Director: John Carpenter
Cast: James Woods, Daniel Baldwin, Sheryl Lee, Thomas Ian Griffith
Have I Seen it Before: Never.
Did I Like It: And I’m not as frustrated with myself on that one, as I have been with my other blind spots in the Carpenter canon.
I’m never more struck by the idea of the alternative utopia than I am when watching movies. We think Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) would have been better if Colin Trevorrow had been allowed to make his version, but he also made Jurassic World: Dominion (2022), so it’s not like if his version of that other film came together, it wouldn’t be riddled with flaws, too. If Tim Burton had made a third Batman film, it would have been far superior to Batman Forever (1995), but I also have the suspicion that he would have tired of the series, been hamstrung by the studio, or both. I’m also tempted to think that Halloween H20 (1998) would have been much better if Carpenter had been involved, but his track record in the 90s was so thoroughly spotty, and with a climax that, we might be better off imagining Carpenter fixing every horror movie we thought went wrong than actually getting to see the movie.
This is all to say, I’m not really enjoying the film, and it only partially has to do with the fact that I can’t stand to look at James Woods for longer than a few minutes, anyway. Here, he’s offering the worst kind of self-conscious, affected performance. It’s no wonder that his greatest work has been as supporting heavies in other films. It’s also no wonder that he can’t get arrested anymore, but that’s another story all together. The best performance in the whole film is Daniel Baldwin, and that’s only because he takes a lighter to his arm in such a way that I’m left with the only conclusion that he felt every flick of that flame.
The movie is filled to the brim with too much meaningless exposition, and far too many bad special effects to have any hope to truly enjoy it. It’s a shame so many of Carpenters films in the 80s were great but under appreciated, marching through his 90s films is watching him become disenchanted with filmmaking all together.
At this point I almost don’t want to watch Ghosts of Mars (2001). I may not like any Carpenter movies after that… No, that’s crazy. I’ll always have The Thing (1982), Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), and of course, Halloween (1978).