HALLOWEEN - October 2018 - A Treat, Not a Trick

[AndyDursin]

It can only be an improvement on Rob Zombie's excrement...not to mention all those other Miramax sequels (which Jamie Lee got killed off in!). Pretty sure fans will be happy to forget they ever happened...

[Monterey Jack]

No.

Just no.

[AndyDursin]

I'm in. I mean the world has gone nutty over an IT remake so why not a decent HALLOWEEN? Even the hideous Rob Zombie flicks made money.

Big thing is Blumhouse is producing this time so it ought to be watchable at least. Most of the Halloween sequels are so limp that pretending they never happened isn't going to be a problem.

This could be a problem though!

David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express, Your Highness) will direct Halloween and co-write the script for the film with Danny McBride (yes, Eastbound & Down star Danny McBride).

[AndyDursin]

John Carpenter is going to score, Nick Castle coming back behind the mask...hey it may still suck but that's kind of fun at least.

http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/263092 ... um=twitter

[AndyDursin]

Looks agreeable enough -- more than I can say for Rob Zombie's white-trash-remake and the Miramax sequels.

[Monterey Jack]

Hey, I'd like this to actually be good, but this is the SECOND time the Halloween franchise has struck the previous sequels from the record to make the "true" sequel to the 1978 original. Are we gonna get yet another one of these in 2038 with an 80-year-old Jamie Lee Curtis being pursued through the halls of her old age home?

And the franchise has a TERRIBLE track record. Yeah, the original is still an untouchable classic, and Halloween II is pretty decent follow-up that still has that Carpenter/Cundey sleekness, but the third is a big pile of WTF?, parts four and five were awful, and I never bothered with the sixth, H20 or the Rob Zombie remakes (watched a clip of the first one on YouTube with about fifty F-Bombs over the course of two minutes as L'il Mikey Myers' white-trash famb'ly screams at each other in their kitchen, and was like, "No thank you." ). I'm sure everyone involved in this new version is honestly trying to make a good movie, but do we NEED this? Yet another rehash of a story that could barely sustain one good movie FOUR DECADES ago? And if it is good and makes money, they'll just crap out a cheapie cash-in sequel for next year, and the cycle will start all over again.

[AndyDursin]

I agree with you...it's funny this is the second time they've tried doing a direct HALLOWEEN sequel that pretends none of the other sequels exist (HALLOWEEN II in particular!), though this is the first time that they've dumped the "Michael's your brother" angle that Carpenter threw into II (and the shot-for-TV extra scenes of I) on top of it.

It may well suck completely. I don't know, but is it any worse than Disney's whoring out of every IP they own? (Just read Owen Glieberman trashing INCREDIBLES 2, a movie as necessary as FINDING DORY and the CARS sequels). On the positive side, I like the fact there's a horror movie I might go see actually being released around Halloween. I haven't been to one in years, so if it's not awful, I might go. There's at least that.

[AndyDursin]

MJ looks like you might have to see this one after all...reviews are good!

https://ew.com/movies/2018/09/09/hallow ... ff-review/

Long live Michael Myers, so maybe someone can finally kill him — in a big, funny, scary, squishy, super-meta sequel that brings it all back to the iconic 1978 original.

Forget whatever you know, or should have wiped from your browser history, about the other franchise entries that came in between. Director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride have brushed them aside for the core story of original survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), now a fierce grandma with a gun and a long, long memory. She has a semi-estranged daughter (Judy Greer), and a granddaughter too (Andi Matichak). And she knows Michael (played by Nick Castle and James Courtney) is being transferred after 40 years to another mental health facility.

Strangely, things don’t go well in the transfer. Soon Michael is on the loose in Haddonfield, Illinois, on the anniversary of his Halloween-night rampage four decades before, and the body count is piling up like so many churros on a taco cart. Green (All the Real Girls, Pineapple Express, Vice Principals), once an indie auteur and now a sort of genre journeyman, clearly loves his source material. He and McBride fill the script with comic riffs and referential winks to the original, even as the movie lets Michael slash, stomp, and impale his way through Haddonfield’s terrorized, poorly reflexed population.

The tropes are all here: teenager makeout sessions, frantic escapes through a dark wood, death by ax and steel-toe boot and bathroom stall. (Also the iconic score, the pumpkin-colored font of the credits, and a few original supporting characters.) In some ways, Green might even be too faithful; there’s no new Deadpool-y twist of fourth-wall breaking or this-is-why-he-cries back story.

Instead, the movie mostly works because it’s so fundamental, and funny too: Michael still never speaks; his mask and his slow, deadly, deliberate walk say everything they need to. At 59, Curtis seems to have fully arrived in her role as a midnight-madness queen, and she has a great time in jeans and a gaey fright wig, swinging her shotgun around and screaming at everyone to get in the safe room.

By the end, she might even have finally gotten her guy — but true hate never really dies, as any good horror knows. And neither, if the box office is strong enough, do boogie men. B+

[AndyDursin]

Let the good reviews pour forth!!

https://variety.com/2018/film/reviews/h ... 202933806/

First the trick: David Gordon Green’s “Halloween” sequel pretends like the last nine films in the franchise don’t exist, picking up 40 years after John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 slasher movie as if none of that other nonsense has ever happened. Now the treat: His take reunites Michael Myers (once again, it’s Nick Castle under the mask) with Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the babysitter who got away, for a final confrontation — one they’ve both been anticipating all this time, but audiences had no reason to think they’d ever witness.

That makes this new “Halloween” an act of fan service disguised as a horror movie. The fact it works as both means that Green (who flirted with the idea of directing the “Suspiria” remake) has pulled off what he set out to do, tying up the mythology that Carpenter and company established, while delivering plenty of fresh suspense — and grisly-creative kills — for younger audiences who are buying into the “Halloween” brand without any real investment in Michael and Laurie’s unfinished business.

[Monterey Jack]

I hope it's true. I honestly would like to enjoy this movie, but, even if it is as good as early word-of-mouth would indicate, and it makes money, we're just gonna get another sequel a year or two down the line that will ruin anything worthwhile this film gives us.

[AndyDursin]

Thats like hoping a team loses before making the Super Bowl because "they are going to lose anyway so why watch it" (as my friend said before the Patriots first Super Bowl win lol).

Who cares about 2 years from now. There's so much crap out there, if they get this movie even close to right I will gladly go to a mediocre sequel too.