Summary:
Twenty years after Michael Myers terrorized Laurie Strode, he returns to do it again.
My Thoughts:
Yeah! Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis, “A Fish Called Wanda”) is back!
We’ve made it to entry number seven in the “Halloween” franchise (can’t say I ever say I’d make it this far in the series, but hey, it’s certainly had some fun moments!), and for the first time since “Halloween II” we pit The Shape against his archrival Laurie Strode. Though I admit “Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers” was probably the worst of the series so far, I was eagerly looking forward to watching this entry, primarily because the series had started to slump into a rut. As much as I liked some of the psychic connections Michael developed with his niece in “Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers”, the series also started to feel as if it had jumped the shark just a bit.
This film feels far more like a return to the original roots: it’s just a masked killer vs a group of scared people, and honestly, it’s a blast! There are plenty of references to the original films, but Michael himself looses any of the supernatural powers he had previously possessed (aside from being nigh impossible to kill), and Jamie Lloyd (Laurie’s daughter with the psychic link to Michael) doesn’t exist in this universe. Of course, this entry is nowhere near as great as the original “Halloween”, and there are plenty of moments that require a bit of suspension of disbelief, but if you’re a huge Michael Myers fan, then this is certainly an entry you wont want to miss.
“We’ve got a psychotic serial killer in the family who loves to butcher people on Halloween, and I just thought it in bad taste to celebrate.”
As I’ve watched through the “Halloween” films, I’ve noticed that continuity for character relationships is sort of all over the place. Sometimes Laurie has a daughter (“Halloween IV”, “Halloween (2018)”), sometimes she has a son (this film). Sometimes she’s related to Michael Myers (original franchise), sometimes she’s not (“Halloween (2018)”). For better or worse, this film follows the continuity of “Halloween II” (only Michael doesn’t die like he did at the end of “II”), but ignores entries “IV” through “VI”. So in this entry, Laurie is related to Michael, and instead of a psychic daughter named Jamie, she’s got a douchebag teenage son named John (Josh Hartnett, “The Faculty”). This entry takes place exactly twenty years after the original entry, hence H20- “Halloween: Twenty Years Later”. When we meet up with Laurie, she’s the headmaster of a school, but she’s also gone into the witness protection program, so she has changed her name to Keri Tate (a reference to the Tate/Manson murders, perhaps?).
I sort of like the way that Laurie is when we meet up with her again from a psychological standpoint, but, from a logistics standpoint, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Laurie is really struggling from her encounter with Michael all those years back; she has a medicine cabinet full of pills; she needs her teenage son’s reassurance after she wakes from a nightmare; and on Halloween day, she guzzles down glasses of wine at lunch and more throughout the day… Yet she’s also, somehow, managing to balance this severe case of PTSD with being the headmaster of a prestigious boarding school. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to become the head of a prestigious school if you’re in protective services, and I also don’t know if Laurie would ever be allowed to run that school. It seems a bit farfetched, but since I was able to accept Michael’s psychic connection to a girl he didn’t know existed, I think I can get past a headmaster with a crippling case of PTSD.
The opening also takes a bit of suspension of disbelief in order to fully get onboard; the film starts with Michael gathering information about Laurie at a home where Dr. Loomis used to live (RIP Donald Plesaence, he didn’t make it to this entry). The home is occupied by a family (the son is played by a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and Michael quickly dispatches of them in interesting ways, grabs the file with Laurie’s new info and leaves. Right away, this starts to beg some questions, the most obvious being: a) where has Michael been hanging out for twenty years, b) how does he know that this particular home has any connection to Dr. Loomis, c) if Laurie is in protective custody, why would Doctor Loomis have information regarding her whereabouts now, and d) why, after all this time when he’s been wandering free, does Michael feel such a driving need to come after Laurie again, so much so that he’s willing to drive from Illinois to California? He seems so content to just murder whomever is before him; why make the trip? There’s plenty of heads to sever in between Illinois and California. If you get over the minor logic issues in the writing that sort of just places the characters where it wants to put them, the film actually starts to have some fun moments. After the initial “Halloween”, this series hasn’t ever been incredibly intelligent when it comes to plot twists or character development; so honestly, I just took the flaws in stride. You sort of have to do that if you’re a horror fan that’s gone this far down the horror rabbit hole.
In terms of tension, I actually think this is one of the better “Halloween” movies of the initial run, and some of the moments of tension are when Michael doesn’t even have to kill anyone. For instance, there’s a scene near the beginning of the film where Michael sneaks into a woman’s bathroom and steals her purse, and I thought that scene was one of the more intense scenes of the entire franchise thus far. Towards the end of the movie, we pit the Shape back up against Laurie Strode in a relatively satisfying ending, and the way that this film ends begs the question: How could they possible make another “Halloween” movie unless the word “Resurrection” was in the title? Guess what the next one is called: “Halloween: Resurrection”.
Verdict:
Most of the “Halloween” sequels have negative reviews, but I actually think this one is pretty decent. Certainly, it’s nowhere near the level of brilliance Carpenter reached with the original “Halloween”, and, really, it’s just more of the same you’ve seen in every other “Halloween” flick, but there are some really great moments.
Endnote: I really missed the wild-eyed Donald Pleasence as the unhinged Doctor Loomis. This film just felt like it was missing a little something without him.
Review Written By: