Trick or Treat?

Of all the classic horror movies I've seen, Halloween is my favorite. It generates legitimate tension without being hokey like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th. Not to mention that it came first, with Michael Myers inspiring that entire subgenre of supernatural stalker-killers. I'm not a fan of the franchise as such; I think I've seen maybe half of the 10 Halloween movies released before this year. But that original 1978 film still works for me.

As such, I was keenly interested in this new 2018 incarnation also titled Halloween, for its connection to the original. It brings back Jamie Lee Curtis in the role that made her famous. It also whisks away all the history of every intervening Halloween film (good or bad) to position itself as the one and only sequel in "true continuity" with the original.

The result is something of a mixed bag. For a fan of the original film like me, the 2018 film is a treasure trove of sly references and connections to the first. If you don't know the original very well, you'd be well-rewarded to watch it before seeing this one. It's not that the plot is complicated to follow (ha!), but you'll notice how much of the new film deliberately echoes the first. Camera compositions are routinely built to evoke the 1978 movie. Certain sequences are written in ways that revisit ideas from the first film (while sometimes switching the character types around in their positions). This new movie really comes off as a love letter written by people who really cared for the first Halloween.

There's also some fun updating for 2018. In interviews, Jamie Lee Curtis has said this Halloween is a movie for the #MeToo era, and she's right. You wouldn't need her to tell you that, either. The film's female characters are all drawn more interestingly and sympathetically than the men. They avoid stupid decisions to falsely endanger themselves. They stand up for themselves and get things done. (Well, "mostly," to those last two. Gotta let the killer get his licks in sometimes.)

All that said, I don't want to give the impression that this film is a revelation. Some of the set pieces are quite silly. It's languidly paced for the first half hour -- much like the original, but not in a way that slowly allows the tension to build.

I'm pretty sure, in fact, that some of the Halloween sequels this new movie informally winks out of existence were actually better overall. The original Halloween II cleverly connected boogeyman Michael Myers with Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, and also had the fun conceit of picking up exactly where the first movie left off. The 20th anniversary sequel, Halloween H20, was more thrilling in how it matched Strode and Myers for the showdown they'd each been waiting for all their lives.

Indeed, it might just be that the parts of this new movie that I liked best were actually, for the most part, just trading currency on things I liked in the original. So, reining the enthusiasm in, I'd have to say that this new Halloween merits about a B-. Fans of scary movies that really need a new one at this time of year will probably want to check it out. If you're not a fan of the franchise (or at least the original Halloween), I can't imagine this movie winning you over.