🎃💀Hooptober 2020: Film 11/67💀🎃

Don’t shoot me, but this was way better than the original.

My reaction to when I found out David Gordon Green was helming a Halloween film was about the same reaction I had when I found out David Gordon Green was making a big-budget stoner comedy - Pineapple Express. In my teens, I came across his debut film, George Washington, and I fell in love with him as a director. He kept the extremely intimate-drama feel throughout much of the decade but then did a complete 180 and made one of the funniest comedies in years. So I suppose it really shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see him transform yet again, bringing along his boy Danny McBride on as writer.

But what’s perhaps even more interesting than the roster of fresh talent on this project are the faces that come back. With John Carpenter assisting on the story and providing the score after practically disowning the franchise, with Jamie Lee Curtis doing “Laurie Strode” better than ever, and even with Nick Castle returning as “The Shape”, this feels like a genuine reunion and an opportunity at a much needed do-over. Filmmaking is hard work and frustrating as hell. I imagine that frustration is multiplied when a character you’ve created becomes a money-maker and you don’t really have much control over it anymore. While I’ve never watched the Halloween series beyond the original, it doesn’t take much to know how disappointed almost everyone was in what followed. So Blumhouse picking up the reigns and allowing Carpenter to go back and do it how he’s been wishing he did it in his head all these years feels really special. 

The first movie is iconic. I’ll just get that out of the way. Its influence on the horror genre is immeasurable, but there wasn’t much to really latch onto for me aside from respect for how much it changed the game. The characters didn’t have much depth, the kills were mostly off-screen and kind of boring, and for two-thirds of the movie, we are treated to generous helpings of “he’s-there-then-he-isn’t”. And while it’s a solid execution in suspense, it never felt that satisfying to me.

Halloween 2018 more than makes up for it. Having never watched any of the sequels, I was able to go into this having it be the definitive follow-up in my head and it was very rewarding. The dynamics they brought to the table between three generations of women added the emotional depth I felt was lacking in the original. To see how the trauma of one’s past can be carried and passed down through generations, slowly manifesting itself into an unexplainable hatred, was fascinating to watch and made me genuinely care for all three women tremendously.

Myers comes off as much more menacing this time around as well. I know some have issues with them trying to humanize him, but I think that’s bullshit. He is a human. He’s a human who killed his sister and got severly fucked up because of it. The idea of an unstoppable, inexplainable force is terrifying and is one that’s existed as long as storytelling has been around. But when our first introduction to the character is him as a child, he isn’t an inexplainable force. He’s a child with some serious issues which is a lot more interesting and worth exploring than how he’s been presented in the past. 

Super stoked to see how Halloween Kills & Halloween Ends finally/maybe tie up this franchise.