Halloween (2018) * 1/2

Directed by:  David Gordon Green

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Andi Matichak, Nick Castle

This sequel (as it's purported to be) wants us to forget about Halloween II through infinity and reimagine its new narrative, which is that Michael Myers was recaptured on Halloween night 1978 after killing five people and falling off a balcony after being shot multiple times.    Fair enough.    I went in to this Halloween with eyes wide open.    Maybe this Halloween, as reimagined by writers Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, will spring a few surprises on us.   Maybe it will recapture the chilling suspense and magic of John Carpenter's original vision.    It didn't take me long to realize, with a sinking feeling in my heart, that this Halloween is no different than the sequels it wants us to purge from our memories.  

Halloween begins with promise.   A pair of British documentarians/podcasters are doing a story on the events of the first movie.   They gain access to Myers, who still has not uttered a word since his institutionalization for the murder of his sister in 1963.   We also still don't see his face, and the movie maddeningly contrives situations which obscure it, such as soft-focus shots or Myers standing behind a tree.    Is he Michael Myers or Wilson from Home Improvement?    We know this much about him:  He eats, drinks, breathes, ages, grows a beard, and excretes waste, but he just can't die.   No matter how much he is shot, bleeds, or is blown up, he just won't shuffle off this mortal coil.    And neither can countless psychopathic killers in other slasher movies born out of the success of the initial 1978 film.  

What makes Carpenter's first film so successful, and its imitators and sequels so unsuccessful, was its fearful mood, jarring suspense, and eerie atmosphere.    It functioned on the level of a nightmare, like the ones in which we try in vain to outrace something chasing us and feel as if we are running in quicksand.    This version of Halloween doesn't focus on the suspense, but the killings themselves.    It is more intrigued by showing all of the creative ways Myers can bash someone's skull in, stab a woman through the neck, or otherwise separate a person's limbs and blood from his/her body.

We also meet Laurie Strode (Curtis), who since surviving Myers' killing spree from forty years ago is now a prisoner of her own fear.    She lives in a compound with trap doors and an arsenal of weapons stored for the impending return of Michael Myers.   That or if David Koresh should resurrect.    Laurie's obsession with Michael Myers was so intense, she finds herself estranged from her daughter Karen (Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Matichak).   But, at the very least, Karen can handle herself with a shotgun.    Laurie's scenes of estrangement and isolation are effective, but like everything else in Halloween, it is eschewed once Michael escapes from the institution and starts hacking people to death.

Halloween soon becomes a geek show.   Characters are introduced just to be offed by Michael and his knife.    He is soon reunited with his famous mask and is able to slink around town in the dark undetected while there should be an massive manhunt for an escaped, evil serial killer.   There may be two or three cop cars on the case, but no sense of panic in the streets, even in the age of social media.    No amber alerts or breaking news stories.    The entire incident seems to take place in a vacuum away from the outside world.

The movie lumbers towards a final showdown between Laurie, her family, and the indestructible Michael Myers, but not before a dozen or so victims have met their gruesome fates.    It is all so dull. There is no suspense or good, old-fashioned frights.   We are simply witnesses to one butchering after another.    The conclusion is as predictable as it is inevitable.    When the final battle reaches its conclusion, two questions lingered:   Didn't Laurie see Halloween II?   And doesn't she know that it isn't going to work?   It is funny how all of the ideas this movie borrows are from all of the sequels it wants you to pretend you didn't see.

Like James Bond, there is nothing more that can be done with the Halloween series.    Characters have been killed and resurrected, recast, and entire events are wiped away and said never to have happened, but what's left is what you've already seen before and wish you hadn't.