With spooky season in full swing, the timing could not be better for me to look back at the unexpected birth of a horror franchise that has lived on for more than forty years in the hearts and minds of moviegoers. And that franchise is none other than the Halloween movies. Initiated by John Carpenter’s low-budget classic from 1978, viewers watched seven sequels and two remakes over the course of the next thirty-plus years that were met with varying degrees of negative reception.
And then, in 2018, under the direction of indie darling David Gordon Green and writer-producer Danny McBride, the series was softly rebooted with a direct sequel to Carpenter’s original film while ignoring everything else. Its box-office success birthed a new trilogy under Green’s direction that concludes with Halloween Ends hitting theaters (and Peacock) this weekend. Thus, I want to look back at this newly-created “quadrilogy” to solve, once and for all, if all the retconning and soft rebooting was worth it. So, without further ado…LET’S GET STARTED! Halloween (1978) For a summary of the production and release of Halloween, click here. Full transparency: I’m not the biggest John Carpenter fan. While I appreciate the artistic achievement of his cult sci-fi horror flick The Thing and thought that his sci-fi romance movie Starman oddly charming, he’s by no means my favorite director from the “New Hollywood” generation. That being said, however, I uphold his 1978 film Halloween as not just one of the greatest “slashers” ever made but as a well-deserving horror classic that holds up to this day. For starters, Halloween remains a great example of low-budget filmmaking at its finest. As both co-writer and director, Carpenter’s approach to both the script and the shots exemplify how (unlike some other accomplished directors) he crafted a movie that played into its lack of money rather than allowing it to get the best of him. His direction of the cinematography, combined with the staging of the scenes, rely not on heavy-duty special effects but classic tension that can be a slow burn at time. Ultimately, however, such an approach worked to his advantage in terms of making Halloween a movie that transcends its time as opposed to feeling tied down by it. But, undoubtedly the greatest technical achievement of Halloween is its score. Also done by Carpenter, the signature theme (most strongly associated with Michael Myers in the film) goes down as one of the best musical stingers of cinematic history alongside the iconic themes from Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, and Indiana Jones made by the industry-defining work of John Williams. Similar to those signature genre themes, the ways in which Carpenter applies the music to certain scenes does a great job of enhancing the horror and ratcheting up the tension. Surprisingly, I’ve found that music in horror movies (in my humble opinion) often works against the director’s overall creative vision by either being too excessive to be special or too minimalistic to feel impactful. Fortunately, that is not the case with Carpenter’s score in Halloween. When it comes to the atmosphere of horror movies, I found on a rewatch that Halloween managed to form a very distinguished and recognizable eerie vibe from the get-go. Even after the noteworthy opening POV-shot scene of young Michael Myers (Will Sandin) murdering his older sister Judith (Sandy Johnson), seemingly without remorse, the film’s time jump with Dr. Sam Loomis (Donald Pleasance) and nurse (Nancy Stephens) embraces a midnight drive through a rainstorm to peak effect. But, more importantly, the small town of Haddonfield Illinois never feels like a place where an elusive killer like the adult Michael Myers (Nick Castle) is unbelievable. Quite the opposite, in fact; Carpenter’s portrayal of the town and its residents in the first and second acts adds to the horror that Michael’s victims experience on Halloween night because nobody wants to peak behind the curtains and become invested in other people’s lives and problems. Unfortunately for many of the characters, that level of small-town nosiness could have saved lives. But what about the characters? Are any of them memorable? Aside from the protagonist and antagonist, not really. But they don’t need to be because Halloween relies on the audience sympathizing with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) while simultaneously longing for Michael Myers to kill more of her friends. Carpenter excels at striking this balancing act, allowing for Strode to cement her legacy as one of the original and most iconic “final girls” of the horror genre. Curtis’s portrayal of the plain, wholesome teenager is somehow relatable and pleasant in the first two-thirds of the flick before turning into raw, emotional fear during the climactic fight. In other words, I am certainly glad that Strode has remained a central character of the franchise (particularly David Gordon Green’s “H40” trilogy). But, I think that Halloween ultimately sits on the shoulders of Nick Castle’s embodiment of “The Shape.” He terrifyingly embodies the pseudo-faceless and speechless killer who represents the primal nature of death and human nature. In fact, I would argue that the film is even more enjoyable if viewed through his eyes. As the villainous protagonist, Michael Myers’s quest to relive the thrill of killing his sister fifteen years prior by dispensing Haddonfield of its several horny teenagers an experience that you are genuinely invested in. At the end of the day, Halloween may not be the best acted or producer horror movie compared to some of recent years. But if you watch it, you cannot deny its timeless appeal as a progenitor of the modern slasher flick that remains a brief piece of entertainment and an impressively crafted work of art nearly a half-century after it was released. Halloween (2018) Having never seen a single sequel to Carpenter’s original Halloween flick, I counted myself fortunate when the news of David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Stronger) making a direct sequel that would ignore all previous sequels came out. Simply put, I carried no baggage into the theater four years ago seeing 2018’s Halloween for the first time which (in my humble opinion) made the experience more enjoyable. But, the question now was: does Green’s first entry in his “H40” trilogy hold up now? At least for me, the answer is a resounding yes. Much to many peoples’ surprise, Green’s collaboration with Danny McBride crafting a retcon four decades after Carpenter’s film somehow pulls off an incredible feat of this kind of filmmaking. Not only does it respect the original work in the writing and direction, but it also modernizes the story of Michael Myers going on a killing spree by treating its main cast as (mostly) intelligent and resourceful in addition to fleshing out the specter that his murders in 1978 cast over Haddonfield ever since. Of course, no one was more traumatized by the events of the original Halloween movie than Laurie Strode herself. As the sole survivor of “The Shape” forty years prior, Strode’s descent into trauma-inspired paranoia is undoubtedly the heart of Green’s film. Unlike in the original, Jamie Lee Curtis is no longer a young, inexperienced actor here. Rather, she pitch-perfectly embodies the effects of PTSD have had on the character and the ramifications of that night. From her complicated relationships with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) to her psychotic break around the Halloween season, Curtis expertly shows the audience how Strode has effectively avoided processing her trauma and moved on from it. Instead, she has become like a war veteran in her later years whose obsessive trap-building, security measures, and weapons training reflect her inability to move on. Sure, it helps her and her family in the third act but that’s beside the point. 😊 The other character from the original that gets much-deserved respect in 2018’s Halloween is Michael Myers himself (now primarily played by James Jude Courtney). Whereas in Carpenter’s film the iconic serial killer is largely relegated to the realm of reality (until the final scene, that is), here Green and McBride fully blur the lines of the true nature of “The Shape.” Throughout the film, characters like true crime podcasters Dana (Rhian Rees) and Aaron (Jefferson Hall) and Michael Myers’s new psychiatrist Dr. Ranbir Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) examine if Myers is just an adaptive and remorseless murderer or if he truly does emit elements of the supernatural. In this movie, “The Shape” fully takes form as the stoic “boogeyman” which elevates it to a thoroughly enjoyable slasher flick that’s bloodier and more gruesome than its predecessor. And, if you ask me, it’s better off for it. That being said, 2018’s Halloween is by no means perfect. Certainly, it includes a few too many visual homages to Carpenter’s movie that almost—key word ALMOST—pushes the film into camp territory. However, the two incredible tribute shots (Laurie Strode standing outside Allyson’s classroom and Michael Myers looking over the balcony to find Laurie gone) more than make up for the several less-than-good callbacks. In terms of the movie’s structure, it is a little slow in the first act largely due to the fact that podcasters Dana and Aaron are simply not very interesting characters to follow. By about twenty minutes, I started asking myself: “How long do they survive?” Fortunately, my wish was answered within the first thirty or forty minutes when Michael Myers fled the bus crash and brutally murdered the podcasters in one fell swoop. This is the catalyst for an amazingly visceral and compelling second-act rampage involving Myers indiscriminately murdering on Halloween night back in Haddonfield. Using a great one-shot following Myers through the neighborhood, Green successfully ratchets up the tension before bringing the conflict to the personal level involving Allyson’s friend-zoned classmate Oscar (Drew Scheid) and Deputy Frank Hawkins (Will Patton) being victims of either Myers himself or the effect he has on people trying to decipher the substance behind his evil deeds. And, of course, it all culminates in an utter blast of a third-act showdown between Michael Myers and three generations of Strodes—all of whom get at least one moment to shine—in which “The Shape” is defeated with brains instead of brawn. Thanks to Laurie’s hidden trap, the movie ends in the visual feast of Laurie’s home burning to the ground with Myers trapped in it before Laurie, Karen, and Allyson flee into the night to mourn their losses of family and friends. In all honesty, there are few more perfect endings to a recent horror movie than 2018’s Halloween. While, in my humble opinion, Green’s first entry in his “H40” trilogy doesn’t quite emanate the vibe of a classic like Carpenter’s 1978 flick. However, it stands on its own as a more-than-entertaining sequel that could have—and, perhaps, should have—served as the end of a retconning duology for Laurie Strode’s story. With a solid murder rampage from Myers and a thoroughly satisfying climax wherein Laurie’s daughter and granddaughter helping her defeat Myers symbolizes the mending of their complicated relationships, I don’t think a better bookend to Halloween could have been than what this movie accomplished. But, the business of moviemaking is a thing and thus Universal Pictures could not help themselves by greenlighting two sequels after 2018’s Halloween grossed 255 million dollars (becoming the highest-grossing slasher movie of all time). So, what did Green and McBride come up with for Halloween Kills? Halloween Kills (2021) Man, did they fumble the ball with this movie. I don’t care what criticisms you may have for Carpenter’s original from 1978 or Green’s first film of the franchise from 2018. No matter the gripes one might hold against those movies, they simply don’t hold a candle to the near-abomination that is Halloween Kills. I want to be clear that the movie had potential to be a fun continuation of the story from 2018’s Halloween. While it had no chance of living up to the iconic status of the original, it could have stood on its own as a solid piece of entertaining “slasher” filmmaking. But it just isn’t. From the piss-poor screenplay to the uninteresting characters, Halloween Kills possesses little can be called good. But, let’s highlight some of those positives before diving into the horrid aspects of this movie. I mean…Carpenter’s music is still great. And…Michael’s kills are good, I guess. And…the flashback scenes are cool…That’s it. ☹ I think one of the biggest problems I have with Halloween Kills is how unnecessary it feels. Even before the trilogy comes to a close with Halloween Ends, I can find virtually no justification for this movie existing other than as a shameless cash-grab to give Green and his crew time to write and prepare to film the sequel. But, why is this movie bad? Let me explain why. 😊 First and foremost, Green and the writers decide to evolve the mythos of Michael Myers from the embodiment of death that the first two Halloween movies did in favor of some forced social commentary about the effects that social paranoia have in crises like these. While the intention is noble, I just think that they misunderstood the kind of movie they were making. To be clear, slasher movies can excel at providing sharp critique about humanity (David Robert Mitchell’s low-budget flick It Follows is a great example). But, more often than not, these movies should be nothing more than sleek entertainment. Yet Green’s indie sensibilities dragged Halloween Kills down when he tried to make it more than that and fell so incredibly short in the process. Beyond the story itself, there is such a drastic and off-putting tonal shift from 2018’s Halloween to this movie. Whereas the former relied more on witty bits of sharp humor designed to break tension in the lead up to savage kills, the latter gives us lazy, over-the-top performances from several principal cast members that are unceremoniously murdered with an excessive amount of blood and guts that feels cheap and uninspired by comparison. In other words, I feel like Halloween Kills is not happening in the same world as the two movies that preceded it. Instead, it creates its own distinctive tone and vibe for the worse. However, perhaps the most damning creative choice was for Halloween Kills to shift the story’s focus away from Laurie Strode and her family in favor of bringing back several survivors of Michael Myers’s murder spree in 1978: namely, Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) and Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) whom Laurie babysat that night, Dr. Loomis’s nurse assistant Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), and Tommy’s childhood bully Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet). Simply put, none of these characters are as compelling survivors nor are these actors as talented as Jamie Lee Curtis (or even Andi Matichak or Will Patton). As a result, the whole plot revolving around the townsfolk gathering into a mob to hunt down Michael Myers ends up feeling vacuous when it should have been engrossing. All of these problems, however, can be tied back to the creative decision by Green and the writers to have Halloween Kills pick up right where its predecessor left off. If some time passed, we could have explored the generational trauma passed down to Laurie’s daughter and granddaughter as a result of them surviving Myers’s rampage while also grieving the death of their husband and father, respectively, Ray (Toby Huss). Instead, we get one brief scene of Karen and Allyson holding together and acknowledging his death before chaos falls upon the hospital where Laurie is laid up. This did not help the fact that I was not at all invested in any of the other characters’ journeys, and with Laurie wounded and in a hospital bed, the lack of focus on Allyson or Karen in favor of Tommy Doyle taking center stage just makes the movie a less-than-adequate, pointless “slasher” sequel. While I can dream that the final film of the “H40” trilogy will retroactively make Halloween Kills a better movie, I’m by no means getting my hopes high. Ultimately, I just want Halloween Ends to be good. Halloween Ends (2022) [NOTE: This blog contains spoilers for “Halloween Ends.” You have been warned.] Is this the worst movie ever made? It’d be dishonest of me to say so… However, I think that Halloween Ends is quite possibly the worst way to conclude both this trilogy of films as well as the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers that John Carpenter began in 1978. And while I could nit-pick individual scenes for the weird writing, clunk dialogue, and laborious pace, I want to approach my critique of the movie in a different way. First, to highlight the primary reason why (in my humble opinion) Halloween Ends simply doesn’t work: the introduction of the Corey Cunningham character. Now, to be clear, I have no qualms whatsoever with Rohan Campbell (the actor that played Corey Cunningham). In fact, I think he did the best he could with the material he was given by evoking an ounce of sympathy out of me in the first act before turning full-on serial killer and committing some of the most gruesome kills of any of these Halloween flicks. But, I just cannot get behind the creative decision of David Gordon Green and his writers to introduce a brand-new protagonist in the third and final movie of their trilogy that they expect us to care about just as much (if not more so) than Laurie Strode or her granddaughter. Overall, the first eighty-ish minutes of Halloween Ends feels like a giant middle finger from Green to fans of both the original Halloween movie and his own 2018 sequel by doubling down on spending so little time on both Laurie and Michael Myers. Instead, the movie’s entire first act and much of its second act tries (and fails) to be a character study of Corey Cunningham who embodies the “infection” that Michael Myers has left with Haddonfield itself. With echoes of Pennywise the Clown’s malevolent influence on Derry from Stephen King’s “It” (albeit far less interesting or impactful), Halloween Ends turns Michael Myers into a virus more so than an unstoppable murderer in order to make the point that the true evil lies with the people of Haddonfield and the town itself. Could this have worked in an indie, no-name horror movie like It Comes at Night? Sure, but this is the finale to a trilogy four years in the making and, more importantly, a conclusion to a story that began nearly fifty years ago! Because of that undeniable fact that Green inexplicably forgot about while making this movie, Halloween Ends comes off mostly as a wasted opportunity to conclude Laurie Strode and Michael Myers’s story in satisfying fashion. Thus, after finishing this movie, I asked myself: how could it be done better? And as I sat on the toilet pondering it, I decided to write a treatment that kept the first twenty or so minutes of Green’s version of Halloween Ends intact but diverged it from there into a story that I think would be both more coherent and more entertaining than what we were actually given. So, if you will indulge me, I’d like to share my take on the finale to this forty-four-year journey that Laurie and Michael have been on. Without further ado…here it goes! 😊 Okay, so after Corey Cunningham wakes up from being pushed over the side of the highway and enters the sewers he is killed in spectacular fashion by an in-hiding Michael Myers (the first diversion from Green and company’s screenplay). The next morning, Laurie and Allyson learn of Corey’s death on the news; despite Allyson trying to grieve, Laurie snaps back into paranoia mode as she’s convinced that Michael is back and is going to track them both down. Despite Allyson’s protests, Laurie forces her to flee Haddonfield together. Thus, the second act is essentially an “anti-buddy” road trip/on-the-run movie that explores Allyson’s trauma and culminates in an emotional argument between her and Laurie wherein she blames her grandmother for all of the horrible things that have happened to her since the 2018 movie (specifically, the fact that her obsession to face off against Michael Myers indirectly caused the deaths of her friends and parents). In the aftermath of the fight, Allyson leaves Laurie alone not long before Michael Myers finds and attacks her to conclude the second act. Their first fight is gruesome, but Laurie narrowly escapes Michael and decides to return to Haddonfield because she’s now convinced that the only way to end this all is to go back where her journey with Michael began: the childhood home of Tommy Doyle where Michael nearly killed her over forty years prior. Upon arriving there (the house is abandoned or vacant), Laurie sets up several traps for Michael as she mentally prepares herself for battle (a callback to the militaristic, PTSD-stricken version of the character from Green’s 2018 movie). Then, we get a “calm before the storm” scene where Laurie calls Allyson but it goes to voicemail in which she apologizes to Allyson for her trauma being passed down to both herself and her mother Karen while also asking that, if she hears this, to contact Deputy Frank Hawkins so he can bring the police to the house and find hers and Michael’s bodies (implying that she doesn’t plan to survive this final encounter). Once Michael finally shows up, him and Laurie Strode have an epic showdown throughout the Doyle house (including some visual callbacks to the 1978 film). She is nearly killed more than once, but Laurie manages to finally pin Michael down (much like she actually does in Halloween Ends) and prepares to finally end it all by killing him. However, Michael briefly breaks free and nearly chokes Laurie to death (like in the actual movie) before Allyson arrives, debilitates him, and she and Laurie kill Michael Myers together (like in the actual movie). With the battle over, Allyson helps Laurie bring Michael’s body outside to show to Frank and the Haddonfield cops (who came thanks to Allyson’s warning). Finally, the film ends with a flash-forward one year into the future showing that Allyson has moved away from Haddonfield to start a new life. However, she still keeps in touch with Laurie who has finished her memoir (like in the actual movie) and is finally at peace (á la the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2). I’m no screenwriter, but I came up with what essentially amounts to two acts of a Halloween movie in the span of ten minutes while using the bathroom. If I could do that, certainly multiple paid writers could have concocted a better conclusion to this four-film story than what they actually put out. Again, my pitch isn’t the most original storyline but I’m wholly convinced it would have been a more faithful and entertaining way to end this series without a doubt. Simply put, Halloween Ends is a pathetic excuse for both a sequel and the conclusion to the “H40” trilogy. At the end of the day, how will I remember these four Halloween movies? All differently, of course. Carpenter’s original Halloween from 1978 remains a classic horror movie that defined the “slasher” flick for years to come, while Green’s direct sequel from 2018 earns its reputation as an overall fulfilling continuation of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers’s story that balances the inherent silliness of the slasher subgenre with some genuine thrills and great character moments for both Laurie and Michael. And the two sequels to the 2018 film are bad. Honestly, just watch Carpenter’s film and Green’s first film and ignore that the other two even exist. Trust me; you’ll get much more out of this franchise by doing so. With all that said, here is my official ranking of these four Halloween films:
What is your favorite Halloween film? Are you excited or nervous about David Gordon Green bringing his filmmaking style to The Exorcist franchise next year? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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