It has been 40 years since the legitimately scary horror classic, Halloween hit theaters and turned Jamie Lee Curtis into the original scream queen. There have been 9 movies in the franchise since that time ranging from reboots and sequels to weird spinoffs.
While Laurie Strode’s story has continued in several of these movies, the new sequel out this weekend, goes out of its way to show us that nothing has happened in 40 years since the original murders that took place on Halloween night. The sequels are apparently no longer canon.
At this point, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has dealt with crippling PTSD that has dictated her behavior and paranoia for decades. Michael Myers has been locked up in an insane asylum since his original killing spree and seemingly lives out his days waiting for his chance to continue the bloodshed he started.
The characters in Halloween deal with the psychological consequences of one horrendous night. Laurie has a fully-loaded safe house and awaits the chance to face The Shape just one more time so she can be the one to take him down. However, she is an embarrassment to her daughter’s (Judy Greer) family. The only one who respects Laurie is her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).
This new sequel has been a passion project years-in-the-making from writers David Gordon Green (who also directs) and Danny McBride. To give some perspective on how much of a departure this project is for these two; they are known for writing Pineapple Express and Your Highness. While this genre may not be their forte, they clearly display their love for the franchise as a whole. This movie is littered with references to the missing sequels, with some moments that general audiences may miss, but horror fans will get a kick out of.
In being true to the franchise, Green and McBride may or may not be in on the joke of well-known horror tropes. This movie is full of people breaking horror movie rules, yet it’s played so overly serious, so it would seem there’s no self-awareness. Anytime a character can make a bad decision, they will, and they will get gutted because of it.
The constant horror tropes make for more than a few eye rolls, but this movie makes a solid attempt at giving dimension to each character, even if they’re only introduced to be fodder for Myer’s knife moments later.
This direct sequel can never be as terrifying as the original film, but is actually as good as a sequel can be. It eliminates any camp from the other sequels and plays it very straight. Sadly, this Halloween isn’t necessarily scary, but there is enough happening (between carnage and the ever-creeping presence of Michael Myers) that it will keep you interested and you may even get a bit squeamish.
Halloween isn’t necessarily going to save the slasher genre, as Scream did in the ’90s, but it makes for a great scary movie date night. It pays reverence to the franchise and is easily the best revisit to the classic trinity of slashers (Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers) since New Nightmare in the mid-’90s. B
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