THE NEW HALLOWEEN is an unapologetic love letter to the franchise,
honoring what has come before while simultaneously trying to reanimate it to
remain pertinent in the present day and make a man in a mask utterly terrifying
in the post Modern world
of rampant terrorism and widespread shootings.
It wisely jettisons the baggage of the preceding 9 movies and tangled
continuity of thorn cults and stripper moms to wipe the slate clean and bring
Halloween back to its roots of a maniac without boundaries loose on a night of
potentially limitless horror.
Although the prior movies are wiped from continuity their ghosts and
bones remain in this movie. There are
deep cut references to the thorn cult, the sister trilogy, the clownish cops of
Halloween 5, the silver shamrock masks from Halloween 3, and the bathroom
stalking scene in h20. Even the name of
one of the journalists investigating the myers murders is the same as one of
the security guards from Halloween: resurrection. Despite these easter eggs and references to
what has come before, the movie makes it clear its only interested in following
up on the immoral classic; only the original counts now, and myers has been
locked up for forty years since his original Halloween night killing spree.
The beginning of the film is defined by denial. Laurie, the lone survivor from the original Halloween
killing spree, insists that evil is out there, that they are not safe, that the
bogeyman exists, but after so long nobody really wants to hear about it anymore. She is a prophet of doom living uncomfortably in a time of
peace. That Halloween night so many
years ago defined her entire life; she stays scared to survive, but others
included her own daughter and granddaughter, doubt there is anything to fear in
the first place.
And of course evil just bides its time; Michael escapes during a
routine prisoner transfer on hallows eve to return to Haddonfield, and wastes
no time staking up the body count. Michael
is a force of nature here, stalking from one house to the next, killing the
occupants in brutal fashion and moving on as trick or treaters flow through the
suburban streets outside none the wiser.
He spends the most time stalking a blond bombshell, continuing the Halloween ritual he began in the first film
of systematically murdering nubile teen babysitters that reminded him of Judith,
his first kill and arguably his first thrill.
it isn’t long until laurie is teased out of hiding to hunt myers
down before he can repeat the havoc wrought on halloween forty years ago. She seems eager to face her fate this time;
she wants the pleasure of killing him for revenge . She acts as the new dr. loomis of this film,
although there is another false loomis haring in the mix, the controversial dr.
sartain.
Dr. sartain is introduced as
an understudy to dr. loomis, however he shares none of the late doctors ideas
about what to do with myers. Dr. sartain
sees it as an opportunity to study pure evil and try to understand it. Loomis wanted nothing short of seeing myers
destroyed. Dr. sartain seems oddly
protective of his patient michael myers; he even goes as far as murdering a cop
to try to preserve that evil. He is more
like dr wynn from Halloween 6, fascinated by unbound evil, desperate to
understand it and maybe control it. Dr sartain
could be a snarky jab at the Halloween fanbase who share in his desire to see
michael live to create unlimited sequels, to preserve the shape so he can spread
terror indefinitely. The late producer
malek akkad once famously said Halloween would have no less than 21 entries,
dr. sartain seems to be on the same page.
Dr. Sartain is operating under
the assumption that michael and laurie are cosmic counterpoints to each other
as predator and prey; that michael lives to stalk laurie, and laurie lives to
avenge the deaths of her friends forty years ago. While it certainly is apparent that laurie
never shook the horror of that original Halloween night and has been waiting
for the bogeyman to return ever since, its uncertain how michael feels about
it. Every effort to illicit a response
from him seems futile, his refusal to speak confounds any attempt to attach a
motivation to his actions and leaves journalists and doctors desperate for a
reason to his madness other than evil merely existing. dr. sartain corals michael to lauries sanctuaryhome
in the woods to force a final conflict in an attempt to learn more about the
condition, to observe michael as loomis has, in the wild.
The final act plays out almost
exactly how you would expect with some role reversal between laurie and the
shape thrown in; at one point laurie even stabs michael with his own knife, the
ultimate Freudian subversion of male strength.
By the end every institution of safety fails laurie and her family
making all of her prophetic musings about survival ring true; it is up to them
to dispatch the evil themselves, to face fate no matter what it brings. Little does michael know hes walking into a
well laid trap of feigned female vulnerability, leaving him in a smoldering wreckage
much like the ending of the original Halloween 2, not to mention a few fingers
short. The final shot of the film is 3
generations of defiant strode women riding off into safety, a final girl expose.
The soundtrack was done by
carpenter himself and is on point as expected.
I can see myself spinning it quite a few times this season for those classic
Halloween feels. There are many musical
cues and call backs to the original film; the zingers are back, the slasher is
back. This new entry is exactly what the
genre needs, a true Halloween resurrection.
It honors everything that came before while expounding on some of the
original themes and subtext if the immortal classic. I have already seen it three times in the
theater and plan on another trip before it is through. While it is impossible for a movie to live up
to its hype I felt like this one was not a letdown and will be in regular
watching rotation come next Halloween season, right next to the classicks.
