Well it had to happen eventually. This year was the one that got away when it comes to my established tradition. Over the last year I've been very busy working on two new podcasts that I'm pleased to say are going well and that I'm very proud of, but as a result and coupled with the other madness of life I simply didn't have time to watch three films on Halloween night this year. But a tradition is a tradition and for my blog "Hit or Miss: The Big Screen" I have watched three films over the last couple of weeks, all from the extremely appropriate same franchise; Halloween (1978), Halloween (2018) and Halloween Kills.
Reviews for both of these films exist here on this blog already so at the risk of being redundant I shan't copy them here again. However I did actually record new, updated reviews for the aforementioned Big Screen Podcast which you can watch for yourself here;
https://youtu.be/_IEx5RxXlqE a
Halloween (1978): ***** (5/5)
Halloween (2018): ***1/2 (3.5/5)
Halloween Kills
Let me start by saying that as somebody who has seen every Halloween movie, a Film Studies graduate and a person that has a good few years of reviewing films under my belt that I have absolutely NO clue what the majority of critics are talking about with this one. For the sake of background I hold up Carpenter's 1978 film as a legitimate masterpiece, I've at least enjoyed most of the sequels and I found that the 2018 predecessor to this movie was good, but not great. So going into this film I expected I'd probably feel the same. I was wrong. I was wowed. Impressive direction and fantastic plotting which is both unafraid of a little social commentary and of embracing the unexpected.
It's also wonderfully respectful to the 1978 film. Multiple returning actors playing the same characters (and a couple of recasts), copied camera set ups, angles and scene stagings all impressed. There's even an incredibly impressive recreation of the original film's look and feel for a flashback to previously unseen events on Halloween night 1978, including massively impressive prosthetics and voice work that brought the late, great Donald Pleasance back to the screen far better and more respectfully than CGI ever could. It was jaw dropping. All of this and even a sly, winking Easter Egg to Halloween 3: Season of the Witch that made me smile. The acting was impressive, the direction doubly so, although the overly gruesome & gory nature of the kills and how uncompromising David Gordon Green is will definitely not appeal to everyone! Forgive me but I don't mind a little gore and inventive killing in my slashers and I got that here. Perhaps my complaint would be that none of the sequels have shown the restraint of an original film & director that didn't need to be visceral to depict terror & atmosphere, but that's another case where this film is a truly worthy follow up with glorious atmospheric light & shadow, real tension & a pervasive sense of fear.
It's not perfect; Jamie Lee Curtis has SHOCKINGLY little to do (though I assume that will be remedied in next year's Halloween Ends), there's some infantile humour that doesn't quite hit the mark and naturally the film goes for a couple of cheap jump scares, though they aren't all that offensive, feeling rather arbitrary and like even the director knows they are necessary but wants them out of the way. It's also by definition an incomplete movie with a bit of a shock cliffhanger that I won't spoil but very much makes this feel like a part of a story less than a contained whole. I still think it does some stuff here that really works though.
Overall I'm glad I saw this film on the big screen and that I didn't go in with any bias. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I truly can't wait for the sequel that's now beautifully set up. See you next year when Halloween Ends!
****1/2 (4.5/5)
MM
