Okay, so I watched David Gordon Green and Danny McBride's "Halloween", the first time since the second weekend of its release in October of 2018. I felt the same as when I saw it in the theater...it was merely okay. Some younger audience and critics liked it a lot. I know many old school fans of Carpenter's masterpiece from 1978 weren't all that crazy for it. Some who loved Carpenter's film actually did like it. And some like me were sort of in the middle. I don't hate it. Curtis and Will Patton were both quite fine, while the male high school characters, the boyfriend (Dylan Arnold) of Laurie Strode's granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), stupidly kissing another girl at a Halloween school party, and the goofball pal (Drew Scheid), who goes to kiss Allyson and is scolded by her for it, are written to be seemingly fun, likeable teens only later proven as pathetic and immature. And fucking Dr Sartain--pupil of Dr. Loomis--enraged me the first go-around, while this second viewing, when I knew what was coming, just left me rolling my eyes in absolute apathy. What a bad miscalculation in terms of not only how Patton's Officer Hawkins is dispatched but that he's discarded through the "heel turn" of "mad scientist" Sartain. And this took me right out of the movie. Sartain wants to see how it feels to be in Michael's position as a killer, hoping to understand him, always curious about what is going on behind those dark eyes. That he scoops Michael in Hawkins' cop car, with Allyson in the back seat, and she gets out alive, with this all resulting in what you expect--Michael breaks through the protective shield, attacks Sartain, Allyson escaping and fleeing home, as Michael kills his doctor (smashing his face underfoot)--I couldn't help but throw my hands up figuratively, mentally checking out. Removing the familial link between Michael and Laurie didn't necessarily irk me as much as seem unneeded, more or less perhaps appeasing Carpenter, on record as always regretting the screenplay decision to include that in "Halloween II" (1981). I think they could have kept that in and the film doesn't even suffer from that, because Michael pursuing Laurie and her family remains very much on the agenda...in fact, the familial tie could have even added extra gravitas to the forward drive of Michael, given him extra motivation. Since I will be revisiting this in two months, I wanted to cover the elephants in the room here so I could get to the good stuff when I'm hopefully in a spirited mood come October.
If I'm honest, this Laurie feels very much similar to Laurie in "Halloween H20" (1998). I'm glad I decided to watch H20 just recently so it was fresh on the mind. The 2018 film has a much better gas station scene. A mom and daughter get out really easy in H20 while the podcasters hoping for a big story aren't so fortunate. But Laurie, traumatized by her experience with Michael, is really only slightly different in the two alternate timelines. To me, the separation of twenty years and difference in the 90s and 2010s--and that one is at a California private school while the second is Haddonfield--give us variations of Laurie, both still very much anticipating another confrontation with the Boogeyman. Both are paranoid, very protective of their children, haunted by memories that left them scarred and overtly on edge and constantly awaiting the big confrontation that eventually arrives, and despite seemingly impossible odds get the better of him.
I'm actually hoping to see a Blu copy of this in October, and maybe compile other thoughts about Laurie and her girls. There are some brutal kills, strong savagery that should recall Zombie's films. And while some might be critical of Michael killing randoms in a neighborhood, after laying waste to cops on the bus meant to transfer him to another facility and a shop clerk and teller at the gas station, along with the podcasters, I chalked that up to his imprisonment for forty years. Much like Bundy in Florida, the isolation from getting to kill really repressed these homicidal desires. So he let loose, and that savagery, whether hammer blows or butcher knife stabs, was pent up and released on an unexpected populace.
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