30. Halloween (2018), dir. David Gordon Green

[strange_complex]

Serial killer movies just ain't my bag, and I only watched this because we were ushered into a premiere screening of it during the Brașov Dracula Congress which I attended in October, without being told what we were going to see. I have seen the original film a million years ago (though not any of the intervening sequels), and as far as I can tell this one was trying to be a clever, modern, self-aware take on it while actually really being not all that different from it at all. It was marketed as being about women fighting back, and indeed Jamie Lee Curtis' character (Laurie Strode) is well-developed and well-acted, while the film ends with her, her daughter and her granddaughter managing to reconcile their differences and defeat Michael Myers after multiple men have died in the attempt. But we're still shown flash-backs into Michael Myers' childhood which include his sister sitting naked in front of her dressing table brushing her hair, before being murdered by him and ending up on the floor as a Sexy Corpse. There are a couple of references to chess-sets early on, presumably to help establish Myers and Strode as deadly opponents, and some stuff about how Myers' prison psychiatrist has become obsessed with him as an object of study to the point of enabling his crimes. But fundamentally, the plot boils down to a lot of people dying, usually shortly after scenes which have portrayed them as stupid or assholes - another big hoary old trope strongly rooted in the original Halloween. I mean, don't get me wrong - I'm well aware that the Gothic vampire and ghost stories I love best are absolutely packed full of tropes as well, often reflecting the same kind of conservative bent. But a few soaring ruins, dark supernatural beings or pagan shenanigans make all the difference for me. If you liked the original Halloween, and / or the wider serial killer genre, you'll probably like this film - but all I really got out of it was a reminder of why I don't.

Dreamwidth version |
comments | Leave a comment