I love slasher horror movies. The cheesiness, the tropes, the villains. I love them. “Friday the 13th Part 3” and “Nightmare on Elm Street” being among the best in the genre. Slasher films had been around, but they did not get popular until “Halloween (1978)” and the emergence of Michael Meyers. But to be honest, I’m not a fan of Michael Meyers. Meyers, at the end of the day, is a human. If you shoot him in the head, he will die. Yet, he always found a way to survive every gunshot, car crash, and fire he ever suffered. Heck, in “Halloween 2” both his eyes were shot out, but he could see just fine in “Halloween 4: Return of Michael Meyers”. I always found this to be a cop out. Freddy and Jason survived crazy stuff, but they are paranormal in nature, unlike the completely human Michael.
Blumhouse pictures has taken the reigns for Michael’s newest outing (which makes this the fourth series continuity change) which serves as a direct sequel to “Halloween (1978)”. That means there was no Laurie as Michael’s sister, no psychic niece, no Kungfu Busta Rhymes, no “H20”, none of that. This is a good thing. With that being said, “Halloween (2018)” has a ton of throw backs and nods to those films. This is really fun for fans, and isn’t ham-fisted in anyway.
In this film, Michael comes back more brutal and more bloodthirsty than ever. The first on screen kill is a young boy, only around twelve years old. Michael does not slow down from there. The effects and the score that punctuate Michael’s kills are stunning and beautifully well done. However, I kinda wish Michael had a reason to kill. In the first film, he just wanted to go home, and when he was home, he saw Laurie babysitting a young boy, and that reminded Michael of his sister, so he needed to kill Laurie and he only killed those who got in his way. The whole series was his quest to kill Laurie, who ended up actually being his sister. But in this film, while he wants to kill Laurie, he goes out of his way to kill others for no reason.
Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis) was not explored enough in my opinion. She’s just a super paranoid grandma who is alcoholic. It’s basically a better written version of her “H20” character. The granddaughter, Allyson, is clearly the future of the franchise, but they need a better dialogue writer for her and her friends. The love triangle subplot is just cringey as hell and needs to go away.
Overall this film is very well made and knows what it wants to be. But its bad to mediocre dialogue and somewhat hammy acting from other supporting characters holds it back from being a masterpiece. I give it 7/10 above average. I hope it gets a sequel, and I hope Michael’s slasher cohorts find a way to be revived in similar manners.