Halloween Ends (2022)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matchiak, James Jude Courtney, Rohan Campbell

Have I Seen it Before: Well, that’s really the whole point, isn’t it?

Did I Like It: There is literally no opinion about this movie that isn’t controversial, so we probably better get this one out of the way right away:

Yes. My name is Mac Boyle, and I enjoyed Halloween Ends. If you’re no longer here when I get to the next paragraph, I’ll understand. We’ll always have that romantic motorcycle ride we took between murders.

Still here?

Okay.

Ends is a meditation on the effect of violence on people. Some of them try to force the idea of moving on. Some collapse in on themselves. Still more try to wield that evil for their own in a vain, flailing attempt to exert dominion over their lives. It also has a little, itty bitty flirtation with a golden-year romance between two characters I have spent a lot of time liking over the past several years. I’ll admit that if your relationship to the Halloween series is entirely dependent on the series adhering to its tried-and-true formula, this film isn’t going to work for you. But I am forever a sucker—like Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)—for a sequel that Trojan-horses an entirely different genre into their series. Green’s movies have been unique echoes of what Carpenter might have done with the series had he not given up on the whole affair back in the 80s.

Now, given the amount of breath I’ve wasted over the last fifteen years complaining about Rob Zombie’s two films in the series, you would might be totally justified in thinking me something of a hippocrite. But consider this; for all of the weird new territory that this film attempts (I will admit, not everything about the film works 100%; I’m looking in your direction, band kids), Michael and The Shape (Courtney) is still that strange kid who woke up one day and decided to start and never stop stabbing people. No siblings. No Thorn. No “Love Hurts” and disappointing stripper moms. If the core of what made something work in the first place stays in tact, then I’m ready to go in a lot of weird directions

Halloween Kills (2021)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Two new movies in such a short amount of time. What an embarrassment of riches. I caught the movie on Peacock because a) Still not entirely sure who would be breathing on me in a movie theater, so if there’s another option, why not go for it and b) I can take a watch through the shockingly good Saved by the Bell relaunch.

Wasn’t thinking one of my reviews of the Halloween movies would include a reference to Saved by the Bell, but here we are…

Did I Like It: Hawkins (Patton) lives! Is that enough for a review? Probably not. I so enjoyed that character, and was injured by his apparent death in the last film, I’m willing to give the whole affair a pass.

As a sequel to Green’s Halloween (2018), it is probably safe to say that this film isn’t the same uniformly satisfying experience. I think that, largely, is fueling some of the negative reaction* to the film. Characters are introduced (in many cases, reintroduced) at a lightning pace, and disposed of nearly as quickly. Jamie Lee Curtis—such a vital, essential presence in the last film—is relegated to a hospital bed for the runtime, echoing some of the stranger decisions in Halloween II (1981). I don’t buy for a moment that the men who live in the Myers house now are somehow the only people in town who weren’t aware (or suspected, or were ready to form a mob because) Myers was on a rampage again. The film is perhaps a bit too obsessed with the mythology of the character that I can’t help but get the sinking feeling the next film will commit that most odious sin and try to explain Myers.

The shape (if you’ll forgive the expression) of this trilogy is incomplete, and so this film might end up being remembered as something of a fundamental mess, or perhaps just a victim of the middle-trilogy syndrome. I get the sense that Green and Company have some very specific ideas for what the forthcoming Halloween Ends will look like, and this movie is largely a clearing house from the last film, when it isn’t obsessed with setting the table for the next.

But there are plenty of things to like about the film. The flashbacks to 1978 (a sequence which was attempted for the last movie, but cut for budgetary reason) are great fun, and only add to the hero that is Sheriff Hawkins. When the film finally unleashes in its final minutes, it does so in a rather surprising fashion. A Carpenter score is a Carpenter score, and you can never go wrong with it.

Ultimately, any review really must exist in context. Anyone who hates this movie is either so weighed down by unreasonable expectations, determined to react to every movie in bad faith, or has not watched any of the other films recently. I watched all of them in the last week, and it’s clear this is one of the better films to feature Michael Audrey Myers, just not the best.

*Interesting note. Peacock posts the current Rotten Tomatoes score on the HUD when the movie is paused or just starting to play. The film’s score went up a whole percent while we watched the vanity cards. I’ve never seen the consensus change (to very nearly fresh, no less) as I started watching a film.

Halloween II (2009)

Director: Rob Zombie

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Tyler Mane, Sheri Moon Zombie, Brad Dourif

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. After my initial reactions to Halloween (2007), I’m not entirely sure why I would subject myself to it, and I even remember having a good laugh at the fact that the first time I tried to watch it on disc, my PS3 refused to recognize the disc.

Almost as if it were trying to protect me.

Did I Like It: I think one of the big problems I had with Zombie’s original film was that for all of the hype of his “unique vision,” the film couldn’t help but just be a tinny, discordant retread of the really original Halloween (1978).

Can’t really say that about this one, now, can we?

If we really must deal with a Michael Myers (Mane) stripped of any of the artifice of previous films (indeed, he lurches through large portions of the film unmasked, an he even talks) then maybe, just maybe this is the best possible version of that interpretation? I’m tempted to say it is. I’m confident that this is a much better film than Zombie’s first attempt. I’m even pleased to say that Zombie’s largely kept his worst impulses under control, aside from a few moments.

The visual flourishes show a greater deal of imagination on Zombie’s part, and the violence is once again unflinching.

That might be the one problem I continue to have with Zombie’s attempts. The violence is unsettling, which is certainly a choice. It keeps us from being desensitized in our passive observation, but despite all of this, I can’t help but think Zombie still view Myers as the hero of the piece. He’s ready to tear apart every other character (sometimes literally) and make them angry, hateful version of their predecessors. Is there no hope—if even for catharsis—in a Rob Zombie movie? Is that the whole point?

Halloween (2007)

Director: Rob Zombie

Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Sheri Moon Zombie, Tyler Mane, Scout Taylor-Compton

Have I Seen it Before: Ugh. Yes. Let’s start with a note before I even begin this screening. There are few films which have annoyed me more over the years. But this time, I’m going to try and take the film in under its own terms and see if I can’t come to some kind of peace with the film. Let’s see how it works.

Did I Like It: I want to start the review proper with the things that are good, or at least I can get behind in the film.

After a litany of director-for-hires making under protest films they really didn’t want to, Rob Zombie is a director offering a vision of the material.

Malcolm McDowell is legitimately terrific casting for the new Sam Loomis. He has close enough to Donald Pleasance’s energy, with just a pinch more sinister cynicism and a bit less campy magic to make him a new presence.

Zombie’s depiction of violence is visceral. It’s impossible to be desensitized by this film, if for no other reason than its primary goal from moment to moment is not to entertain, but to provide discomfort.

I’m trying to find other things, and I will admit that I probably didn’t viscerally hate the movie on this screening, but I still don’t like it. Ultimately, I’m not a fan of Zombie’s aesthetic, and it is here in spades. He recasts Myers (Daeg Faerch as a child, Tyler Mane as an adult) not as the boy down the street who inexplicably became the visage of evil. Here, the kid meaner than the meanest bully becomes and even meaner person as time progresses. Myers is so over-explained, and in such a pedestrian way that I honestly can’t tell—despite all of the nauseating violence on display—whether or not Zombie wants us to root for the shape.

And that startling new vision? It’s more often than not watered down, usually collapsing under either a need to have four or five different climaxes, or just aping the scenes from the Carpenter original.

I’m not a purist, or at least I try not to be, but I find making Myers just another psychopath with a checklist of every little element in the DSM.

And that’s what Zombie is, ultimately. Cheap.

After all that, I need a break before I even dream of taking in Halloween II (2009)…

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Cast: Busta Rhymes, Bianca Kajlich, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Katee Sackhoff

Have I Seen it Before: It was, indeed released on my 18th birthday. After a screening that weekend of Road to Perdition (2002) that ended more depressingly than could be exclusively blamed on the film itself, some pals and I went to go see this to try and save the weekend from itself.

And damned if I didn’t have a great time with it.

Did I Like It: This is not to say that I’m going to take the borderline psychotic view that Halloween: Resurrection is a better film than Sam Mendes’ crime epic, just that I would make the point that taking in a movie at a certain time in one’s life can create wildly—sometimes laughably—subjective opinions.

A lot of time has passed since that screening 19 years ago, and the movie has since descended into a lot of noise. The first reel of the film serves only to discount Halloween H20 (1998), and is interesting only in the sense that it looks like Jamie Lee Curtis is being held against her will. The rest of the film is a mishmash of half-formed ideas, moments filled with anti-tension, and choices (Kung Fu, anyone?) that to recommend the film would be an act of sadism. 

The film no longer engages or entertains, it only distracts. My big takeaway all these years later is that people in Haddonfield don’t know how to count. Myers (Brad Loree) is often referred to as variations of America’s worst mass murderer, but it also—discounting the continuity of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)—notes that, combined total, Michael Myers has killed about a dozen people over the course of 20 years. In an era of mass shootings, and only a year after 9/11, that comes across as a slightly ridiculous statement in a film that is already filled to the brim with them. Hell, when we throw John Wayne Gacy into the mix, Myers is not even the Illinois state champ.

And yet, the movie—try as it might—is not without some positive developments. For one thing, Myers’ mask looks pretty okay, that already has the film mastering one element that other sequels perpetually whiffed. 

To move beyond the superficial, the film does largely try to jettison the mythology of familicide that has weighed down even the more watchable of the previous sequels, but never gains anywhere near the needed velocity to break orbit from the past. To go further, it turns a dim eye toward previous attempts to explain the evil that lives within Myers. Both impulses were reckoned with far more effectively in the eventual Halloween (2018), and so these attempts to be new and interesting only serve to illuminate how severely off the mark the series has travelled from the John Carpenter original…

Then again, I still have my rewatch of the Rob Zombie films to look forward to. So, things could always be worse.

Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later (1998)

Director: Steve Miner

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams, LL Cool J

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I do remember the first time I ever heard about the film. Jamie Lee Curtis was presenting at some awards show, and was introduced as the star of the upcoming Halloween: H20. I was naturally intrigued that Curtis was returning to the series, but based on the title I assumed Laurie Strode had become some kind of latter-day Jacques Cousteau and her brother had come to hunt his sister on some seabase on the ocean floor, like Sphere (1998) meets the original Halloween (1978)…

…actually, now that I think about it, that wouldn’t be the worst possible conceit for a movie. A slasher movie on a submarine. I kinda want to do that now. I might very well do it now.

Anyway…

Did I Like It: The Halloween series, after the wobbly, disjoined affair that was Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) was doomed to follow the path set by other Dimension properties—like Hellraiser*—to direct-to-video depths.

I can’t help but wonder if that might have been better for the series as a whole. The movies—free of meeting corporate requirements for a wide theatrical release—could have gotten a lot weirder. Halloween has never been better than when its being completely ignored by the world at large.

But that’s not the world we live in now, nor is it the world where Thorn governs Michael Myers’ predilections, and every employee of Smiths Grove (except that one) was in on it. This is the world where Jamie Lee Curtis decided to become nostalgic for the beginnings of her career.

The movie that results is slight before it is anything else. Indeed, it has the shortest running time of any in the series, owing largely to the fact that an entire subplot revolving around the detective called to investigate the murder of Nurse Chambers (Nancy Stephens) and his hunt for the Shape.

And yet, there’s an argument to be made that the film could be even shorter. Something has happened to my Blu Ray over the years since I bought it, and it skipped it’s way through several sequences. This didn’t take anything away from the experience, though. That’s not an exceptionally strong endorsement for the movie, I realize. I’m tempted to think that it owes too much to Scream (1996) (which, in turn, owes too much to the original Halloween). A copy of a copy won’t be as sharp as original. Multiplicity (1996) taught me that much. Also, the one-two punch of Halloween: Resurrection (2002) and Halloween (2018) rendered any of the films strengths mostly moot.

And then there’s the mask… As much as I complain about the mask in previous sequels, here it looks mostly okay. Until it absolutely doesn’t. Some reshooting after test screenings necessitated the mask being grafted on via CGI. If there’s one thing that CGI in the 90s did really well, it was recreate things that were already real objects at other points in the film.

You can try to explain to me why they couldn’t just use a single mask, or at least a single mold of a mask, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.

*At one point, after Freddy vs. Jason (2003), there was even talk of forcing the Shape to go toe-to-pin with Pinhead. Let us thank Thorn that we avoided that, or at the very least, that I have avoided having to write about.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of the Michael Myers (1989)

Director: Dominique Othernin-Gerard

Cast: Donald Pleasance, Danielle Harris, Ellie Cornell, Beau Starr

Have I Seen it Before: When I wrote a story a few years bak about a boy terrified that the VHS boxes in the horror section of a rental store are out to get him, my memory of first eyeing this movie’s poster in a Homeland’s video rental department* that inspired it.

Did I Like It: Now, if only the film had lived up to that moment of undefined anxiety completely divorced from any context. Any virtues of Halloween 4: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1988) are washed away (literally, there’s a raging rapid and some waterfalls) in this film’s opening minutes.

Pleasance goes from camp hero to camp lunatic in this one, sadly paving the way for the work Malcolm McDowell will do in another fifteen years. Harris continues to equate herself well.

But every Halloween film that tries to immediately follow after the (sometimes mild) successes of their predecessors end up with even more problems in the end equation. If the concept of the Man in Black and the Thorn cult would have landed anywhere comprehensible, then at least the series might have landed in a campy mythological place. Here, things aren’t the worst yet, but they are grim portents of sequels and reboots to come.

Also, the mask is still unrelenting trash. I’d rather wear a real Silver Shamrock mask. I could write a whole book about these masks, but I don’t want that kind of evil in my life.

But that’s all fine, because at this point the film series would really have to have run out of steam, and there aren’t going to be any more Halloween movies to come.

If only.

*Long, long ago, grocery stores often had their own video rental stores in them. It was a wild time. Kids, ask your parents all about it.

Halloween II (1981)

Director: Rick Rosenthal

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, Dick Warlock*, Lance Guest

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. In fact, from cable TV airings, I’m reasonably sure it’s actually the first movie in the series I ever saw.

Did I Like It: Sigh. The movie has much to answer for, but it also has a great deal to recommend it.

Yes, John Carpenter simultaneously shotgunned his way through a case of beer and the bridge between the second and third acts of this movie. In the process, he made Laurie Strode (Curtis) the long-lost sister of Michael Myers (Warlock). Sure, it gets Loomis back to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital for the finale, but it also straps an albatross of mythology onto a film series that, in its original form, was pure suspense and a minimum of history.

The violence here is amped up, probably unnecessarily so and also begins the series’ unfortunate tendency to follow the trends set up by other horror films, instead of establishing them as it did previously. Putting Strode in a sedative-laden fog for much of the movie could have added a layer of suspense to the proceedings, but is handled unevenly.

But I can discount the film entirely, and I don’t think much of it is tied to my fond memories of the movie from childhood. Donald Pleasance remains amped to his campy best, and remains a delight in the series for the rest of his life. The cinematography of Dean Cundey—one of the most understated and under-appreciated elements that made the original Halloween (1978) one of the greatest films of all time—continues to acquit itself quite well. 

Also, once the film does finally get going, it unleashes tension quite well, although I wonder if that had more to do with John Carpenter’s re-engagement with the film after an initial cut failed to satisfy anyone. The sequence where Strode is running from the shape, but is stymied by the slow ministrations of a basement elevator are simple, unnerving, and have to do this day introduced just an ounce of anxiety into every time I try to use an elevator.

If only the rest of the series could keep it up.

*Great name for a stuntman, or greatest name for a stuntman? There is no third option. Also, is it just me, or does every cast member not in the original movie sound like they have porn star names?

Halloween (2018)

Director: David Gordon Green

Cast: Jamie Lee Motherfuckin’ Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, and Will Patton (my new best friend)

Have I Seen it Before: How could I?

Did I Like It: I loved it, but stop asking me questions about my objectivity.

On spec, the new (and eleventh) film in the Halloween franchise has the potential to be the greatest fan film ever made. Bring Jamie Lee Curtis back. Check. Bring back Nick Castle to play The Shape*. Check. John Carpenter is willing to do the score. Big check. 

Thankfully, the film is even more than just the sum of it’s parts. The Carpenter score is transcendent, not content to merely rehash the themes he wrote 40 years ago, Carpenter and the members of his band add much to the proceedings, and in the process make a soundtrack just as memorable as the original.

With nine movies of obnoxious baggage—sorry, that should read “mythology”—serving only to weigh things down, this new story pointedly ignores (and more often, repudiates) every previous sequel. The Cult of Thorn is gone. Laurie and Michael are not related. Dangertainment is nowhere to be found. Tyler Mane is nowhere to be found. It allows the movie, surprisingly, to not be a Carpenter clone (which, in their own feeble way, every other movie in the franchise has tried to be), but actually becomes a movie that someone not plagued by a completionist’s compulsion might want to watch. There is plenty of fan service to be sure, but I was pleasantly surprised that there was an enjoyable movie in there.

The film also manages to shake itself free from the Weinstein’s grip in both spirit and practice. This film is a direct result of Dimension Films losing the rights to the franchise (and that had all worked out awesome), but where those mid-90s to late-00s films went willingly into the trap of a film that hates women, this new movie is boldly, and with a goodly degree of wit, opting for the other direction.

It’s recently come to my attention that some are upset that the movie ignores the continuity of the other films. Ugh. Let me explain something to those of you out there who might be upset by this. These films have been notorious for throwing away continuity. So by being upset that the other movies aren’t being deferred to, you’re actually ignoring what those other films have been about. Deal with it. This movie is great. Not, Carpenter’s original great (few films are) but definitely one of the better times I have had in the theater with a horror film in recent memory. I think there is a possible context where a reasonable person may not like the film, but dismissing it because it is trying to blaze a new trail (and still celebrate the past) is not that context.

* And, according to some sources, Tony Moran for scenes with Michael Myers unmasked, but at press time the internet has not provided a final answer as to whether he is actually in the film. 

John Carpenter's Halloween (1978)

In my nearly fevered anticipation for the forthcoming rebootquel Halloween (2018), I thought I might re-watch all of the original series(es). My gushing in this entry leads me to think that I may not have the strength to suffer through Rob Zombie again, to say nothing of Paul Rudd. We’ll see.

Director: John Carpenter’s John Carpenter

Cast: Donald Pleasance, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nancy Loomis, and (ahem.) P.J. Soles.

Have I Seen it Before: I’ve at least seen it as many times as Anchor Bay has released it on either DVD or Blu Ray, so that’s got to put it somewhere in the 100s.

Did I Like It: Oh, how do I count the ways?

It will be supremely difficult to write thoughtful reviews about some of my greatest-of-all-time movies. John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of them. The acting is sublimely modulated cheese, especially with the world’s supreme scene chewer Donald “I SHOT HIM SIX TIMES” Pleasance. The cinematography is perfect. Each frame harnesses a perfect sublime banality, that when the horror really kicks into high gear, the tension is there, but there’s also a palpable sense of tragedy at the same time. The music is so beyond perfect that it a) completely removes any pretext at criticism I might hope to reach for, b) makes the film without this music unimaginable, and c) elevates the sequels and (ugh) remakes into (on average) watchability.

And all of it was made with next to nothing. It is an unbelievable achievement that no amount of sequels, copy-cats or (again, ugh) remakes could hope to replicate, nor ruin.

Now, the long arm of legacy is what this film consistently has to fight against, but if you can put yourself in the mindset of someone living in a universe where the other films don’t exist (a feat which I think is going to become significantly easier in a few weeks), the film is even more unnerving. Here Michael Myers (Will Sandin as a child, Tony Moran unmasked as the adult Myers, and Nick Castle as the form commonly referred to as “The Shape”) isn’t the Freshman Abnormal Psych paper of the latest Rob Zombie films, the scion of the Cult of Thorn, Laurie’s brother, Jamie’s uncle, or budding Dangertainment star*. He was purely a kid—and he could have been any kid you knew growing up—who one day picked up a really sharp knife and never looked back. He slithers through the vast majority of the movie simply watching his prey, and when the moment comes, he zeroes in to take what he wants, simply because he wants it, and should therefore be entitled. He is every man, and if we’ve learned anything recently, he cannot be stopped.

That’s the movie I love, and if you don’t… Well, then fuck you, Rob Zombie.

That may be harsh, but it’s not like I don’t totally mean it. Totally.

*God, when you really unpack Halloween: Resurrection (2002), the more of a headache it becomes.