In a world in which ten Halloween movies exist, along came the third reboot in this convoluted series – the third one simply stylized as Halloween. The best way to make a Halloween movie in 2018 is to just wipe the slate clean and make this new film a direct sequel to the original John Carpenter classic. And that is exactly what David Gordon Green did.
The film called, Halloween, knows its audience and includes a lot of references to the other films in the series without ever being too pandering to the fan base. Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie Strode, and she does an even better job at playing the now PTSD stricken character. The return of Michael Myers sees Nick Castle back in form as the antagonist. The costume department designed a frightening, grimy mask for the iconic villain and all of his scenes are as frightening as the viewer would hope.
Another returning figure is Carpenter, the director/composer of the first film. This time, he focuses solely on the soundtrack, while incorporating electric guitar tracks into his original compositions to a great effect. The soundtrack stands alone as an incredible piece of work.
The film is very well directed and shot, with one stand out sequence following Myers from house to house in an impressive unbroken take. Plus, the final thirty minutes are very exciting, intense, and worth the price of admission alone.
The film still has its missteps, and unfortunately does not start off very strong. There are many misguided attempts at humor that fall flat on their face. The one exception is a little kid, who is downright hilarious. The writers give each and every victim of Myers some sort of dialogue before they die, which is honestly rather unnecessary and unrealistic.
The biggest problem here is that the whole film feels hackneyed. The editing is a bit of a jumbled mess, with characters and plot lines receiving little to no closure. It is extremely obvious that there was a much longer cut of this film that was sliced down to reach a runtime under two hours.
There are also a few poorly written characters. One character becomes evil seemingly just for the sake of progressing the plot. There was also an inclusion of several teenage characters who feel like generic slasher movie victims and little else.
Although the film comes as a mixed bag, with underwritten characters and scattershot editing, the whole film is consistently entertaining, it is rather scary, and there are lots of memorable moments. Though it is extremely flawed, there is definitely a lot to enjoy.