Summary:
A man investigates the latest Halloween craze, Silver Shamrock masks, thinking that there might be a kind of plot surrounding them.
My Thoughts:
This film has somewhat of a reputation surrounding it, so I was sort of looking forward to my viewing. “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” is the only “Halloween” sans the famous masked psychopath Michael Meyers. Since Michael Meyers ‘dies’ at the end of “Halloween II” (only to be resurrected in “Halloween: The Return of Michael Meyers”), John Carpenter’s plan was to produce a new Halloween themed movie every year, and this film was to be the first film to kick off that new wave of anthology Halloween movies. This movie apparently didn’t do at that well at the box office, so Carpenter’s plans for an anthology series were scrapped, and “Halloween 4” featured Mikey once more.
Since I knew all that backstory going into this viewing, I knew I wasn’t one of the people that was going to be disappointed by that lack of Mike; I was more curious to see where the series would’ve headed had Carpenter been able to take it in the direction he wanted (note- he has only producer and music credits on this, but he would’ve been the one to choose the stories to produce each year). As the story got started, I immediately found myself noticing a drop in quality between the first two films in the series. While the second film’s directing style (and even the story) was noticeably less impressive than that in the first film, this third film seemed like it would’ve been passable as a Sci-Fi channel movie of the week. The acting is all around pretty horrible; the dialogue is stilted and uncomfortable; and the story is predictable. The only saving graces that this film boasts are some of the practical effects and it has a few cool ideas; the only problem is it doesn’t know how to execute those ideas very well.
There are a lot of issues from the very beginning. Our main character, Daniel Challis (Tom Atkins, “The Fog”) isn’t all that charismatic or likeable or intelligent, in fact he’s pretty flat as far as protagonists go. The love interest, Ellie Grimbridge (Stacey Nelkin, “Bullets Over Broadway”), is just about as uninteresting as Daniel. All the other characters are stupid and not scary except for a few random people who don’t talk, and whose presence isn’t explained until about an hour and ten minutes into the movie.
Now, if you can make it to that hour-and-ten to hour-and-twenty minute mark, there’s a few moments where the movie actually has a couple cool ideas. The only problem is that the film tries to be a mystery with thriller elements for that first hour and ten minutes, and there is no mystery to be found in this story. Our protagonist suspects Silver Shamrock is doing something wrong and the viewer is pretty much told from the beginning that he’s right in his assumptions, so I have no idea why we waste the first hour and ten minutes beating around the bush. When Daniel finally investigates Silver Shamrock, the film takes a few good turns, but they’re also totally ridiculous and don’t at all match the tone of the first two “Halloween” films; also, the title of this movie is sort of a dead giveaway for the whole thing.
SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW
After Daniel infiltrates Silver Shamrock, he finds out that the company is using witchcraft (and also part of Stonehenge, because why not?) in a diabolical plan to turn all of the kids that wear Silver Shamrock masks on Halloween night into a pile of bugs, snakes, and crawly things…
Okay, so, if you’re a fan of the first two “Halloween” movies and are expecting a slasher flick, and not some weird pseudo-Lovecraftian horror fantasy witchcraft thing, I’d expect you to be checking out right about now. However, if you’re a Carpenter fan, you know that he has a history of liking horror that’s more in this fantastical vein (“The Thing”, “In the Mouth of Madness”). I honestly think that the witchcraft/ fantastical elements sort of worked in this movie, but I also don’t think it’s really at home in the “Halloween” franchise. This movie felt more like a TV movie of the week than anything else, and I don’t know if that was just because this probably had a lower budget than some of the other Halloween movies or if there were just some production issues, maybe, but something didn’t work with the way the twist was handled overall. The idea was cool, the way it was handled, made it almost seem silly. If Carpenter could’ve continued the Halloween franchise his way, we might’ve got some cool Lovecraftian horror stuff instead of the slasher flicks we got now, but I also don’t know if it would’ve been that sustainable of a series.
Verdict:
As a “Halloween” movie, I don’t think this really works, and as a standalone film, aside from a few moments, I feel pretty apathetic towards it. I suppose if you’re a franchise completionist then you should see this, but I would have a hard time recommending it to anyone just on a whim. It feels too much like a cheap made for TV movie for me to really take it seriously.
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