Halloween movie review | A rare Hollywood horror sequel
Halloween film about the horrors of the past, and how trauma has such an all-encompassing, and often irreparable effect on those who’ve survived it. Halloween begins with a terrific opening set-piece that takes place in the courtyard of the mental facility where Michael Myers has been kept ever since he went on a rampage all those years ago. Two British podcasters approach hesitantly, egged on by Michael’s new psychiatrist, a man of baffling origins named Ranbir – he could be Indian but who knows? They’ve hired a Turk to play him.
The podcasters are convinced that Michael and Laurie are the only ones who truly understand each other – destined to collide – and are on a quest to get them to sit across a table before he’s moved into a different facility on Halloween, 40 years later.
Director David Gordon Green’s Halloween reimagining/reboot/remake slips perfectly into this category, almost as easily as one of Michael Myers’ knives into the backs of an unsuspecting victim. It is a film that not only has respect for the original John Carpenter classic – the movie from whose loins it emerged, if you will – but rebels against it in a way that only progeny could. It takes the DNA of what made Carpenter’s movie such an influential masterpiece and injects it with a slick contemporary touch – a dash of feminism, a nose thumbed at horror tropes, and an almost carelessly provocative third act.
Green and his co-conspirator, writer Danny McBride, have come up with such a unique new take on the material that you could almost imagine producer Jason Blum doling out high-fives a minute into their pitch. I imagine it going something like this: “So, we’re going to ignore all nine Halloween movies that came after the original,” McBride tells the gathered suits – he does all the talking while Green sits in the corner – “and make a direct sequel set 40 years later. But get this,” he says, “we’ll make Laurie Strode the predator, and Michael Myers the prey.”
That iconic synth score, immediately evocative of a bygone era of horror, plays in all its glory over the opening credits, and is perhaps one of the earliest signs of the visual trickery the film has up its sleeve. On several occasions during its breakneck 105-minute length, the film harkens back to Carpenter’s original by mirroring key scenes visually and thematically. Fans would notice retreads of many familiar moments, but with key shots and characters’ roles reversed – often literally.
The key to characters such as Michael Myers is this: You can’t psychoanalyze them, which is weird because these movies insist on giving psychiatrists such important roles. David Gordon Green understands this, and creates a Michael who is exactly the sort of elemental monster, a supernatural force of evil, that Carpenter intended him to be. This calls for certain plot contrivances to bring him and Laurie together – because as much as she’d like to think that he’s as obsessed with her as she is with him, Michael’s defining characteristic is his lack of logic. He kills because he must.
Halloween, however, is yet another head-scratching choice for Green – by his own admission, him and McBride have ideas for a sequel, so we can probably expect him to play around with his horror dollhouse for the next couple of years and wait to see how that turns out.