Jamie Lee Curtis, reprising her Laurie character of 40 years ago, is now a grandmother in her reinforced fortress of a home, renewing her battling to survive the one-man slaughter machine of skin-masked, wordless psycho Mike Myers, just escaped from a psychiatric institution. The back story of this situation is as threadbare as the imagination of the writers, seeking to find something, anything, on which to hang an excuse for a parade of grisly killings - all, of course, to the background of Halloween revels with its handy excuse of lots of teenage kids in 'scary' costumes to fall prey to the blood-curdling and blood-letting whims of the prowling killer. It hardly needs saying that the final confrontation is between Curtis and Myers. If he resurrects after this one - oops, plot spoiler! - to appear in yet another sequel (please, no!), it will by no means be the first time he's done so.
Filmed in South Carolina, it felt very much to me a dated affair, like the horror gore-fests of the 60s and 70s only with the 'yuk' factor dialled so far up to max that it's numbingly boring, yet with absolutely nil trace of any humour underneath, which used to be the saving grace of so many of those tacky, creaky Hammer films of old.
Apart from Jamie L.C. the only cast member whose name I recognised was Will Patton as the senior police figure in charge. They all do their best with an undemanding script and storyline. The characters who are bumped off (I lost count but the number was somewhere around eight or nine) are given little chance to establish themselves and so lack much of our sympathies other than for us to think "Well, there goes another one - Next!" There are the usual jump-scares when you're meant to be surprised at a sudden appearance accompanied by a loud thump on the soundtrack, and which turns out to be perfectly innocent or a false alarm - but you know that it will very shortly afterwards be followed by the real thing - the same old, old formula.
Director David Gordon Green is also a name I didn't know, having worked a considerable amount on TV productions. He brings very little new to this film - well, nothing at all, in fact.
I have seen worse horror films but I dare say that a large part of the audience will not be familiar with the tricks of the genre, and so may well be more satisfied with this product. Horror films were much more a staple of the cinema in my day than they are now, so there well might be a novelty angle than anything I felt.
People are comparing this favourably with the John Carpenter original of 40 years back. As I wasn't and still am not such an admirer of that work I'm able to say that the comparison may well be a fair one...............4.5.
(IMDb.................7.3 / Rott. Toms..............6.8 )
It's been getting great buzz over here but I,also, was not a fan of the original or any of the 200+ sequels, so I will probably, no, definitely,sit this one out... even though I like JLC very much.
ReplyDeleteWhereas JLC might have been an attraction, Bob, in this she's not given much range to work with.
ReplyDeleteAt least she isn't prone to the endless screaming which her on-screen daughter and grand-daughter are subject to, and which was wearing me down. Missable.
I think this is often the problem with sequels. They try to squeeze another film out of it and it becomes too predictable. Remember the "Jaws" films. The last one in the series was dire! Your review is what I had expected of this film.
ReplyDeleteI know, Carol. Once they know they've got a box-office winner they just won't let go of the theme until they get to a sequel which turns into a loss - and it's mugs, sometimes me included, who pay for more in the hope that they might, just for once, come up with something worthwhile.
DeleteThe 'Jaws' sequels were pretty well scraping the barrel from Jaws II on - but they did have a spectacularly high bar to get over on the original. Can't say the same thing about the first 'Halloween' though.
I never got into the Halloween movies. I admit the first one was well done/made.
ReplyDeleteYou only need to have seen the first one, Dr Spo, then it's a case of job done!
DeleteThe best thing about the Halloween movie was Donald Pleasance! Such a great character actor.
ReplyDeleteYes, The great Donald P. - one of those scarce actors who always endowed a film with a mark of 'quality' even though otherwise they might not have deserved it.
Delete