I appreciated the simplicity of David Gordon Green’s Halloween sequel, which uses a reboot title of plain old Halloween. Green is an above-average director, whose best work is found on the HBO television series East Bound and Down, and he’s not bad at striking an interesting tone, making so-so material watchable. (E.g., his film Joe starring Nicolas Cage.) With Halloween, Green brings back Jaime Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, now a paranoid prepper of a grandmother, and enlists none other than John Carpenter himself to reimagine the iconic theme music, which ends up being the film’s best attribute.
Strode, unsurprisingly, is traumatized by her experiences with the criminally insane serial killer Michael Myers, living as a J.D. Salinger-type hermit inside a fortress. Her daughter (Judy Greer) thinks Grandma Laurie is crazy and resents her PTSD-fueled emotional distance. Laurie’s granddaughter (Andi Matichak) longs for a closer relationship with Grandma while still resenting what seems to be an overabundance of caution. (Laurie lives alone, armed to the teeth.) Laurie’s paranoia has hardened her into what we take to be a not-so-great nanna.
Meanwhile Michael Myers, now as aged as Laurie, is locked up in the institution. Laurie’s relationships are frayed in ways that are established but not examined — would not Laurie’s family be more understanding, just a little? Having a serial killer stalk you is no joke. At one point Greer’s character insists that the world is a good place with good people in it. Usually characters that stupid die first.
It’s interesting how the culture of reboots and the nostalgia-drunk mentality that drives it has become as much of a commentary on itself as cash grab. Note how the movie begins on two obnoxiously bland characters who are summarily Janet Leigh-ed. They are documentarians who are “doing a podcast” about the Michael Myers killings of forty years ago. They visit Michael in the institution, shooting questions at him he doesn’t answer. They bribe their way into Laurie’s fortress to interview her. Laurie bursts their hipster bubble — there’s nothing to “understand” about Myers. Some people, as Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis told us in 1978, are just bad. The brief interview scene is inert and pointless, with Curtis barely showing a pulse, but serves as a more or less well played commentary on the sort of movie the original Halloween was not. Evil killer, with a knife, loose in the neighborhood. That’s all there is to understand.
Even the competent Green, who co-wrote the screenplay with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, knows that whatever innovations he can muster must eventually give way to the obligatory series of Of Courses. Of course Michael escapes. Of course this is what Laurie had been preparing for. Of course he kills some innocent people in gruesome ways. Of course he seems almost supernatural in his abilities. Of course Myers’ new rampage brings Laurie’s frayed family closer together. Of course this culminates in a final showdown. Of course this all happens on Halloween night.
The twists and surprises Green serves up have the effect of jump scares, just cheap little moves that ultimately don’t add anything to the central story. Curtis, whose engine has always run cool as an actor, makes Laurie seem more disinterested than traumatized. Green has attempted to make a classic slasher film that doubles as a meditation on trauma and family and catharsis. It does neither impressively. I’m all for using genre films for such explorations, but in this instance it feels more like finding a fly in your soup. Carpenter’s original was great because such things were deeply encoded in subtext, not stuff about which characters openly argued. Halloween (2018) tells more than it shows, and what it does show we’ve seen too many times before.
Halloween (2018) — TWO STARS
Directed by David Gordon Green
Rated R
Miramax
Blumhouse
Universal Pictures
105 min.
Lewis On Film 