banal, late '90s teen slasher. A banal, late '80s teen slasher, on the other hand? Well, speaking for myself, that might have been more acceptable. Either way, I think we all know that the best way to avoid a disappointing end for Michael is if he never dies. 

Trick or Trailers: Halloween II (1981)

At one time, when a horror movie was successful it didn't automatically mean that a franchise was born. For decades, Norman Bates remained incarcerated. After Leatherface danced by daybreak in the wake of Sally Hardesty's escape, his chainsaw stayed silent for years. 

So even though Michael Myers disappeared from the lawn of the Doyle house after taking six bullets in the chest at the end of Halloween, it didn't necessarily mean that audiences would ever see him again.

Halloween's open ending may look like an obvious, even cynical, sequel set up from today's standpoint but it was simply ambiguous. The only curtain call Michael needed to make was the sound of his breathing playing over the film's final shot of his childhood home.  

That said, in 1981 it was hard not to be excited by the prospect of More of the Night He Came Home. The trailer promised to give us more of Dr. Loomis' dogged pursuit of Michael and more of Laurie Strode in peril. Slasher movies were booming and surely this sequel would show the makers of all the Halloween knock-offs how it's really supposed to be done. As it turned out, though, not so much.

Halloween II began the long tradition - celebrating 40 years now! - of fans finding themselves largely disappointed in Halloween sequels. 

It also began the cherished tradition of fans continuing to hope, against all logic, that the magic of that first film might one day be recaptured. 

The fact that II, even in the hands of Carpenter and Debra Hill, entirely missed the point of Halloween, though, should have been a strong indicator that this ship would never quite be righted. I don't think there's a single franchise that so immediately got off on the wrong foot with its first sequel as Halloween did. All the subsequent mistakes that other Halloween films have made were born from the mistakes of this one. They stumbled on the first try and they've been falling forward ever since. 

Some of the Halloween sequels and reboots have been better than others. Some have been pretty nifty in their own right. But none of them have really, truly made a convincing case that Halloween should have ever gone past the first movie. 

What Halloween II had that none of the other entries would (because of Halloween II!) is the benefit of the doubt. Once II was released, every future Halloween was forced to live in the shadow of that first disappointment. It will forever be the only sequel where the trailer had fans mostly expecting a treat rather than being wary of a trick.   

 

More Of The Night HE Came Home

With the release of Halloween (2018), the various makers of the many assorted sequels and reboots to John Carpenter's 1978 Halloween are now officially 9 and 0 when it comes to successfully matching the singular, elusive magic of the original (for the purposes of keeping this Myers-centric, we're leaving Halloween III: Season of the Witch out of the discussion). That is not to say the new movie isn't good or that none of the other films in the franchise have been devoid of merit either, only that all of them have tried, in their own ways, to do what Carpenter did and yet all of them have fallen short of achieving that specific goal. That doesn't mean it hasn't frequently been fun and intriguing (if sometimes frustrating) to watch them try.

If anything, seeing how so many filmmakers have struggled to replicate what seems like such a basic model is what makes these films fascinating and it only increases the impenetrable mystique of the original. The whole reason that Carpenter's Halloween spawned a whole sub-genre was, besides the enormous amount of money that it made, was that it seemed so damned easy to copy.

Hellraiser (1987), for example, was a hit but yet you never saw a wave of Hellraiser clones afterwards because who the hell knows how to make more of those? Even making actual sequels to Hellraiser was a difficult task, never mind unrelated copycats. But with Halloween, everybody looks at it and says "Oh, I can do that!" only to find out that they really can't. Halloween seems like the simplest of movies to make endless copies of as Carpenter put the perfect blueprint for the slasher film right there for all to see. And yet it's proved impossible.

It's like a chef who walks you slowly through their recipe, step by step, listing every ingredient and showing you exactly how they created their dish, down to the last pinch of salt, and yet whenever someone else tries to recreate it for themselves, the taste is always noticeably off. Why is that?

Well, I think one big issue is that when people make a Halloween movie, what they're really doing is making a Friday the 13th movie - or at least a movie that attempts to split the difference between the two franchises.

Beginning with Halloween II, the thinking became that Halloween would have to get with the times. What worked in 1978 was already considered passé and Halloween had to play catch up with the slasher competition in order to remain relevant.

To put it simply, Halloween was a movie that said less was more. Friday the 13th said nah, More is more and that's what's become the accepted wisdom. The outrageous sleeping bag kill from Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood (1987), for example, would not be out of place in the new Halloween (or in any other Halloween besides the original, for that matter) whereas any of the original Halloween's kills would be very out of place in any Friday film.

Another aspect of the original Halloween that separated it, and the character of Michael Myers, from all the imitators to come but was lost in the other Halloween's was the fact that Michael is playing a game in the first film. He may be evil and he may have the devil's eyes but yet there is a child-like element to him and to his pursuit of his victims in the first film.

The way that he follows people, stalking his victims, always risking being seen (like when he accidentally knocks over the flower pot and quickly moves away before Annie spots him) and sometimes allowing himself to be seen, as part of the game (like when Michael stands in plain view by the hedges when Laurie is walking towards him). As the night goes on, he could kill Annie and Lynda and Bob - and even Laurie - at any time but he chooses to prolong the game he's playing.

He waits, he watches, he chooses just the right time to surprise his victims. Like a child, he hides and then pops out. He hides in the back seat of Annie's car. He waits for Bob to open a closet door so he can spring out like a jack in the box. He puts a sheet over himself to disguise himself when he enters the bedroom to kill Lynda (the fact that Michael doesn't just put a sheet over himself but also takes the goofy step of putting Bob's glasses on in order to "complete" his disguise is a clear sign that this is something that is playful to him).

In line with that, Michael's indestructible nature is also portrayed differently in the original. In Halloween, it's akin to when kids play cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers and one kid will pretend to shoot another and the other kid will fall down and "play dead."

In the first film, Michael can't really be hurt but he pretends to be. Whether he's jabbed in the neck with a knitting needle or stabbed or shot point blank, he goes down the same way every time - flat on his back, unmoving.

In none of those cases is he the least bit injured. He's just trying to fool Laurie, and then Loomis, into momentarily thinking that they "got him" only so he can surprise them by getting up again. In all the films that followed, his unkillable nature becomes more of a robotic thing. When he gets put down, he's really down, no "fooling" about it. The underlying sense of mischief is gone.

But having talked about how the other Halloweens have strayed from the spirit of the original, how is the new film on its own terms? Well, it's a mixed bag but I give it favorable marks. It's just a solid slasher film. There's no back story, no mythology for Michael, no Druid cults, no celestial constellations to guide Michael, and no Busta Rhymes.

I'd say it sits well along side the other anniversary entries - 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and 1998's Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later - as being a well-meant, game attempt at getting the franchise back on track.

Of those three, 4 is still my favorite. Aside from the fact they had to work with the unfortunate familial element from II, director Dwight H. Little and scripter Alan B. McElroy simply got Michael and got the Halloween vibe just a bit better than anyone else has. That film wasn't perfect, but it was the closest I think I'll ever get to what I really want out of a Halloween sequel. And it had Loomis, an aspect of the series that was so essential to Halloween that any Halloween without it is playing at an automatic disadvantage. No disrespect to Jamie Lee Curtis but Donald Pleasence was, to me, the real glue that held Halloween together. When he passed, he left a void in the series that has yet to be filled. And, well...that's that.

With this latest film, though, you've got an absolutely fantastic soundtrack, courtesy of Carpenter, his son Cody and godson Daniel Davies, that expertly, effortlessly resurrects the classic Halloween sound while also bringing in surprising new layers. You've got Jamie Lee Curtis, giving it her all forty years after the original, and you've got Michael Myers stripped of the barnacles that have clustered onto the character over the years. To my mind, just with all that you've already got yourself a worthwhile entry in the series. And that's what Halloween (2018) is.

So what's not so good about it? What keeps it from being a real gem rather than just a fun slasher pic? Well, first of all let me say that while I applaud the idea of finally freeing the franchise from Michael and Laurie's sibling attachment, I also feel that this movie's Laurie Strode desperately needs II as part of her history to make her story here work. In a weird way, the Laurie of H20 (all references to Michael as her brother aside) is the one that could have believably only endured the events of the original and be living the life she was.

She was a woman still haunted by her experience but yet had compartmentalized it enough where she could function and be a successful adult. The Laurie of 2018's Halloween, however, seems like far too much of a mess to have only lived through what she did in the first one. Not to diminish her trauma but, come on. A very scary thing happened to her but I don't think it's anything that someone couldn't - if not "get over" - then just deal with in a normal fashion.

But if you say the events of II happened to this Laurie, well then - now you're talking! You don't build a isolated compound fortress for the sake of some random psycho who once killed a couple of your friends and tried to put you down too, even as traumatic as that is.

But if you're talking about your psycho brother who wanted you dead so bad that he killed your friends, then slaughtered his way through a hospital staff and then, even after being blown up and engulfed in flames from head to toe, was STILL COMING AT YOU - yeah, that's a guy you're going to spend the rest of your life believing that as long as he's breathing you're not safe. You'd be right to think "I'm probably not done with this guy. Dude's determined. Better be ready for Round Two."

So, as much as II had some unwanted baggage attached to it, for the Laurie of this movie to be what director David Gordon Green and his co-scripters Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley wanted her to be, she really needed to have the events of that movie as part of her story.

But, they aren't and she doesn't and so you just have to go with it. But yet it does create a plausibility problem (outside of wondering how the hell Laurie could have realistically afforded to build her tricked-out fortress and her stockpile of weapons - but on that count, whatever. I don't even know how most TV characters can possibly afford to live in the kinds of houses and apartments they do so I can let Laurie's situation slide). I feel like everyone involved in this movie had a last act in place they knew was killer and just wanted to do whatever it took to get that last twenty minutes or so on screen but unfortunately everything leading up to it is just a little undercooked.

Chief among those undercooked elements is the left-field plot mechanism, involving Michael's psychiatrist Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), that gets Michael from the streets of Haddonfield to Laurie's compound. If you've seen the movie, you already know how ridiculous this is. I honestly don't know what to say about it except to say that it needed a lot more work. As is, it brings the movie to a screeching halt just when you want it to be hitting the gas. Once everything is in place for the big final showdown, you can kind of say "Fine, whatever it took to get us here!" but it's just a clumsy turn of events that I don't think subsequent viewings will smooth over.

Speaking of events that subsequent viewings won't smooth over, I don't think I'll ever think it was ok for Will Patton's deputy sheriff to drive his police vehicle head on, with killing force, into someone who he suspects is Michael.

Yes, it actually is Michael but at the time, Patton's character is simply taking the word of a traumatized teenager that this masked figure that she's pointing out on a dark street, from the vantage point of a moving vehicle, is 100% the guy they're looking for. I feel like Patton's character really needed to seek out that extra level of identification before gunning his vehicle straight into someone who literally could be anyone. You can't have someone just say "that's him!" and immediately plow your fucking car into someone. Seriously, what the hell is up with the law enforcement in Haddonfield?

Another issue with the new Halloween would be that it has far too many characters that it doesn't know what to do with. Interesting characters will appear and then mysteriously vanish (like Omar Dorsey's Sheriff Barker). The podcasters, for instance, who get the movie's story rolling, really could have been used more. I feel like one of them should have made it to the end somehow (the guy, at least, looks like he could have believably survived Michael's assault in the gas station bathroom) to bookend the movie. Whichever one lived could have echoed Laurie's line of "It was the boogeyman" with Laurie giving the Loomis reply of "As a matter of fact, it was."

Too many characters feel like they're there for no purpose than to facilitate a plot point or to add to the body count (or both). Again, a very Friday-style slasher movie move rather than a Halloween one.

But while all these issues might hold Halloween (2018) back from greatness, it doesn't mean that it isn't fun. For anyone to be a slasher aficionado or a fan of the Halloween franchise - or both, as most fans checking out this movie would be - you have to be someone who has learned over time how to go into a movie with a set of realistic expectations. You're someone who already knows all too well what it's like to be sorely disappointed by a movie and by any measure, this is way better than what usually arrives under the Halloween banner.

Walking out of the new Halloween, all gripes aside, I was still able to say I can't wait for the next one and that hasn't been the case for me for thirty years. Everything after 4 has been a case of either "I hope they get the next one right" or "Best to let it die now" but never "I can't wait to see what they do next!" Speaking of what's next, if nothing else this movie gave Curtis a far better exit - if she wants this to be her finale - than the limp goodbye that Resurrection provided.

Whether or not Curtis returns, it's a given that this movie won't be the last Halloween and that Michael will be back. One thing I will say about further sequels is that they have to re-establish a new Loomis-type character. The suggestion that I'll put out there and hope the universe will hear is that I'd love to see Robert Englund as Michael's new psychiatrist. He's the perfect age now, he's got the perfect look with the white hair and beard. And you need someone in that kind of role that's going to have the charisma and the character actor clout of Pleasence. Even if the new role isn't Loomis per say, it has to carry that same weight. You don't necessarily want Michael to keep going after the same victim movie after movie, but you want the same guy doggedly chasing him and telling anyone who will listen that the Evil has escaped. I'm telling you, Englund should be that guy. Maybe it's just the fanboy in me that wants to see Freddy being Michael Myers' psychiatrist but can you honestly tell me that wouldn't be awesome?

Answer: No, you can't! Don't even try!

Whatever comes next for Halloween, here's hoping it'll break the trend of only the anniversary installments being the decent ones (and before anyone says "But II was good!" - no, it really wasn't). It'd sure suck to have to wait until 2028 for the next good one to come along.

For now, though, The Shape is back in fighting shape.

Trick or Trailers: Halloween H20 (1998)

Oh my god, this is really happening!! I've got my tickets ready for a new Halloween movie tonight! And even better, I've got every reason to believe it's actually gonna be good. Woooo!! As any follower of the franchise knows, that has not always been the case. In fact, it's rarely been the case.

But anniversaries have been good to Halloween. 1988's Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers brought the boogeyman back with style and reestablished the Halloween brand. Then in 1998, after that brand had fallen on hard times again, it was time for Jamie Lee Curtis to reclaim her Scream Queen crown in Halloween H20.

Coming twenty years after the first Halloween, but two years after Scream (1996) had revived the slasher genre, one has to wonder what a seventh Halloween would have looked like without Scream making slashers - and horror itself - hot again. Rather than reboot the series to accommodate Curtis' return, would they have just soldiered on from the convoluted continuity of 4, 5, and 6 and brought back Paul Rudd as Tommy Doyle to have him carry on as the new Loomis? Who knows? I definitely don't think that Curtis would have been attracted to the idea of coming back to Halloween had Scream's success made that prospect suddenly not seem like an embarrassing back step.

When the trailer for H20 was released, it definitely made a new Halloween movie seem like an event again, even though I will never get how anybody ever thought it was a good idea to start putting Halloween movies out in the summer. I mean, come on. When your movie is called Halloween and your tagline is "This summer, terror won't be taking a vacation" how does that not immediately strike you as being wrong?

But anyhow, the trailer:



That trailer is so late '90s it hurts. Everyone looks so young, even Curtis - even though at the time it seemed like so much time had passed where we were now seeing Laurie as a middle aged woman and a mom to a teenage son.

Back then, it seemed that H20 underlined so dramatically how many years had passed since the original (I mean, it was part of the title!) but looking at that trailer now is to really feel the passage of time.

It definitely brings back memories of horror in the late '90s. H20 may be a Halloween movie but it's wholly of the Scream era. That may be why I've never totally warmed up to H20. Even with the presence of Curtis, it felt less like a true Halloween film to me than just another generic late '90s slasher chasing the success of Scream. That feeling was not helped by the fact that H20 was also a Dimension Films production and that its poster was in the same Scream mold of "floating heads" that was the go-to style for horror one sheets then.

And I've gotta say, the big thing that takes me aback watching this trailer is to realize just how freaking white the Halloween movies were. We think back on the '90s as being such a progressive, PC decade but jeez, you'd be hard put to see a movie today with such a lack of diverse faces.

You've got LL Cool J in a supporting role, sure, but yet the main group of teens and the rest of the adult cast are white across the board. Today I think that'd be an instant eye-brow raiser. Times were different then, though - from seeing this trailer, more different than I remembered!

Even though having an experienced horror director like Steve Miner (Friday the 13th 2 and 3, House) at the helm gave hope that H20 would be a better sequel, it hit a competent note rather than an actual strong one. But competent sure beats atrocious, am I right?

It's just a shame that the best part of H20, Laurie's abrupt beheading of Michael, was immediately undone in Resurrection. That last scene in H20 was a legitimate gasp getter, even if the most naive horror fan already knew that it wouldn't stick. I expect the makers of Halloween (2018) are canny enough about the genre to not even pretend that this movie will be the end for Michael Myers. The only thing more undying than evil are horror franchises that keep bringing in the cash.

Trick or Trailers: Prom Night (1980)

With Halloween inching ever closer, we're sticking with the Jamie Lee Curtis slasher theme here. Next up is 1980's Prom Night. The trailer for this is so great, let's not waste any time and just get to it:



If I could pick one early '80s slasher trailer as being the most emblematic of the sub-genre, it'd have to be Prom Night. That is the slasher genre's golden age, right there, encapsulated in all its cheesy glory. No kid who saw this trailer back in the day wasn't 100% sold.

Thanks to a speedy turnaround that gave Prom Night its TV premiere a scant seven months after playing theaters, when excitement for the movie was still fresh, underage kids like me who missed out on Prom Night on the big screen got to watch it in the comfort of home!

For anyone who wasn't there, let me tell you - it was a big deal!

I believe it's the fact that its network TV airing put it in front of so many impressionable eyes, many of them in pre-cable, pre-VCR households at the time, that gave Prom Night such a foothold in the consciousness of Gen-X horror fans. Fans of a certain age will swear to you that it's a good movie, maybe even a horror classic, but in fact it's pretty lousy.

I've got all kinds of affection for it, sure, but it's bad. And it's such a weird Jamie Lee Curtis horror film in that her character, being the beloved sister of the killer, is never actually in any jeopardy. You'd think that Curtis should have been one of the kids whose thoughtless behavior leads to Robin Hammond's death. Ideally, she should have been the "good girl" of the group who carried remorse for her actions.

She should have been the character of Kelly that Mary Beth Rubens plays but, obviously, have her not die early on but instead survive to be the Final Girl and confront the killer in the climax. But they didn't do that so Prom Night stands as the one Jamie Lee slasher film in which she's never in any real peril, making it low on actual suspense.

Then again, I kind of think Prom Night's tepidness played in its favor to a younger audience. It was just scary enough for kids to feel like they were watching a "real" contemporary horror movie like Friday the 13th but it wasn't hardcore enough to actually traumatize them.

It was like a slasher movie version of an underhand pitch. It's a softball movie that gave a lot of young kids their earliest taste of a grittier type of horror before they were ready to graduate to the next level. Although its protagonists were high schoolers, I believe that Prom Night's greatest admirers were strictly of the less jaded junior high set.

Trick or Trailers: Terror Train (1980)

It's kind of crazy to think that in just a week, the new Halloween will hit theaters and we'll get to see Jamie Lee Curtis facing off with a masked maniac again. But as nostalgic as it is to think of Jamie Lee returning to the Halloween franchise in particular, just seeing her return to horror period conjures fond memories of her early '80s Scream Queen heyday. Laurie Strode may be her most iconic horror character but the rest of Curtis' genre legacy is also worthy of note.

My favorite JLC slasher, outside of the original Halloween, is definitely 1980's Terror Train. The most curious thing about its trailer, though, is how little it hypes the presence of Curtis herself.

You'd think that any slasher movie that had the star of Halloween would go out of its way to advertise that point but, no, based on the trailer you get the feeling that the studio thought audiences would be showing up to see the train. Weird, right? But check it out:



Maybe it was just inconceivable to studio marketing types that a horror actress would have an actual fanbase. Or maybe the thinking was that the slasher audience only cared about the body count. Whatever the case, the trailer for Terror Train doesn't even bother to play up the movie's biggest selling point, treating the movie like any generic slasher - indistinguishable from any of its many competitors.

Speaking of which, watching this trailer fills me with memories of the days when it seemed like a new slasher, that would always look like a carbon copy of the previous slasher, would open every weekend. I was too young to see R-rated movies in the theater then so I never got to see these trailers on the big screen but every time I would put on the TV between the years of around 1980 to '83, there'd be a new TV spot in heavy rotation promoting the latest slasher pic and for the longest time it seemed like it was a deluge that would never end.

Of course the slasher trend did eventually dry up - almost perfectly timed for when I was finally old enough to see slashers in the theater on my own. But it's ok, I'm not bitter!

If anything, I attribute my fondness for the slasher genre to the fact that, when it was at its peak, it was always just a little out of reach - like a train I was forever running after, desperate to hop on, but just too fast to catch.

Trick or Trailers: Halloween II (1981)

It's funny to look at this trailer and remember a time when sequels were still a novelty. Now they're so common but in the early '80s, it was actually something of a surprise when slasher sequels started to arrive because as far as horror goes, sequels were usually reserved for the likes of blockbusters like Jaws, The Omen or The Exorcist.

I hadn't seen the original Halloween by the time II came out but I remember being excited that they made another one as it just seemed like a big deal - and the trailers and TV spots successfully terrified me.

Somehow I had missed seeing much in the way of promotion for Halloween when it was first released. My only exposure to the marketing to that film was through posters and newspaper ads. Really, what creeped me out the most to do with Halloween was the cover of the novelization.



But when Halloween II came out, maybe because it was a heavily hyped major studio release, it was impossible to avoid previews. As a kid, it was the shot of Michael Myers walking down the stairs that really stuck with me for some reason.



The low angle, the way the mask looked, it all just freaked me out.

In some ways, they screwed up Michael's mask in this movie; they just weren't able to recreate the original look but I still like what they came up with. Michael's mask has changed much throughout the course of the Halloween films but I'd rank this look just behind the original's.

Most would say the same about the movie itself but personally I don't think it's the next best Halloween. If anything, I hold something of a grudge against it as I feel like it started the franchise on the road to ruin by making Michael into Laurie's brother and then introducing all the Samhain nonsense. Those developments opened the door to all the ways the series would continue to go wrong.

The ads for Halloween II promised "More Of The Night He Came Home" but as much as I've enjoyed many of the Halloween entries, I think this movie proved that, in the end, sometimes less is more.

More Of The Night HE Came Home

With the original Halloween (1978) now over thirty years old and with seven sequels, a remake and a sequel to that remake in its wake, it's hard to remember a time when Halloween was just a film and not a franchise. It's also hard to remember a time when a Halloween sequel was the cause of real anticipation, rather than skepticism, among fans. But in 1981, there was plenty of excitement to go around over the idea that the story of Halloween would continue. At least I know that excitement was the mood among the kids in my neighborhood (most of whom, like myself, hadn't yet seen the original) - I can't speak for the adult world of 1981. The tagline for Halloween II was perfect, promising fans "More of the night HE came home." Even though three years had passed in the real world since John Carpenter's film had altered the course of modern horror, Halloween II was going to pick up the story just after the Shape's body vanished at the conclusion of Halloween. Now that sounded like a hot plan.

Initial story concepts for Halloween II had involved Final Girl Laurie Strode fending off a new attack by Michael Myers in a high rise apartment years after the events of Halloween but the choice to make Halloween II a seamless continuation of the events of Halloween proved to be a wise decision. First time feature director Rick Rosenthal was assigned the thankless task of following in Carpenter's footsteps (Rosenthal was hand-picked for the job by Carpenter based on the strength of a short Rosenthal had directed called Toyer) while Carpenter and Halloween producer Debra Hill co-wrote Halloween II's screenplay, with a story that featuring heroine Laurie Strode doped-up on meds and going into a second round with Michael Myers (now played by veteran stuntman Dick Warlock rather than Nick Castle) in the largely empty halls of Haddonfield Memorial Hospital.

The members of the original cast who's characters had survived the first film loyally returned to their roles with Jamie Lee Curtis now a full-fledged Scream Queen sharing top billing with Donald Pleasence and Charles Cyphers and Nancy Stephens returning in smaller appearances as Sheriff Brackett and Nurse Marion Chambers respectively (Stephens would go on to marry director Rosenthal) - and even Nancy Loomis (today known as Nancy Kyes) came back to appear in one shot of the late Annie Brackett lying on a gurney. But even with so much returning talent in front of and behind the camera (the indispensible Dean Cundey encored as cinematographer), Halloween II was mostly greeted as a letdown from the original. Because, well, it was. Carpenter famously - or infamously - stepped in after Rosenthal handed in his director's cut and filmed some graphic new footage meant to help the film compete with the kind of explicit horror films that had come into vogue since the release of Friday the 13th (1980). Rosenthal denounced these changes as tampering with his vision but without the kind of virtuoso suspense of the original, Halloween II clearly needed something to boost its chances with increasingly jaded audiences. The result was that Halloween II became something that Halloween hadn't been - a splatter movie. Today that doesn't seem like such a big deal but at the time, it was taken by some as a betrayal of Halloween's much-admired aesthetics.

More controversial than the added gore - and arguably more damaging in the long run for the series - was the unexpected plot development that Laurie and Michael were actually siblings. Even though this has been a part of the Halloween mythology for so long that most fans don't think twice about it, for those old enough to remember when the only Halloween movie in town was Halloween, I think there's almost universal agreement that having Michael and Laurie turn out to be brother and sister was a creative fuck-up on Carpenter and Hill's part. It was a lazy move, cribbed from the playbook of a soap opera, and it immediately took away a good deal of the original's mystique.

A large part of what was scary about Halloween was that Michael was an implacable boogeyman, stalking and slaughtering girls who had done nothing to invite his wrath. To find out that Laurie was really his sister was just lame - lame, I tell you! - and the series has had to deal with that misstep ever since. If Rob Zombie could've accomplished one great thing with his 2007 reboot, it would've been to finally free the series of that baggage. Of course, it reappeared right there in the first film - Zombie couldn't even put that shit off until the sequel! Now here we are with the new Halloween II bearing the tagline "Family Is Forever."

But it all started back in 1981. In a Halloween II flashback Laurie visits Michael in Smith's Grove Sanitarium when they were kids and in one of the new scenes cut into the TV airing of the original Halloween prior to Halloween II's theatrical release, Loomis finds the word 'Sister' scrawled on the door in Michael's abandoned cell. Despite delivering a crippling kidney punch to the series, however, there's still plenty to enjoy in OSHII (old-school Halloween II, natch!).

The film's single best asset, of course, is the returning Donald Pleasence as Michael's ever-batty nemesis. In fact, Pleasence remained the best thing about all the Michael-themed sequels until his death in 1995. In Halloween II, Pleasence puts the Loomis persona back on like a glove and his portrayal of Loomis as a twitchy, belligerent nut is endless fun. Loomis is the indefatigable Van Helsing of slasher cinema and it's the ongoing duel between him and Michael (with all his shouting about the inhuman, evil nature of Michael, Loomis is ironically the best press agent a boogeyman ever had!) that made the Halloween series distinct from its competition.

Sadly, Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't fare so well in her return performance as Laurie Strode. Whether Curtis didn't feel the same enthusiasm for the part as she did in the first film or the fact that Laurie had little else to do in this film other than lie in a hospital bed, Curtis' performance isn't nearly as strong this time around. What's worse is that what we do see of Laurie seems contradictory to - or at least inconsistent with - the character as established in the first film. When Laurie reacts to the attention of Lance Guest as Jimmy, the smitten EMS, it's with a visible confidence that doesn't seem at all like the same painfully shy wallflower we knew Laurie to be in Halloween where she was beside herself at the idea that dreamy Ben Tramer might know she liked him (in a nice touch, Carpenter and Hill have the Tramer character killed off in a traffic accident, briefly mistaken for Michael). The Laurie in Halloween II seems too much like a Laurie who's gotten three years older between films, not the mere three hours older that's she meant to be (on a side note, the real life time gap makes for an amusing moment as Loomis is reacquainted with Nurse Chambers - even though in terms of the story he was just with her hours ago, he has to take a moment to 'recognize' who she is for the benefit of those viewers who might not remember such a minor character from the original).

Whatever faults Halloween II may have, though, they're all but forgiven with the film's fiery finale. Carpenter and Hill meant to end the story here and it shows. The conclusion of this movie - where Loomis and Michael suffer a mutual immolation - remains an awesome sight. There's been plenty of scenes in movies over the years where stuntmen are burning from head to toe but this is the best of the bunch to my eyes. Maybe because usually when you see these kind of fire gags, the stuntman is always - understandably - flailing around. Whether it be the Thing in both the original and the remake, or Freddy Krueger in the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, you always see characters on fire acting like people are supposed to act when they're on fire. They're panicking, running - doing everything they can to stop the fucking flames. But in Halloween II, to see Michael still doing the classic Michael Myers walk while enveloped in a full body burn - and having strolled out of a raging inferno in the first place - well, it's a sight that continues to impress. I don't know if Dick Warlock did that specific stunt himself but whoever did it really earned their paycheck that day. I've got to hand it to anyone who can stand there lit up like a roman candle.

While Rosenthal returned to the series to zero acclaim with the maligned Halloween: Resurrection (2002), Halloween II remains one of the most popular of the sequels. It may be a flawed film but in that its story is so linked to the original, it's hard to disregard it - and unlike any of the series' entries that followed, Carpenter and Hill's participation lends it the stamp of the genuine article. Had they known where their boogeyman would go, though, perhaps they would've concluded Halloween II with Loomis riding on a nuke a la Slim Pickens on his way to obliterate Michael along with the rest of Haddonfield.

Jeopardy Free Jamie Lee

Towards the end of the new Prom Night (yes, it was lousy, by the way), lead actress Brittany Snow evades her psycho-stalker in the manner that made original Prom Night star Jamie Lee Curtis a Scream Queen during her horror heyday. But while watching the new film's endgame play out, something that I never consciously noticed about the original Prom Night finally came to my attention.

And I’m probably the last person in the world to pick up on this so forgive me if this is nothing but a “duh” moment for everyone else but as I watched Snow’s character going through the familiar motions of the Final Girl, alternately eluding and striking back at her pursuer in the kind of tense climatic face off that Jamie Lee earned her place in horror history with, I realized that Jamie Lee’s Prom Night character was never in any jeopardy in that film.

As Kim Hammond, Jamie Lee has nothing to do for the duration of Prom Night but be the best disco queen that Hamilton High has ever seen. While her classmates are being taunted, harassed, stalked, and slaughtered, Kim herself is never a potential victim (actress Anne-Marie Martin as Wendy earns the longest chase scene between herself and the killer and even though Wendy fails to survive, this sequence is the kind of lengthy pursuit that in most slasher films would've been earmarked as the heroine’s Big Moment).

It isn’t until Kim’s ax-wielding brother Alex brings his slaughtering ways onto the flashing lights of the dance floor in the last ten minutes or so of Prom Night that she’s even aware that there’s a killer on the loose. And even then, it’s her date Nick who’s in direct danger, not her.

This made me wonder for a moment why Prom Night's producers even bothered to cast Jamie Lee in the first place but I believe that with any other actress it would’ve been too apparent just how little this character had to do with the events of the film for an audience to perceive them as being the lead.

In 1980, though, Jamie Lee had the horror movie crown long before she got to the Prom. It only makes sense that after Halloween that she could literally dance her way through the role of a horror heroine.