Halloween (2018)

Halloween, just released to great business, is the eleventh film in the Halloween franchise, but it is a direct sequel to the first film, released in 1978 and directed by John Carpenter. I learned a new film term: retcon, short for retroactive continuity, meaning this film ignores films two through ten, as if they never happened. Carpenter only co-writes the score here (which is very good); it is directed by former indie hero David Gordon Green, who has become something of a studio hack.

I've never seen the original film, but I feel like I have, and there's a great deal of exposition in this sequel. Michael Myers, a serial killer who is described as pure evil, has been locked up in a mental institution for forty years, after being captured for killing babysitters. The only victim who escaped death, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) now lives in a house turned into a fortress, with lots of locks, gates, and guns.

Myers escapes, and wreaks havoc on the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, until the eventual showdown between he and Curtis. The film's end is ambiguous enough to suggest a sequel.

I'm of two minds about this film: it's fun, with plenty of genuine scares, but suffers too much from cliches. I'm not a big fan of the slasher genre because it highlights two basic tropes that annoy me: the stupidity of characters who get killed, and the indestructibility of the killer. I mean, Myers should be close to sixty years old but isn't stopped by mere bullets. I read in the summary of the first film that he was shot six times at the end. Killers who seem inhuman take me out of the picture.

The characters aren't too stupid in this one, although I find it interesting that an escaped lunatic is roaming the town and the town does nothing to warn the citizens: trick or treating goes on, and people leave their doors open. I don't think I'm spoiling things to mention that Myers will end up at Strode's fortress, and doesn't have any trouble getting in.

These type of films only work in the moment, when you're caught up in the suspense, but deflate like a popped balloon when logic takes over.

Nevertheless, Michael Myers has certainly earned his place in the culture. I was interested to learn today that the mask he wears, which is an expressionless face painted white, was originally a Captain Kirk mask that was purchased for $1.98 on Hollywood Boulevard. So William Shatner has been scaring us all these years.