Hey everyone, I'm back and just finished marathoning the Halloween franchise for the first time. Here's some thoughts!
Halloween
This was great. Michael Myers is super spooky, and it's almost worse that he's just chilling in the background. Watching. Waiting. He just shows up in windows and door frames and chills there. I also really liked that he gets real up close and personal with his kills. Freddy does crazy dream kills, Jason uses all sorts of weapons... and here's Mikey, just using his hands and kitchen knife. Jamie Lee Curtis is also great, even though she doesn't really look like a teenager.
some other fun things:
The score is great, but that goes without saying.
They're watching the original version of the Thing From Another World, which John Carpenter adapted the same work in 1982, 4 years after this movie.
It’s so creepy when he’s standing there under the sheet.
Great, tense thrill-ride of a movie.
Halloween 2
Starts us off with awesome opening credits and then picks up immediately after the first. There's also some great framing in the first scene, by having the focus on the girl on the phone, and in the background, have Michael slip into the house before he kills her.
It’s clear they’re making good use of a higher budget, and even obvious stuff like “Mike is definitely behind that door because of the way its framed” is still paid off well. There are plenty of awesome kills like the one with the back of the hammer (brutal), and a kill fully in the background behind the hospital glass, followed by burning the nurse's face in the hydrotherapy pool.
There's also some cool imagery, like the bloody tears when Laurie shoots him.They have a lot of really excellent ways of ratcheting up the tension too. When the nurse turns around the dead doctor and Michael Myers shows up in the darkness behind her as she backs up… that’s some good shit. And even just seeing his shadow in the room to let you know he’s there? That’s also some good shit.
The best way they increase the tension however, is to have people just stumble across bodies. We don't see the kill... occasionally, a nurse or Laurie with just enter a room and oh shit, there's already a corpse in here. Frightening, and adds up to a great great sequel.
Halloween 3: Season of the Witch
I know there's no Michael Myers in this one, which pisses a lot of people off, but I was aware of it going in, which definitely helped. Theres also plenty of eye gouging, heads getting ripped straight up, drills in temples, and intrigue to keep me satisfied.
more importantly though, the reveal of what the mask did to that lady actually scared me a bit. They show her face and I literally jumped and said "oh fuck". The pitch and speed of the jingle going up and up while the kid turned into bugs/snakes was also super intense.
There's a fun ambiguous ending, Easter eggs like the movie Halloween actually being on TV, and an always delightful chance to reference the robot house yell from Futurama, which means I liked this a whole bunch even if it doesn't fit into the main series that effectively.
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers
The ridiculousness of it all get turned up to 11 when Michael immediately kills a doctor by just jamming a thumb into his forehead. Conversely, kids standing around this poor little girl and chanting “Jamie's an orphan” is the most realistic depiction of children I’ve ever seen. So it kind of plays both sides.
I really feel bad for poor Loomis. No one ever listens to him, and he's always right. I don't have a ton to say about this one because it was a little "same-y", but had a pretty good ending that I really liked as a cliffhanger, so not great but not bad either.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
ANNNNNND they immediately back down from the cool cliffhanger and instead turn this into another bullshit psychic connection movie. We also (for much of the movie) have TWO silent characters which lets be honest, is pushing things a little bit.
The worst part is that these kids are so fucking dumb. There’s no tension because they’re so fucking dumb, and I can't connect with any of them because how can anyone be so dumb? They're ignoring police, not taking DOZENS OF MURDERS SERIOUSLY, and buying the mask to play pranks on each other. Why is that mask even still sold in Haddonfield!? It completely defuses the movie because Michael is just “the shape”, with no emotion and no dialogue and the kids are all stupid assholes.
The weapons get more and more outlandish, which also detracts from the intensity of the originals which were very up close and personal. There is some cool imagery, like Jamie trying to stay stuck in the laundry chute. Didn't really like it as a whole though.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
When your first scene is a lady in labor being pushed through an underground tunnel by a cult… you’re in for a bad time. Hey, Paul rudd though.
One of my biggest issues the pacing in this movie. It's really slow at the beginning, but even just looking at individual scenes the pacing is off. They seem to want to let suspense build, with long scenes of people walking down hallways and reaching for doors and opening washing machines, but they’re usually accompanied by silence, not creepy score. Which means It’s not that suspenseful, it’s just boring. When there is score though it's interesting that there’s screaming /electric guitar in the score instead of just discordant strings.
On the other hand, lights go out? CLAAAAANG. The brother jumps down and surprises someone? CLAAAAAANG. THAT’S NOT SCARY ITS JUST SURPRISING.
I did like individual kills though, like the radio guy was up on the post and dripping blood on people, and the seemingly Rear Window inspired kill where we and the main character can see the room and calls to warn the other girl.
The cult storyline didn't really make sense, the genetics tangent didn't really make sense either, and while things were sort of improved by the producers cut, none of it really worked for me.
I have to say though that I really respect that Donald Pleasance is still giving his all, and when Tommy freaked out from coming face to face with Michael again was great. Even with these two trying their best though, this is still a pretty damn bad movie. Also, epilepsy warning for the surgery room scene.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
One thing I like about these is seeing young actors before they hit it big, and this one has both Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Josh Hartnett, which is neat. I also enjoyed LL Cool J writing erotic fiction.
They succeed in doing some cool framing in a bunch of scenes, like seeing Michael through the crack in the door in the bathroom. Good thing that lady was on the toilet because she probably crapped herself. The acting is also pretty solid in this one, particularly Jamie Lee Curtis. I'm glad she's back, and I really believe that this fucked her up pretty bad, and she is GUZZLING that Chardonnay and vodka. Josh Hartnett is also doing a good job reacting realistically to his mom's bullshit.
there's also some cool kills, like thinking the garbage disposal is going to turn on with his hand in it, only to have him turn around face to face with Mike. The dumbwaiter crushing that girls leg is also pretty intense.
It's not all peaches and cream though. There's a super ham-fisted comparison to Frankenstein, a bullshit fake-out death (LL should have stayed dead), and I don't think a single car has started on the first attempt in this entire franchise.
Finally, I really liked Janet Leigh being in the movie… lots of psycho references, and she’s JLC’s mom, so that's fun. A nice step up from the last couple movies.
Halloween Resurrection
I actually liked the opening scene, and I guess her killing the paramedic is as good a way of any as making it so Michael Myers is still out there. That makes it even worse though when JLC gets killed off immediately. There's also a bunch of dumb shit like Sarah having this music that’s supposed to be badass… as she rolls up on a scooter.
This is another iteration where I hate all the characters. They're all fame-hungry dickheads except for the main character who is just whining incessantly, and honestly what the hell are you doing, busta? Him and Tyra Banks are doing everything they can to not look at the video feeds and see that there's a killer, one girl is weirdly eager to have sex in the basement of a serial killer's house, and honestly where did these kids even find a bong? Luckily for Busta, he gives an exposition dump to Michael Myers which I guess is appreciated enough that Mike doesn't kill him, and even later, he somehow survives TWO instances of getting messed up by Mike. Survival must have been in his contract.
There's a lot of weird editing choices, like cutting away from a kill to Tyra Banks making coffee several times. They also keep cutting to body cameras which means there's too many cuts, and that footage is shitty quality, so I'd really love if they stopped it. Oh, also, jump scare noise jeez, a baby chair. How terrifying.
This whole movie is honestly just boring, and they didn’t even wait for the next one to bring him back. Unbelievable.
Also worth noting: the 3 biggest people on the poster just about a half hour of screen time COMBINED.
Halloween (2007)
They go wayyyy too in-depth on Michael Myer's background. His actions are almost worse if Michael had a good, normal home life and this makes it just another serial killer. And even if we needed backstory, we definitely don’t need 38 minutes and 41 seconds of it. I think part of it was just to rack up the body count.
Once the intro is finally done, we meet some fellas who I'd swear actually say “We’re gross southern racist rapists who work in a mental asylum! How many more stereotypes can we fit in!?”
At 50 minutes in, we're finally at the opening of the original and it only gets worse. Original Laurie is a sweet, simple nerd who’s afraid to ask a boy to the dance. The first time we see this Laurie, she comes downstairs for breakfast and makes a graphic sex joke about her teacher molesting her to her mother. Her friends are similarly terrible.
I also don’t like that they took all responsibility away from Loomis. In the original, Loomis is transporting Myers and lets him escape. In this one, Loomis is well retired and get called in by the asylum.
Everyone is so much meaner than in the original. The cops, Laurie's friends, even the little kids. I'm told this is part of Rob Zombie's style, but I really hate it. Also, was… was he not there to kill her? In the original he’s just killing people, and in the sequel, he’s actively hunting her because she’s his sister, but then in this, he’s like “hey sis” and just kneels in front of her? I guess the ending was fine but it really feels like a spit in the face of the original.
Halloween 2 (2009)
Not a lot to say about this one. Rob Zombie keeps it classy by starting this one off with a necrophilia joke instead of molestation. He's also making sure his wife stays employed by making her a ghost, and this supernatural stuff is the worst part of this whole movie. It's truly awful, and again, stops Michael from just being a force of nature.
And oh my god Laurie is so annoying in this. We’re supposed to be on her side and I honestly kind of just want Michael to kill her so we don’t have to hear her screaming at people any more. Yes, it’s brutal, but there’s no imagination to it.
Profiteering of the misery of others indeed.
FINAL ORDER
2, 1, 3, 4, H20, 5, 6, Reboot, 8, H2 (2009)
Except for H20, this felt like a pretty steady decline.
If you enjoyed this, you can also find my reviews of Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.
Submitted September 20, 2017 at 02:08PM by Georgehef http://ift.tt/2w7ue9d
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