Halloween Ends (2022, David Gordon Green)

While I had some expectations about Halloween Ends’s plot going in, based on the previous entry, the franchise, and behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt, nothing prepared me for a soft remake of Nightmare on Elm Street II.

Halloween Ends is not about Jamie Lee Curtis getting out the butcher knife granddaughter Andi Matichak gave her in the last movie to kill Michael Myers (once again James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) with Will Patton helping like they’re an adorable old couple hunting serial killers. It’s about local boy Rohan Campbell who accidentally killed a little kid he was babysitting a year after the last movie’s events. On Halloween, obviously. So, Ends’s opening kill is a child’s graphic, accidental death.

It’s incredibly manipulative but also really compelling.

The action then moves ahead three more years. Curtis has given up the prepper life (which seems entirely unlikely given Ends would then take place in 2022, post-Covid—but just like with its immortal septuagenarian spree killers, it doesn’t take place in the real world). She and granddaughter Matichak live together in a charming house where Curtis works on her true crime memoir. Matichak’s a nurse, so she didn’t slow down with college after her entire life was destroyed. Despite being Matichak’s best performance in the series, she and Curtis still don’t have a rewarding cinematic relationship. They’re just too slasher movie broken for it to work, and the movie doesn’t even try.

Curtis happens across Campbell in the present—some high school seniors in the marching band are bullying him—and introduces him to Matichak, who’s apparently been dating a bunch of dudes since Courtney murdered her boyfriend last movie. Her most recent beau is a shitty cop—shitty even for cops—Jesse C. Boyd. Luckily for Matichak, thanks to the bullying, Campbell’s about to snap and has no qualms about picking fights with a cop. Not when he’s a bad boy who zooms around town real fast on the motorcycle he’s fixed up.

Ends fearlessly rides a motorcycle over its shark tank, no qualms about all the eighties horror movie tropes it implements (in addition to Nightmare II, Boyd also does a Christine-esque transformation). It’s shameless, which works for it. Especially since Matichak finds her newest Bonnie in Campbell, and they have eighties teen movie montages riding around on his bike, trying to escape their respective traumas.

The movie pays a lot of lip service to trauma and recovering from it. Curtis has a bunch of narration about it, including narrating clips from the other Halloween movies. It’s a little weird to have a forty-year-old franchise, but they’re only using the clips from the first one, H40, and Kills. They should’ve CGI’ed something else together for it. There’s not a lot of flash in Ends, all things considered. It’s a muted finale.

Albeit one with some bizarre plot decisions. Like having everyone in town hate Curtis for the 2018 massacre—she spent her life bullying a man with brain damage, what did she think would happen—or Patton basically being a cameo. If it weren’t this Halloween series with its deceptive opening titles vise a vie cast importance, he’d be unbilled.

Best music of the H40 trilogy from Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies. Solid photography from Michael Simmonds and especially editing from Timothy Alverson. Green’s direction is fine. He’s not mimicking the original movie anymore, not with Campbell as the new protagonist, which helps.

It’s not good or successful, but it’s also not terrible, and it’s definitely the most engaging of the H40 series.

Halloween H20 (1998, Steve Miner)

Halloween H20 is an impressively short motion picture. It’s got an eighty-six-minute runtime, but the end credits run four minutes plus. The opening titles run three minutes, plus the cold open teaser runs ten. So the main action barely runs seventy minutes, thirty minutes of story, forty minutes of slasher suspense.

It’s been twenty years since the original Halloween. Jamie Lee Curtis has moved away, faked her death, gotten married, had a kid, gotten divorced, and become an education professional. She runs an isolated private school in Northern California, where she only has to go into town when she wants, and she can keep herself and her teenage son Josh Hartnett away from the world.

Except this Halloween, unlike the nineteen previous, is the one where her slasher movie villain brother comes back.

The movie eventually explains the timing. It’s one of those humdrum eureka moments; all Curtis needed to do was verbalize in a particular way, and everything becomes obvious. Well, minus bad guy Michael Myers (Chris Durand) being unkillable. Though the film works out how to address that situation. It never figures out what to do about Durand’s lousy mask. They apparently had four and were never happy with any of the results, which tracks; the main mask shows a lot of Durand’s cheeks and eyes, which actually ends up working for it. The goofy hair almost looks like a Muppet riff on a Halloween mask, leading to the violence being all the more affecting when they get to it.

There has to be some way to check all those boxes and not have the goofy mask.

Director Miner and cinematographer Daryn Okada compensate for the wanting villain with mood lighting, with H20 having a few distinct styles. The first is the prologue—set in Illinois, fellow Halloween 1 and 2 survivor Nancy Stephens finds herself the victim of a home invasion; she gets neighborhood teens Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Branden Williams to help, only they try to help too much, leading to the first scare sequence and a good showcase for Gordon-Levitt’s mugging. Miner and Okada give that sequence a Midwestern, outer suburb American feel. It’s fall, the leaves are falling, it’s almost Halloween.

Because the actual Halloween is in the Northern California location. During the day, Curtis goes into town for a lunch date with mildly inappropriate boyfriend Adam Arkin (they either work together or he’s her subordinate). While it’s clearly Halloween, it’s not one where Curtis has to participate. She can remain detached. And then Halloween just plain isn’t allowed at the private school, something son Hartnett rebels against. While most of the school is away on a camping trip, Hartnett and his friends plan a romantic Halloween weekend. There’s girlfriend Michelle Williams and their friend couple, Adam Hann-Byrd and Jodi Lyn O’Keefe. Hartnett and Williams are the chaste, romantic couple; Hann-Byrd and O’Keefe are the amusingly debauched couple. But H20 isn’t really about the teens.

It’s always Curtis’s movie. At least once the story proper starts, thirteen minutes in. The prologue suspense sequence actually doesn’t have anything to do with the main plot, with the pertinent information coming in the opening titles. They’re a montage of news clippings about Halloween 1 and 2 and what’s happened since to Curtis. A Donald Pleasance impersonator reads Halloween 1 lines as it goes; they use a clip later, so it’s unclear why they didn’t use the Pleasance audio.

Then the next half hour establishes Curtis’s character as deserving a movie, including Curtis having to develop the character from scratch, albeit with some Sarah Connor nods, starting with the nightmares and the suffering son.

Every character relationship, every character development arc start point, everything character-related—it gets one scene setup. Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg’s script is all about the logistics. Get character A to point X, character B to point Y, and so on. They get away with it because even though all the action at the school takes place in a single day—Halloween—Miner, and composer John Ottman create this summary style for most of the second act. It’s Halloween, but Halloween’s not important; getting to know the characters is important, and they’ve still got a regular school or work day to get through.

We also meet security guard LL Cool J, the lone Black person in the main cast. He’s the diversity. He’s working as a posh school security guard, so he has time to write his romance novels, which he reads over the phone to wife LisaGay Hamilton. It’s charming in its lack of success. They try really hard to make it charming, and it never quite makes it, but the effort’s there.

Oh, and there’s also the Janet Leigh cameo. Leigh’s only in a couple scenes, including one where she has an aware but not too aware talk with Curtis about being slasher movie victims. It’s not great dialogue, but Leigh’s so earnest about it and so good at being oblivious to the bit it works out. Especially since it sets the mood for the following suspense sequence.

H20’s efficiencies are never more brutal than with the dialogue. It’s short conversations; once the actors hit their marks, it’s over, on to the next scene. No one gets to ramble; there’s no scenery-chewing except maybe Gordon-Levitt at the beginning. The short runtime is almost a necessity; H20 knows what its concept can support and never tries to go further.

As a director, Miner’s strangely better with the actors than with the suspense. H20’s suspense sequences have some personality—and the film likes its pop scare gags—but the character stuff feels more considered. Though some might just be the plotting, the film keeps checking in with Curtis and about how, either way, the twentieth anniversary of Halloween 1 was going to be special.

If her slasher movie brother hadn’t come back, Curtis would still be making a lot of personal progress thanks to Hartnett’s teenage rebellion and Arkin’s sweet and horny attentions.

Then, much like the character gets a eureka moment, the film makes a comparison between Curtis and Victor Frankenstein (in the novel) and their respective Frankensteins, and something just clicks for H20. The movie can get away with a whole bunch, just thanks to that one detail.

Curtis is great. No one else comes close, but then no one else should be able to come close. Hartnett and Arkin are the obvious standouts, Hartnett more. Arkin’s doing a riff, Hartnett puts in some character work. LL Cool J’s really sympathetic; troubled part but very likable. Leigh’s fun. It’s a scene and a half; she doesn’t have to do much. Hann-Byrd and O’Keefe are fine. They’re perfunctory. Williams is just a little bit less perfunctory and also fine. H20 never tries to be more than it needs to be, including with characters.

The technicals are all solid without ever being extraordinary. Okada’s photography ranges from very good to perfectly fine. Patrick Lussier’s editing’s good. Ottman’s music is… an anti-Halloween Halloween score? The music does a lot of work setting the mood for the film and the performances; it’s usually successful. But it’s also a little ostentatious in how much it avoids the traditional theme.

Halloween H20 is a good “extended period” later sequel. It couldn’t possibly exist without the sequels it ignores, but it also gets to do something entirely different thanks to that feign ignorance. Miner and Curtis, with help, make H20 much more special than it needs or ought to be.

Halloween 5 (1989, Dominique Othenin-Girard)

What is it with Halloween sequels and hospitals? This time it’s Danielle Harris spending most of the movie in the hospital. Sure, it’s officially a children’s clinic and appears to be shot in a converted house, but it’s still a Halloween movie where the lead damsel in distress is in a hospital bed. The plot decision may be a nod to the original Halloween II; Harris is playing Jamie Lee Curtis’s kid (Curtis wouldn’t be back to the franchise for another nine years, of course), so there could be some kind of analog between the two films and experiences.

Only, no, because even if director Othenin-Girard could come up with such a device, he couldn’t shoot it. And even if he could somehow shoot it, cinematographer Robert Draper wouldn’t be able to light it. And even if they managed to pull it off, Alan Howarth’s music would crap it out. Because there’s nothing good about Halloween 5, at least not in the filmmaking itself.

Harris is not bad. She’s effective. Because she’s a little kid, who’s being stalked by a giant, unkillable spree killer. Plus, her adoptive parents have abandoned her in the clinic since Harris tried killing the mom at the end of the last movie. End of the previous film, she succeeded; this one opens with a slight retcon. Mom survived but didn’t come back. So instead, adoptive sister—they call her a step-sister, which is weird—Ellie Cornell visits her a bunch, bringing along her super-cool late eighties friend, Wendy Foxworth. They’re possibly in high school. It’s never clear.

They’ve got a third friend, Tamara Glynn, and they’re all going to party at Cornell’s since her parents are out of town for Halloween and, therefore, the only intelligent people in the movie. Get out of town when it’s time for a new Halloween.

Foxworth and Glynn aren’t important except as potential targets for killer Michael Myers (played here by Don Shanks; it’s hard to tell if he’s doing a good job because the mask looks terrible and ill-fitting). Glynn’s got a dipshit boyfriend (Matthew Walker) who’s going as Michael Myers for Halloween, Foxworth’s got a dipshit boyfriend (Jonathan Chapin) who’s got a muscle car and is also named Michael. You know, in case a large part of the second act is going to be Shanks impersonating Chapin after stealing his muscle car. And then chasing Harris through a Christmas tree farm. With the image flipped, so he’s driving on the wrong side of the car. Because Halloween 5 is thirty years old and no one ever thought to fix one of the film’s goofs in the countless home video releases.

Harris doesn’t have the worst support system. For example, at the clinic, she’s got a nice friend in Jeffrey Landman, and nurse Betty Carvalho is good to her. But Donald Pleasence is apparently her attending psychiatrist, and he physically abuses her to force her psychic connection to killer uncle Shanks.

Halloween 5’s that odd combination of shitty and wrong. It’s a bad movie where they make poor creative choices.

Pleasence is risible. Halloween 5 definitely did not help his acting legacy. None of the teenagers are good. Cornell’s the best, then Foxworth, then everyone else is worse. Troy Evans is in it for a bit, and he’s actually good, which is weird. And Beau Starr is okay. He’s able to muscle through the trash script better than any of the other adults.

There’s a weird Die Hard connection with Carvalho and David Ursin appearing in the film; they both had bit parts in Die Hard. The movie also wants to treat Shanks’s Michael Myers like the Frankenstein Monster, opening with an “homage” to Bride of Frankenstein, then what appears to be a nod to the old blind man trope, but more from Young Frankenstein than anything else. Especially when there’s a “roll in the hay” moment.

It seems more likely it’s a coincidence since a Young Frankenstein deep cut seems beyond Halloween 5.

The only way this movie makes sense is if it were some intricate tax dodge or money laundering scheme. But, as a feature film, the badness is simply inexplicable.

Halloween Kills (2021, David Gordon Green)

Halloween Kills is a fascinating sequel. It’s a terrible movie—though probably better than the previous one just because there’s so much less Jamie Lee Curtis, so you’re not watching her embarrass herself the entire time (though she’s got some really embarrassing moments). But given it’s the ninth Halloween sequel and the second remake of Halloween II… a lot is going on in what the filmmakers do and don’t do. And if you’ve suffered through the other twelve movies or whatever… as a viewer, you too can see the creative choices in context.

So fascinating.

And terrible.

It’s so bad. At least the first forty-five minutes are a gory, cruel, humor-drained riff on a fan service sequel. Then, after establishing Will Patton didn’t die last time and then flashing back to the original Halloween and doing a non-Halloween II sequel in flashback—how they missed a Curtis in the hospital joke is beyond me, but I’m not sure I’d feel good if I felt simpatico with Kills’s makers—the movie brings back supporting cast from the first movie. Not Halloween H40 first movie—we’ve established everyone’s back already—but Halloween 1978 first movie. Nurse Nancy Stephens is back, plus little kid grown up Kyle Richards. Anthony Michael Hall appears as the other little kid grown up, as does Robert Longstreet, but Longstreet’s so indistinct it seems like a retcon. Because Halloween movies need retcons in 2021.

Charles Cyphers is also back, but later in the movie and entirely coincidentally—fatefully? Also returning are Michael Smallwood and Carmela McNeal as the disposable Black couple. They were in the last movie but apparently not memorably enough. And Dylan Arnold as Andi Matichak’s boyfriend (and Longstreet’s son). This Halloween is the one where we get the Elm Street parents going after Freddy, basically. Though not emphasizing the teenagers in danger because… well, why do teenagers when you can do stunt cameos and then little kids. Though the little kids in danger stuff turns out to be a Season of the Witch: Halloween 3 reference, which is kind of the only thing actually cool in the movie. Like, they do a solid job working it in.

Oh, and there’s also some good gore animatronics. Kills’s Michael Myers is cruel and gross, basically doing anatomy experiments, and there are occasionally good gore animatronics. The rest of the time, it’s just gross for gross’s sake, but they do an actual fine job at least twice.

Some of John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies’s score is good. Mainly in the first forty-five when it’s the not-funny spoof of itself. During those moments, it seems like making a good Halloween escaped director Gordon Green and his co-writers, Scott Teems and Danny McBride, with them knowingly avoiding past tropes only for it to fail.

It’ll turn out Gordon Green, Teems, and McBride have some big ideas to work out in the second half of the movie, so no, it was just them killing time before their “unjust, lawless mob” plotline, which isn’t the movie but also is the movie. It’s this movie; it’s just this movie is actually only set up for the next movie. Not doing a “Michael Myers Will Return in HALLOWEEN ENDS” is actually the filmmakers’ worst move, and they don’t make a single good one. They just don’t let the film acknowledge itself because they’re pretending it’s serious. And we get to see how Gordon Green does serious with Halloween, and it stinks. It’s embarrassing and silly, and you can tell they tried real hard.

Anyway.

Lots of bad and middling performances. Judy Greer looks really underwhelmed her sequel option got picked up. Curtis and Patton, who bond in their own Halloween II pseudo-remake, are bad. Hall’s not good, but it’s also a lousy part. The supporting cast ranges. Occasionally there will be some effective slasher sequences, possibly thanks to Timothy Alverson.

It’s hard to tell if anything’s good about Kills, production-wise, because Gordon Green makes an absurd choice every thirty seconds, and it distracts, but Alverson’s editing seems good, actually. Whereas Michael Simmonds’s photography is just not incompetent. Also not sure about Richard A. Wright’s production design. Is it terrible, or is it bad at making South Carolina look like Illinois, or is it referencing the Rob Zombie redneck Halloween remakes? Or is it all three?

Again, it’s a fascinating sequel.

Shitty movie, though. Just an utterly shitty movie.

Michael vs. Jason: Evil Emerges (2019, Luke Pedder)

I make this statement with absolute sincerity: a Michael vs. Jason fan movie is a good idea. It doesn’t need actual acting, because neither of the slasher villains are going to be speaking or emoting. Their shapes and the filmmaking are going to do the work. You could do it on zero budget, you just need the masks.

And the Harry Manfredini Friday the 13th music.

Michael vs. Jason: Evil Emerges has some Friday the 13th music, carefully remixed just enough not to be infringing (I assume). They don’t use the Carpenter Halloween music at all because you figure they’d get sued. Good enough for Luc Besson, good enough for some Australian family who really wanted to make a Michael vs. Jason slugfest.

And it is, for a time, a glorious slugfest.

I wasn’t actually expecting one. Not like director Luke Pedder delivers, but for a while, it works really, really well. Stars Joshua Pedder and John Pedder give their all; it’s a wrestling match with some ultra violence. Not gore ultra violence because there’s no money for it, so instead just ultra violent sound effects and editing emphases. It’s cool. It’s kind of dumb, but it’s cool.

Then some Australian hicks show up and threaten the slasher movie villains with guns and bats. It’s all way too predictable and way too unimaginative. Because director Pedder doesn’t seem to get where the film’s strong, where he’s strong—the two villains duking it out.

See, Michael vs. Jason doesn’t just not have a sick mix of Manfredini and Carpenter’s music themes to go over the action, it doesn’t have a single night shot. It all takes place during the day. In this very distinct forest. In Australia. Or in New Jersey, but a New Jersey where the Australians have invaded and run things like a bunch of fascists. They’re killing Michael (John Pedder) without a trial or anything. Jason (Joshua Pedder) has already woken up because his mom told him to get out of bed and kill people.

Michael vs. Jason doesn’t open well. The mom voice is bad, the Jason mask is bad (not the hockey mask, but the full latex mask Joshua Pedder wears so no one could possibly recognize him in the other parts he plays in the short), then comes the Michael stuff and it’s all cribbed from H40, including the too big mask.

The seemingly unintentional charm of it—the actors all covered in one mask or another so they can Fake Shemp, the bad and wordy dialogue, the Australian accents—get it through until Michael inevitably breaks free of his captors. There’s an extended sequence where Michael’s chasing this kid in reflective sunglasses—he’s the boss, probably played by Christopher Goldup, who does the fan movie shot in a woods with no budget equivalent of scenery chewing—and it’s kind of… good. Pedder intuits how to use the reflective sunglasses for effect, even if they’re silly. The whole thing’s silly.

Then Jason shows up and the wrasslin’ starts and Michael vs. Jason coasts to the end. It never gets better than that first fight, where there’s a combination of good choreography, all-in performances from John and Joshua, and some nice cuts from director Luke. The finale has a fake thunderstorm and CGI gunshots. The thunderstorm filter isn’t impressive, but the CGI gunshots are cool until you notice they don’t leave any damage.

I can’t believe I’m getting 600 words out of this one.

Anyway. Michael vs. Jason has a good fight scene, some fine cuts, and the Australian charm factor to get it through its way too long thirty minute runtime. It’s not really a proof of concept, except one to show how director Pedder’s got one heck of a can-do attitude. You’d have to be mildly interested in the concept or potential to be engaged, but Michael vs. Jason is far from a failure. It’s just very hard to recommend. Especially at the thirty minute runtime.

It’d probably work better as just the slasher rumble.

Halloween II (2009, Rob Zombie)

The only good thing about Halloween II are the end credits. They run like nine minutes, meaning the movie is closer to ninety-five minutes than 105. Even though the ninety-five minutes feels like an eternity.

The movie starts with director Zombie making fun of the idea of making another Halloween II. He’s not remaking Halloween II; well, he does for the first twenty-five minutes of the movie but only to make fun of the idea of remaking Halloween II. It’s kind of the best sequence in the movie? If only because there’s not as much cynicism as the rest of the picture. Less cynicism, less “lead” Scout Taylor-Compton trying to emote, less Sheri Moon Zombie as a color inverted Morticia Adams ghost making scary-ish faces as she inspires Tyler Mane to kill people. It’s a hallucination but not. Chase Wright Vanek, as the young version of Mane, is also in the scenes. He could be worse. Moon Zombie couldn’t be worse, but Vanek has some lines in the prologue and he’s atrocious so it’s a surprise when he’s better later. Because he doesn’t get dialogue. It’s a good move from Zombie amid a film full of bad moves.

After the riff on the original Halloween II, Zombie jumps ahead a year to Taylor-Compton trying to recover from her trauma. Meanwhile, Malcolm McDowell is on a book tour capitalizing on Taylor-Compton’s trauma. McDowell’s not good and the part’s thinly written–all the parts in the film are paper thin–but he’s bad in entertaining ways. Taylor-Compton isn’t bad in entertaining ways. She’s got a terrible part and gives a terrible performance in it. She’s living with fellow Halloween I survivor Danielle Harris and her dad, sheriff Brad Dourif.

Harris is just about the only likable character in the film. She also doesn’t give a terrible performance. Many of the cast give terrible performances, so Harris is constant refreshing. Dourif’s haircut gives more of a performance than the actor, which is too bad. It’s a crappy part though.

The worst supporting performance is Angela Trimbur. She’s one of Taylor-Compton’s friends; she gets to personify Zombie’s prevailing conjecture in the film–empathy doesn’t exist, which is problematic because Taylor-Compton’s only in her current situation because of empathy. Halloween II is the perfect storm of cynicism and stupidity, with Zombie trying to cushion the stupidity in symbolism so he can get away with it. But it’s stupid symbolism so who cares.

The best cameo performance is Bill Fagerbakke as a deputy. The worst is Mark Boone Junior. Margot Kidder is somewhere in between, mostly because her therapist isn’t believable at all.

Technically, the film’s competent. Brandon Trost’s photography is definitely competent. Glenn Garland and Joel T. Pashby’s editing gets all the jump scares. Zombie relies heavily on them. He starts with gore, then he goes to jump scares. They’re effective but entirely cheap.

Tyler Bates’s music… could be worse.

Garreth Stover’s production design–presumably under Zombie’s instruction–is grungy to the point of absurdity. Since surviving their serial killer attacks, Taylor-Compton and Harris have apparently embraced nihilism based on their interior decorating but never in their characters. Taylor-Compton’s behavior sometimes flips scene-to-scene so Zombie can move things along. It’s not like she’d have essayed the role better if the writing were better.

Trost’s photography holds things together. Without it, the movie would be stagy. If the acting were better. And if Zombie cared about the acting. It’s really bad.

But it could be worse. It could be much, much worse. The end credits could run eight minutes instead of nine and there might be another whole insufferable minute of content to Halloween II.

Halloween (2007, Rob Zombie)

Halloween is very loud. It’s about the only thing director Zombie keeps consistent throughout. It gets loud. It starts kind of quiet–comparatively–then gets loud. Jump scares always have some noise. But once the jump scares are every two seconds, there’s just loud noise. Giant spree killer Tyler Mane destroys a house in the third act, with his bare hands. Because it’s loud to destroy a house. A different filmmaker with different goals might try to have the destruction of his childhood home, where he became a tween spree killer, mean something. Especially since Mane’s current target is long lost baby sister Scout Taylor-Compton (now a teenager). He’s destroying her house too.

But not Zombie. He’s just being loud. The only reason they’re at the house is because Zombie wanted to avoid similarities to the original Halloween. It’s a very strange remake, because you always get the feeling Zombie would rather be doing anything else. Zombie’s not enthusiastic about anything. The noise, sure, and the violence–sort of, it’s violent and bloody as all hell, but not really creatively. Cynically. Zombie condescends to his own film, which is interesting. You can’t really dwell on it too long because loud noises interrupt reflection.

The film spends almost the first hour outside remake expectations. Zombie’s doing his own origin story for Michael Myers (played by Daeg Faerch as a kid). It’s the late seventies. They’re kind of white trash. Mom (Sheri Moon Zombie) is a stripper with a heart of gold. Sister Hanna Hall is a jerk. William Forsythe is Mom’s abusive, drunken, live-in boyfriend who’s immobilized from injury. Zombie’s really bad at the writing of the family. He can’t take it seriously.

Moon Zombie’s almost all right as the mom. She takes it seriously in a way no one else does. Not the stunt cameos, not Forsythe, who’s kind of funny but also clearly very cynical in his performance. Zombie does all these things in Halloween’s first section but he doesn’t do any of them right. It’s not exactly potential, but the most similar thing to potential the film’s ever going to have. Because once it gets to the “present”–the early-to-mid nineties–Halloween’s got zilch. Eventually you hope–remembering the plot of the original–it’ll end after this next riff on a scene from the original but it never does. Zombie keeps it going for ages, just to mess with expectations of the target audience. And also for those viewers who just want to believe sometime it’ll finally end.

And then it gets so loud.

Until the last third or so, the film relies entirely on John Carpenter’s original Halloween score. Maybe a little louder, set to all sorts of scenes it doesn’t fit, over and over. It’s omnipresent. The finale is just Tyler Bates being loud. Because it’s all about being loud in Halloween.

It’s not about Halloween at all though. Loudness, sure. Halloween, not so much. Even though there’s a kid dressed up as a skeleton boy or something, Halloween doesn’t play in during the present day stuff. Not even as Taylor-Compton being too old for it or whatever. Zombie doesn’t care about Halloween. How appropriate for the movie, Halloween.

He likes his cameos, but he doesn’t care about them. Ken Foree has the best one. Though Sid Haig’s isn’t terrible either. Zombie’s got no more enthusiasm for the successful ones than the bad ones. Sometimes they work, most times they don’t. Udo Kier’s is the most superfluous and Danny Trejo’s the most disappointing. Trejo’s turns out to be Zombie at his most painfully obvious and trying. It’s one of the first exhausting elements in the film.

By the time Taylor-Compton comes in, the movie’s only got a few moments of narrative drive left. Zombie burns it all up with the transition from past to present. It gets so long in such a short amount of time. Maybe because Malcolm McDowell can’t even pretend to try. Of course he goes away for most of the film, which doesn’t turn out to improve anything because Taylor-Compton is so unlikable. Zombie doesn’t care about any of the characters so it’s hard to care much for them either. Big problem given Taylor-Compton is the “lead.”

Technically, the film’s competent. Zombie’s not a good director and he composes poorly for the Panavision, but he’s not incompetent. Phil Parmet’s photography is fine. It’s not any good or ever interesting, but it’s not any good. Glenn Garland’s editing is effective. It’s cheap, but it’s effective. Anton Tremblay’s production design is phenomenal. As crappy as the film gets, it always looks amazing. Even when Zombie’s not showing it in an amazing light.

Occasionally it seems like Zombie wants to spoof Halloween, but instead tries to let his contempt inform the film instead. He never succeeds, because it’s bad, but there are missed opportunities. They all have caveats, but they’re around.

The closest thing to good performances are from Danielle Harris and Brad Dourif. Neither have any good material per se, but they at least try with what they’ve got. It’s more than most anyone else is doing. Even the bad actors seem to know not to try too hard with a lousy script.

Dee Wallace goes all out though.

Halloween is long, loud, unpleasant, and underwhelming. If Zombie can’t convince himself his ideas are good and explore them, how can he convince an audience.

Halloween (2018, David Gordon Green)

Halloween never met a MacGuffin it didn’t embrace. Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride, and director Gordon’s script strings together MacGuffins to make the plot. And if it’s not a MacGuffin, it’s something they’re not going to do anything with. With a handful of exceptions, Halloween is usually at least reasonably acted. Sure, everyone lives in a 2018 where smartphones aren’t omnipresent but the screenwriters probably couldn’t figure out how to update the set pieces they lift from previous Halloween sequels for new technology.

Real quick, just because I probably don’t want to dwell on it–Halloween (2018) recreates some of the previous sequels’ thriller or slasher set pieces. It amps up the violence considerably–the film’s nowhere near as violent after it starts homaging the original Halloween as when it’s trudging through its first act mire. These set piece recreations tend to be extraordinarily violent, like Green is trying to set his Halloween–a sequel only to first film–apart from all the sequels. It’s bloodier. It’s meaner. It’s maybe louder. When Green isn’t luxuriating in the physical graphic violence, he uses the sound for off-screen graphic violence. It’s left up to the imagination.

Only not the result, because he always shows the result.

It seems weird, because for a while Halloween seems to at least be pretending it’s serious. But when Jamie Lee Curtis calls Donald Pleasence-stand in Haluk Bilginer “The New Loomis” (Pleasence’s character from previous films, including the original), it’s like Halloween feels comfortable dropping the pretense.

Back to the MacGuffin-filled opening–wait, there’s a third MacGuffin there too–anyway, Halloween opens with Jefferson Hall and Rhian Rees as these obnoxious British podcaster producers doing a “Serial” on Michael Myers and the first Halloween. They go see Michael (presumably Nick Castle when he’s got the mask off, but never shown clearly–maybe Green and editor Timothy Alverson’s greatest–and most effective–feat). They bring him into the movie. They go see Jamie Lee Curtis. They mention Judy Greer.

Greer is Curtis’s daughter, who lives in town (the same town from the other Halloween movies because even though both Curtis and Greer suffer from severe mental anxiety and depression, they never want to leave the town). She’s got bland “dad” husband Toby Huss and smart and capable daughter Andi Matichak. Matichak and Curtis ostensibly have a character development arc, but much of it either happens off-screen or when diegetic sound is brought over it for effect. The screenwriters avoid the heck out of character for Curtis. With Castle–i.e. what’s happened to the slasher since the slasher movie ended forty years ago–it’s easy. He’s been tied to a stone, silent for forty years. No development whatsoever. Easy.

Curtis, Greer, and Matichak? Not so easy. Greer’s second-billed but barely relevant. She just gets to think her mom is crazy and tell her to get help. Over and over again. Huss should be there to support Greer and he gets more material than her. And, until she’s following in grandma’s final girl footsteps, Matichak gets less than her friends. There’s best girlfriend Virginia Gardner (who’s actually really good), Gardner’s boyfriend Miles Robbins, then Matichak’s boyfriend Dylan Arnold and his bro Drew Scheid.

Matichak gets less to do, outside being hunted by a quinquagenarian masked spree killer, than any of them. The other characters don’t get more development, but at least Gardner and Robbins get stuff to do. Gardner especially. She’s babysitting adorably foul-mouthed near tween Jibrail Nantambu. Another big change in Halloween as it goes on–somewhere in the second act it decides it’s going to do some comedy. The first act doesn’t have any except Hall being a dip and Huss being such a dad.

The frustrating thing about Halloween–not while watching it but while considering it–is how many weird, senseless plotting choices the screenwriters make, apparently for no reason. The film has spared down visuals. Green avoids establishing shots. Possibly because he’s shooting Charleston, South Carolina for mid-sized town Illinois. But probably not. When they’re most important, he’s avoiding them because he’s doing his whole Halloween (2018) is meaner and bloodier and realer.

That tone doesn’t fit with podcasters Hall and Rees. Either they’re jokes, in which case Halloween (2018) is a joke, or they’re serious. But the film kind of wants to take Rees seriously and not Hall. Only Hall’s the noisier one.

With the exception of Curtis, Halloween’s female characters tend to be silent sidekicks to their far less capable male partners. Patton and Curtis know each other–from the first Halloween night–but… it’s not like they get character development. Halloween (2018) doesn’t do character development, because it’s going to deliver an amazing finish. Jamie Lee Curtis vs. Michael Myers, forty years later.

It’s the point of the movie. Curtis has spent forty years arming and training herself to take out Michael Myers. And now she’s going to get to do it.

And the big finale… isn’t boring. It’s dumb. If it weren’t so visually flat, it might be worth some spoof value. Because Halloween (2018) plays like an unaware spoof of itself. Like the screenwriters had something else in mind and Green just sucked the laughs out of it. But Green’s one of the screenwriters.

Halloween (2018) takes itself way too seriously while seeming to know it shouldn’t be taken seriously at all.

Curtis is fine. She and Matichak have potential. She and Patton have potential. The movie explores neither. Matichak’s all right. She’s got very little. Patton’s fine but seems like he should be good. Greer–the movie avoids giving Greer character more than it does Curtis–Greer is hostilely wasted. Like she’s stunt-casted.

The teens–other than Gardner–are all thin, both part and performance; it doesn’t matter.

Gardner’s good. Nantambu’s funny. Not good, but funny.

Technically, nothing leaps out. Green’s direction is fine. It’s never terrible. The script’s weird, but not bad as far as dialogue. Usually. Except the podcasters. And the Donald Pleasence stand-in. Alverson’s editing is good. Simmonds’s photography is flat, visually and in terms of quality. The score–from John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter (yes relation), and Daniel A. Davies–sounds like a Halloween score. Nothing special.

Richard A. Wright’s production design is lacking.

Halloween (2018) is a curiosity. Even though it had the ingredients for something else. Something more. The film’s stunningly unambitious. It’s also passive aggressively hostile to those unfamiliar with the previous movies. While the podcasters fill in a bit, it’s more what’s been happening since the last movie, not what happened in the last movie.

And Curtis gets nothing. Nothing with any of it. Because the script can’t figure out how to make her a protagonist. It can’t figure out a lot of things.

The movie can’t figure out a lot of things. It’s really flimsy and kind of cynical–it’s like a one hundred minute exploration of why you shouldn’t try to make a “serious” movie sequel. To Halloween specifically, but also in general. Again, if it were a spoof–even a dark comedy one–there might be something here.

It’s not. And instead Halloween H40 just a lot of actors wasting their time and some remixed John Carpenter music.

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995, Joe Chappelle)

Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers doesn’t even run ninety minutes and gets boring fast; the last twenty minutes are completely mind-numbing. Nothing makes sense, characters act without motive, cults cult without purpose, it just goes on and on. At least Donald Pleasence is lucky enough to get knocked out for a bunch of it.

Pleasence isn’t in Curse very much. The scenes he does get are usually silly, sort of half expository, half bridging scenes to keep things moving. He has no narrative of his own, which is fine. He’s so uninvolved with the film’s events he shouldn’t have one. Of course, no one gets their own narrative in Curse. At least, nothing approaching a completed one.

Lead Paul Rudd doesn’t. His character survived the first Halloween as a kid, which makes him early-to-mid-twenties. He lives in a boarding house and obsesses over Michael Myers while peeping on new neighbor Marianne Hagan across the street. She’s a single mom moved back in with her family–mom Kim Darby, dad Bradford English, brother Keith Bogart. Devin Gardner plays Hagan’s kid.

So Hagan and Rudd don’t show up for about twenty minutes, maybe a little more–though Rudd does narrate the opening titles, which are set over J.C. Brandy giving birth and then running from Michael and a cult. From a basement. Director Chappelle likes his basements. He likes to poorly direct scenes in them; cinematographer Billy Dickson lights these basement scenes poorly, like everything he lights in the movie. It’s all poorly lighted. Dickson and Chappelle shoot their night exteriors with a lot of blue light. Bright blue light.

Back to Brandy. She’s from the last couple movies but it was a different actress. The movie introduces her in the Rudd voiceover during the titles and there’s no time spent establishing her character. Even though her escape subplot goes on forever, it’s filler. And badly directed. Chappelle badly directs everything in Curse. The movie doesn’t just not having anything to recommend it, it has nil positive elements.

Chappelle’s direction? Bad. Daniel Farrands’s script? Bad. Dickson’s photography? Bad. Randy Bricker’s editing? Bad. Alan Howarth’s music? So bad.

And none of the actors are any good. Once Rudd and Hagan take over the movie, it’s all about Rudd finding Brandy’s baby and then trying to find Pleasence. Meanwhile Hagan’s got a subplot about… nothing? She’s got a couple scenes showing she’s suffering–dad English is physically and mentally abusive, Gardner’s a weird kid–but no subplot. On one hand, it’s good Rudd and Hagan don’t have a romance subplot, but it’s also bad because it’d be so godawful it might be fun to watch.

Rudd’s really bad. Hagan’s better. Darby’s okay. English is bad. Bogart is bad. Mariah O’Brien–as Bogart’s girlfriend–she’s bad. She’s got this subplot about bringing Halloween back to the town. There’s a festival, which doesn’t appear to have actually been staged because Chappelle’s terrible at establishing shots. He, cinematographer Dickson, and editor Bricker are really terrible at tying scenes shot in different locations together. Sure, the plotting is herks and jerks along, but Bricker has no rhythm. There’ll be a bad establishing shot, then a second–longer–bad establishing shot, just on a first unit location. Curse is a visual mess.

Leo Geter is awful as a shock jock who figures in, but not enough.

Mitchell Ryan is in it a few times as Pleasence’s old boss, who wants to hire him back even before Michael Myers returns. Even though Pleasence is clearly not in shape for a nine-to-five.

The jump scares are all cheap, usually red herrings, usually with terrible Howarth music accompanying. But mostly there’s gore instead of scares. But the gore is often insert shots; obvious insert shots. Like Chappelle has something to prove. He can keep finding ways to make the move worse, even as every other “creative” impulse runs out.

Curse is bad. And it goes on too long to be amusing at all in its badness.

Halloween II (2009, Rob Zombie), the director’s cut

Halloween II is terrible. Unquestionably terrible. It sounds as though the director’s cut, which I watched, is even worse than the theatrical cut, based on the items director Zombie added back to the film.

But I wanted Halloween II to be good. It can’t be good–even with Zombie’s dumb ideas, there’s terrible writing and an awful performance from Scout Taylor-Compton in the lead–but I wanted it to be good. Because Zombie, after teasing the audience with a direct remake of the original Halloween II as an opener, does come up with an interesting concept. What happens to Taylor-Compton after the horrific events of the first film, with all “real life” psychology thrown in–including Malcolm McDowell making a jackass of himself as “famous TV psychiatrist”–it could be really interesting.

Zombie has all the pieces–Taylor-Compton’s friend, played by Danielle Harris, and her dad, an excellent Brad Dourif, take her in, which creates all sorts of problems and new situations. Juxtaposed against McDowell tormenting his media handler (Mary Birdsong), it all could have worked out. There’s some good stuff with Harris and Dourif, Birdsong and McDowell, but it’s all accidental. It’s actors with ability transcending terribly written material.

Oddly enough, Zombie cares. He cares about his dumb story invalidating every idea of the Halloween franchise–instead of a soulless shape, Michael Myers is driven to kill by his mystically evil (and undead) mother. Zombie spends most of the movie upset he can’t show Tyler Mane’s face until the end. Zombie puts it off so long, the reveal has no point–not as commentary on the Halloween franchise, which the film could’ve been perfect for, and not for his dumb evil, mystical Myers family thing.

Great photography from Brandon Trost on 16 mm. Occasionally okay music from Tyler Bates.

And, real quick, Sheri Moon Zombie is awful in it (though not worse than Taylor-Compton); it’s sad since the film opens with a flashback where Moon Zombie’s actually good.

Halloween II is not at all worth watching, but it should have been.