Movie review: Suspense-challenged 'Halloween' horror sequel no match for the original
“Halloween” - ★ ★
Forty years after John Carpenter's seminal, low-budget 1978 horror tale “Halloween” assaulted moviegoers, I experienced a weird form of PTSD (Post Traumatic Sequel Disorder) watching David Gordon Green's next franchise chapter, cleverly titled “Halloween.”
Not because it inspired flashbacks to Carpenter's scarifying original, but to its woefully inferior sequels and knock-offs that dominated the first half of the 1980s.
Green's “Halloween” proves to be a shockingly suspenseless, tepid kill-fest in which most of the grisly violence occurs off-screen. We only see gory results.
Fans of jump-scares and conservative bloodletting will be pleased, however.
In Green's sequel - written by him, Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride - characters demonstrate so much contempt for common sense and safety that killer Michael Myers might be doing Haddonfield, Illinois, a favor by culling the community of its less survival-oriented members, many of them introduced just in time to be killed, or inexplicably dropped out of the movie.
The sequel begins with two obnoxious British journalists (Rhian Rees and Jefferson Hall) visiting the white-bearded killer Michael (reprised by Nick Castle) in a psychiatric prison under Dr. Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), taking over for Donald Pleasence's deceased Dr. Sam Loomis.
After repeatedly screaming at Michael to “say something,” the reporters make a brief, expensive visit to Laurie Strode (a vanity-eschewing Jamie Lee Curtis, reprising her iconic role as the single surviving baby sitter from Michael's 1978 massacre).
She lives in a booby-trapped house in the country, practicing her marksmanship and staying in combat-ready condition for the final showdown she knows will come.
Laurie now possesses a tragic back story of a high school baby sitter whose confrontation with the boogeyman has left her an emotional wreck, one who had her own 12-year-daughter Karen taken from her custody - but not before being trained in weapons and shown how to enter a well-supplied, well-armed secret safe room under the kitchen's movable island.
Now, a grown Karen (Judy Greer) tries to shield her own high school daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) from nutty Grandma.
We don't see how the prison bus transporting Michael and some fellow prisoners to a new facility crashes on a rural Illinois road on Oct. 30.
Warren County sheriff's officer Hawkins (Will Patton), an original first responder to the 1978 Haddonfield killings, arrives on the scene and confirms Laurie's worst fears.
At 59, Curtis amps up the pluck of a devoted mother who will do anything to protect her family, but apparently lacks the basic smarts to do it.
Take the scene where Michael invades Laurie's home. He has no idea that Laurie, Karen and Allyson have taken refuge in the safe room he knows nothing about - until Laurie decides to blindly shoot at him through the floor, then race upstairs to see if she got him.
Earlier, loony Laurie, suspecting Michael to be at her front door, puts her face right up next to a window. If you've seen the trailers, you know she probably regrets that.
This movie pays little attention to realistic details necessary to anchor an effective horror story.
Take the backyard night scene where Michael stalks one of Allyson's friends while a motion detector switches security lights on and off. Except these lights turn off when people move, then turn on when they remain motionless.
Wisely, Green's “Halloween” pretends that seven strained sequels plus two Rob Zombie resurrections never happened.
That's a smart move for the franchise in its first blatant bid for the AARP demographic.
<b>Starring:</b> Jamie Lee Curtis, Nick Castle, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Andi Matichak, Virginia Gardner
<b>Directed by:</b> David Gordon Green
<b>Other:</b> A Universal Pictures release. Rated R for drug use, language, nudity, violence. 109 minutes