Halloween (2018)

“He's waited for this night... he's waited for me... I've waited for him...” – Laurie Strode

After forty years, there’s no denying that the Halloween movies had become a confused mess. They’d lost their way, completely and totally. What began as an amazingly well put together, low budgeted independent film had birthed a series of sequels that had added to the ongoing storyline, involving further Myers family members, faked deaths, cults, remakes, visions of white horses (which incidentally, I still don’t understand) there was nowhere new to go. But the fortieth anniversary of the legendary movie was coming up.

The intellectual rights to the series had by now been acquired by horror specialists Blumhouse Productions. And Blumhouse had John Carpenter on board. Carpenter had long been increasingly dissatisfied with the sequels and hadn’t really been involved with the Michael Myers saga since adding some scenes to Halloween 2 in 1981, apart from being credited with composing the Halloween theme. Carpenter had an idea that was simple and audacious. He wouldn’t be credited as screenwriter, opting for Executive Producer instead, but he was very heavily involved – and it shows.

Don’t like the sequels?

Scrap ‘em. All of them.

Don’t like the remake?

Yup, that’s gone too!

Literally NOTHING has happened since the original Halloween in 1978 in this new timeline. Forty years have passed, but Laurie Strode never faked her death, she never had a daughter named Jaime, she never became headmistress of a boarding school or beheaded her brother. Actually, they weren’t even related. There was never a Thorn cult, Rob Zombie never made a remake, and he never shoehorned his wife and a white horse into a pointless sequel that nobody asked for. All gone.

That’s a lot of ballast to cut off. So, what’s left?

A simple, elegantly uncluttered story that harks back to the style of the original. And that’s all we need. Even the title sequence tells us we’re back to basics in a simple, effective way. A Jack Lantern pumpkin, rotting and collapsed begins to revive to ripeness.

After disappearing having taken the dive off the veranda at the conclusion of the 1978 film, we find that Myers was picked up by the police shortly afterwards that same night and taken into custody. He’s been institutionalised as Smiths Grove Sanitorium ever since, under the care of Dr Ranbir Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) since the passing of Dr Sam Loomis. I say under the care of, but Sartain seems more obsessed with Myers and harbours a tad of jealousy that his late mentor actually saw Myers “out in the wild” as he puts it. (He won’t have to wait long.)

Myers interestingly is blind in one eye (we don’t get a good look at his face, but that’s one immediately noticeable detail – a legacy from 1978, when Laurie gouged his eye with a knitting needle. So, what sets him off? What activates or triggers him? He’s obviously not this indestructible supernaturally regenerating entity that can’t be destroyed. He’s literally just an ordinary mortal – granted, more tenacious than most. So, what’s the tipping point?

Well, I blame Sartain, who has foolishly allowed a couple of podcasters to enter the high security institution with the intention of recording a podcast about Myers. And they goad him with his mask, demanding that he break his silence and say something. Sartain does nothing to stop this, he allows them to carry on despite all the nearby inmates in the exercise yard wailing and screaming, as if they know what’s happening. All this on October 29th. On October 30th, Myers is due to be transferred to another institution for the rest of his days. (Honestly, couldn’t they have chosen another time of year? Easter, maybe? Christmas?)

Meanwhile, Laurie Strode (Jaime Lee Curtis) is living just outside Haddonfield. She’s still traumatised from her encounter with Myers forty years earlier. She’s twice divorced, borderline alcoholic, paranoid, and has turned her home into a fortress with high grade security systems, CCTV, a hidden safe room/cellar – and she’s armed to the teeth. Terminator’s Sarah Connor is nothing on post-traumatic Laurie Strode. Her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) was taken from her at the age of twelve because Social Services deemed her an unfit mother, teaching her daughter survival techniques like hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship etc. Karen lives nearby but has little to do with her mother, who she sees as a fruitcake. Laurie does however have contact with her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) and they seem close.

But on the night of October 30th, Laurie has a mission. She is determined that Myers’s prison transfer doesn’t go ahead – she’ll kill him herself, but can’t go through with it. Which is a shame for her, because Myers’s bus never makes it to its destination. Myers causes it to crash (offscreen so we don’t quite know what he did) and he breaks loose, along with several inmates. His first order of business on October 31 as he heads home to Haddonfield is to catch up to the podcasters and retrieve his mask.

There’s a feeling of inevitability about Myers in this film that has been missing since 1978. He’s a force of nature, yes. But he doesn’t really have an identity. He’s a cypher on a mission. And he’ll kill anybody in his way, as Sartain discovers when he confronts Myers “out in the wild”. He repeats his demand that Michael “say something” but with Myers, actions speak louder than words, so Sartain gets his head stomped on until it resembles a pizza what was dropped on the road.

But why Laurie? If there’s no psychic link or familial connection, why her?

And that, my friends, is the most chilling change of all in this timeline. There is NO reason. Laurie was chosen entirely at random. Possibly because back in ’78, her father asked her to carry out an errand on her way to school and drop something off at the old Myers house. That’s where he first saw her. And he followed her around all day after that, until it got dark, and he could strike. And really, isn’t that more chilling than some unlikely supernatural connection?

Myers does some killin’ to limber himself up and loosen his stabbin’ arm before heading to the Strode compound, where Laurie and her family are waiting for him. Now, it’s important to note that he’s not stalking Laurie through some supernatural psychic link – he’s gone back to Haddonfield because that’s his home, and he heads toward the compound because Sartain earlier showed her where she was. He just wants to finish what he started.

Karen’s childhood training serves her well. After a pitched battle between Myers and Laurie where she shows her warrior spirit but gets a couple of stabs in her stomach - he still lives despite the beating she gives him. Karen lures Myers into her sights by feigning weakness and terror before shooting him. Trapped in the cellar by the security systems which were never meant to keep him out, but trap him inside, Laurie activates the gas jets she has installed throughout the house, ignites a flare and he’s engulfed in flame.

But as the fire roars around him, Myers just stands there impassively as if he just doesn’t care as the house explodes and three generations of Strode women escape and hitch a lift.

But wait until the end of the credits. There’s no sting as such, but as the credits end, the music is replaced by Myers’s distinctive breathing.

He’s not dead.

But we knew from the beginning that this was going to be a trilogy.