Halloween (2018) Is The (second) Best Halloween Ever Made- Review

You rarely have pleasant thoughts about a reboot, especially where horror movies are concerned. Usually, you’ll be watching the credits roll with a sense of mild disappointment and confusion. Not here though. Halloween (2018) is anything but that. It’s the best entry in the franchise since John Carpenter’s original from 1979 and it achieves this by updating the world of the original into something new that still feels authentic.

Things in the Halloween franchise have always been weird once you get past the original. So weird most of the time, that it became campy and blunted the terror in the movie. Like, when Michael is part of a cult or “it turns out” he’s Laurie Strode’s brother or some weird shit like that, it actually makes him less interesting. Halloween 2018 ditches a lot of this nonsense to bring you a reboot/sequel that really does follow in the footsteps of the original. (Don’t get me wrong, the nonsense can be fun but it doesn’t feel like the same kind of horror movie.)

I think the wisest thing this movie does from the get go is just ignoring all conventional sequel/reboot conventions and trends and saying “This is going to function as a sequel to the OG, we don’t care that Halloween II exists.” It’s a new timeline and in this one, you have to take it a little more seriously, which was good, because the franchise had gotten so mystical it had become something you lampoon.

It’s set in 2018, 40 years after the first film. Michael is old now and locked up. Laurie Strode still lives in Haddonfield, in a country house with a bunch of security measures, locks and a bunker. She has a daughter, Karen and a grand-daughter, Allyson. A Phil Dunphy-esque son in law, Ray. The town has mostly forgetten Michael Myers and Laurie is considered to be a loony. And she is. She lives in this weird ass house and is obsessed with the idea of Michael's return. She’s also a bad mother and has weird mental breakdowns in restaurants. Her family situation is not ideal and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.

Anyway, you know where this goes- old man Michael Myers escapes while being transported to a new mental hospital. From there he begins the game of killing people to acquire their resources. Truck, coveralls, mask, knife, etc. While this is going on, Laurie has family drama. Similar to the original, it’s a bit of a slower burn at first, but when things kick into gear, they go.

I think the big thing this particular Halloween does very well is parlay the tension around Michael into our other character arc, which is Laurie’s. See, usually, for the first third of every Halloween movie, the protagonist doesn’t really know about Michael and the story is sort of just setting up characters to kill and places to be. But in this film, Laurie is aware about Michael from the get go. Hell, these creepy British people are making a podcast about him. He’s famous.

And so now, instead of the classic “Set Up Teens To Kill” (which does happen a little bit honestly), we actually have some character drama. We see an anxious, bitter and crazed Laurie who’s alienated from her family and community, of course old man Michael Myers and a Haddonfield that’s shifted into a cozy suburban community. It’s very Terminator 2-ish in how it shifts the characters situation while maintaining ties to the original conflict and this movie overall feels a lot like Terminator 2. We’ve got older characters, a conflict that has now aged into maturity and become more fundamental in it’s stakes. It’s no longer just a stalker-slasher film, it’s a battle between two rival hunters- Michael hunting Haddonfield and Laurie hunting Michael.

It’s one of the tonal quirks director David Gordon Green does so well in this movie. It’s got all the slasher sensibilities of the franchise, but deftly incorporates this action movie feel that ups the ante and kind of stabilizes the movie. We all love the idea of the 70s slasher, but they don’t translate beat for beat into this era and this rugged, more violent element that Green brings in here unifies the bridge between the classic film and modern horror. Michael still has unique, impressive kills, but he also much more blunt and in your face brutality. His personality here feels like a refined continuation from the first film.

This movie is funny too, at times in an intentionally cringe way and at times in a dark, sardonic way. There’s a brilliant and terrifying bathroom sequence where Michael drops some teeth on the floor to terrify a soon-to-be victim. There’s another scene where he uses a human head as a Jack-O-Lantern. There’s some classic David Gordon Green dialogue scenes that go on a little too long and are a bit too on the nose in a way that’s uncomfortable. And it can all be kind of funny, in fact the variety keeps the movie interesting.

But there’s just a lot of tense dark humor with all the shit Michael is doing. This time around he’s much more violent and aggressive. He’s also much stronger it seems. He’s really evolved into something truly evil and insane. But there’s something else too, something much more terrifying. He may not be as curious as he once was, but perhaps that’s only because he seems to be much smarter. While the original film kind of framed Michael in this lens of a young predator exploring his violent urges, here he’s a mature apex predator and he moves through the world with a different kind of confidence. He’s more brutal now and uses his raw strength a lot more.

I think this is the second best Halloween movie (as I said in the title) and I really think it’s probably one of the stronger stories they could’ve told for a sequel. The use of time and aging within the narrative gives the movie increased stakes and kind of grounds the franchise in some seriousness it previously lacked. (Never mind that it throws this away in the next movie.) Haddonfield feels like the same place as in the original, but crucially, it feels like a real place too.

I also, without mentioning spoilers, want to say that the ending sequence…one of the best in a recent horror film that I’ve seen. It’s smartly constructed and set up throughout the film and it makes use of a lot of little hanging threads from previous scenes and ties them together neatly. It’s not just an action moment, it’s peppered in with narrative stabs that keep you tightly invested in the characters. The tension in that sequence, especially since it’s built up all movie, just kind oppresses you and the fear and dread feel very real. It’s a very impressive sequence.

I think the last thing I want to say about this movie, is that I appreciate how confident it is in what it’s doing. There are maybe some hiccups now and then, but overall the movie flows very well because of the clear belief and understanding of how this franchise and movie should work. A lot of Green’s ideas here are absolute winners and his versatility as a writer is on full display with the dance between tense horror/action scenes, awkward, strained character drama and random, humorous WTF scenes that add some levity. The thing is, the bones of a good Halloween film are easy to see, but it’s that detail and sleight of hand in the writing that makes them really work. So if you’re up for a great, scary, a little quirky horror movie, Halloween (2018) is one to see.