What I Liked: Michael Myers takes on a group of people twice which is something I don’t think we’ve seen before, at least not like this. In Halloween 4 he fights a mob of vigilantes while racing down the road in their truck and then gets shot by them shortly after. But here Michael goes up against several opponents simultaneously on the ground in the open like in an action movie. While this is a fun novelty thing to do the character definitely works better as a menacing figure when he engages in one on one or even two on one combat.
Michael looks and moves pretty well. The singed mask from the fire at the end of
the previous film (and beginning of this one) adds a cool bit of weathering to
remind you he’s been through some shit.
James Jude Courtney (Soccer Dog: The Movie) gives a slightly
stiffer performance than last time from what I can remember but he can still
lunge and quickly dispatch anyone standing in his way. Although at points they may have pushed it a
touch too far (we’ll dive into this a little later).
John Carpenter, his son Cody and frequent collaborator
Daniel Davies (Dave Davies’ son and Carpenter’s godson!) return for another
solid soundtrack. Maybe the choral
additions to the main theme aren’t the best but the rest of it is good heart
pumping atmospheric tunes.
What I Didn’t Like: They had no idea what to do for
this movie. It follows the tradition of
the ’81 and 2009 Halloween II in that we pick up right where the last
film left off on Halloween night and there’s a lot of hospital stuff. But it’s simply Michael continuing to kill
people. We don’t know why and there
isn’t a driving force to anything.
A whole bunch of times someone tries to shoot Michael with a
gun and except for one instance it never goes well. Either they miss, are out of bullets or
Michael is so fast he swats the gun away at the last possible second. It’s so noticeable because of how often it
happens, like to the point where it becomes comical. The filmmakers seem to want to emphasize that
Michael is lightning quick in this one but really it’s slick editing and people
being terrible shots.
The narration at the end is cheesy and unnecessary. It’s about how Michael isn’t human but made
up of pure evil which we know. We’ve
known that since 1978, Loomis told us.
That’s just ham fisted filmmaking. And there’s another example of this earlier in
the picture when a good chunk of the town has been whipped into a frenzy because
not a single person has been able to stop Michael so naturally they’re
frustrated and extremely pissed off.
They chase after a completely different escaped mental patient and want
to kill him because they erroneously think he’s the killer. Then some character has the out loud
realization that Michael has turned the good citizens of Haddonfield into
monsters. Yea, we can see that. Thanks for knocking us over the noggin.
None of the humor lands.
Overall Impressions: I wasn’t the biggest fan of the
2018 Halloween but it had a few neat ideas like Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis
(Beverly Hills Chihuahua)) becoming a paranoid survivalist who’s
convinced Michael will return one day and attack her and there were some
impressive showcases of Michael dispatching his victims (the one long tracking
shot following him through different houses, the flood light in the yard
turning on and off so you never know where he’ll pop up next, etc). This installment has almost nothing to cling
onto and keep you engaged. The only
scene I really dig is Michael vs a team of firefighters during an actual
fire. The concept is weird enough and
executed well enough that it made for some entertaining imagery.
Even with all of that said my main issue might be that
there’s a mean spiritedness to this film that I don’t care for. A lot of innocent people die and in
horrifically grisly ways and it’s like why?
I mean one poor bastard gets his head pounded against a wall and three
or four knives stuck in his back. And he
wasn’t setup as an asshole or gave us any reason to dislike him. If the filmmakers were trying to remind us
that Michael is the devil and to not root for him they went about it the wrong
way. Good guy characters need to be
built up so we have a connection with them and then you can kill them off for
an emotional gut punch. But to murder
too many random folks who are just minding their own business is a fundamental misunderstanding
of storytelling in my opinion.
On top of this there are technical problems that don’t add
up like characters inexplicably teleporting in scenes or Michael putting on
music after posing the victims’ bodies which seems amazingly out of character. All this shit is annoying but also incredibly
tedious so I’ll just leave it at that.
Oh man, the more I think about it the worse this movie
gets. It’s very violent and not really
in a fun way. And while it initially may
have seemed awesome that they’re doing two sequels back to back they don’t appear
to have a roadmap on where they’re going.
What the hell is the next one gonna be like?
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