4-year time jump since the end of Halloween Kills.
That last one was so bad, I’m not sure I even want to see this one. Ah, who am I kidding? I’ll watch it because I watch every horror movie that comes out.
They’ve had this and the last one done and waiting for release for years right?
The last one was sort of baffling in a weird way, sort of in the way the meta-director slap fight in the new Star Wars trilogy was.
Tremendous flaws aside, I liked the first new Halloween. But I have even less expectations for this than the first new Halloween, thanks to the second.
No, but see, he’s totally gonna die this time.
Just watched on Peacock. Hoooo boy, opinion on this is going to be divisive
Watching it this afternoon. I’m not that hopeful: even the “good” reviews are pretty equivocal, but I guess I gotta judge for myself.
What the fuck did I just watch?
I am excited to hate-watch this.
Ha ha, we saw Halloween Ends!
Short review:
This movie makes me want everyone and everything to die in a fire. A better movie would be a Hellraiser movie where the rules of the box change entirely from one person to the next, with no rhyme or reason. A better movie would be a 4th new Star Wars where Rian Johnson is back at the helm, continuing is directorial slap fight with JJ Abrams and IDK maybe long time Starwars Fans, and it turns out “The Emperor Figure” from the 3rd movie was actually Luke Skywalker, who had conveniently faked his own death (TWICE! And now he’s back and this time he;s pissed). But, uh, Jedi IV would only be a smidge better than this movie, to be clear.
This movie is a terrific Hate Watch.
There will be spoilers, after a fashion.
This movie asks a single question. A singular question, really.
Suicide or Cherry Blossoms?
What the fuck does that even mean? This movie knows, although there is no known language to give it. The answer is anti-Zen; the opposite of Cottleston Pie.
This movie is the third story in a trilogy. I mean, ok, it’s the third movie in a “trilogy” that’s the latest set of installments in a long running franchise (and technically the fourth movie in a continuity). But the stated intent was a three movie story to bring back everybody (well, bring back Lori Singer and Michael Meyers primarily). Why are we recapping the series early in this movie? Everyone knows everything already.
Most of the characters in this movie don’t make sense. None of things characters do - either in a broad sense of how they behave/act, nor specifics down to how people act in specific scenes - feel natural, earned in character, or part of a coherent whole. Does David Gordon Green even remember making the first two movies?
The opening sequence to this movie is not actually story telling. It’s the opposite. Negative story telling? It’s a black hole that sucks in everything that might actually matter and then renders it null and void. It would work in a number of other types of movies. But a senseless tragedy in a movie that’s the 3rd movie (4th actually) about a masked entity that is going around murdering the fuck out of everyone is completely out of place. Even to set up a brand new character. Speaking of that guy.
I have this vision - admittedly sort of Red Letter Media influenced, and the movie pitch guy influenced - of the execs of this movie hearing DGG give the high level description for the Corey character amid the initial meeting for the movie and then saying “ok tell us more about the Autistic kid” and then Green making one attempt to explain what Autism actually is and that falling on deaf ears. And forever more he was The Autistic Kid when the execs were holding meetings. And so whenever one of them came on set and started talking, brother you had to be ready to speak in terms of The Autistic Kid when they asked you questions.
This movie features a literal scene where The Autistic Kid (who isn’t even fucking Autistic, thanks execs) play wrestles - some might call it “rough housing” - with “Michael Meyers”. This is so poorly conceived that regardless of which way this movie goes, the scene is a complete failure. This, more than anything else in the entire movie, forces me to ask “what the fuck are we even doing”.
Laurie Strode, coming off of few movies where her greatest foe was brought back and killed a shitload of people including HER DAUGHTER, is running around acting delightfully punch drunk and screaming about titties. She’s cast off her grim fatalism for. . .uh whatever that movie with the witches is whose name I suddenly can’t remember and am too lazy to look up. The one with Sarah Jessica Parker (they just did a long awaited sequel). There is no real context or explanation for this (a throwaway line about rehab and therapy is not a good explanation). And then in one scene she turns into a crazy possessive whatever because Allyson’s boyfriend starts acting creepy (super creepy, granted). The whiplash is violent.
What the fuck is Allyson doing? Why is she “I’m a sixteen year old experiencing my first crush/love” besotted with The Autistic Kid? Her “these little town blues are really dragging a dame down” act doesn’t feel like it makes sense coming from the other movies or anything in this one. Some of the date sequences have an interesting dream-like quality that doesn’t make sense in the context of the movie. Also Allyson is the worst judge of character of all time.
Oh by the way, Angry Lady Mom, I am super happy your fucking garbage ass brat of a son died in the most contrived dumbass piece of story telling this side of star wars. Fuck off.
This is the most mailed in version of high school bullies I’ve ever seen. This looks like four people transported from four different high school movie eras (80s to 90s, 2000s pre-millennial/millennial, and “generic jock who was a villain in a Meatballs sequel”). Jock Man fucking throws The Autistic Kid off a bridge and thank god it was a low to the ground bridge or else there would have been serious consequences. The deaths of these characters don’t even come with the sort of schadenfreude that some people enjoy in that sort of torture porn (and that’s certainly not my thing). And yet, these are the most coherently written characters in the movie.
Michael Meyers is the second most important killer in a Halloween movie that features Michael Meyers (which is all but one). That’s. . . a decision.
LOL (I just rewatched the scene where TAK basically teleport appears behind Laurie outside her house; this one hit the funny bone for some reason).
Halloween Continues at least had a point, of sorts. And a storytelling direction. I mean it sucked. But it had those basic elements that this movie lacked. Indeed, we appear to have undone the “Michael Meyers is supernatural” thing since Laurie easily beat him up and then killed him.
There isn’t even a catharsis watching Laurie slay the dragon here. H20 is a deeply flawed movie but it was a thousand times better than this.
I am completely shocked the body of The Autistic Kid didn’t go missing. I was also half expecting them to go down the road of Meyers being in the dude’s imagination. Which would have been even more nonsensical than this movie. Actually I now wish they had done that.
I watched the first 20 minutes of Halloween 2018 and bailed, but the reactions to this are making me really curious to check it out.
The question for David Gordon Green is: who was this made for?
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If you are of the fanbase who wants to see MM do MM things, you’re disappointed in all but maybe 10 minutes of this, and probably insulted by his diminished ability.
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If you’re rooting for Laurie Strode, you’re likely equally confused/annoyed by the characterization and the flip/flopping in the span of 90 minutes.
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If you were interested in if someone else would take on the mantle of MM, it was undone at the end as well.
There’s some interesting ideas in here - like the idea of the events of the past “poisoning” a community, which is something that Carpenter had talked about for a potential sequel back in the day, or how survivors of trauma deal with that trauma - but this did not work.
Is Michael a supernatural figure or is he just some crazy-ass old man killer? The last movie ended with a resounding yes, he has powers beyond mortal men. This movie resets him to an insane homeless sewer-dwelling loner that is alternately weak enough to get beat by a dude that got assaulted by high school bullies but strong enough to lift a grown woman with one arm and tear his own hand apart to continue killing.
Did some kind of spirit of Halloween murder move from Michael to the goober boyfriend? When the young man was wearing the mask, he did things a normal dude would’ve found difficult like grabbing a person’s head one-handed and bashing it against a record player hard enough to smash the victim’s jaw off. But then later he just gets shot and crumbles.
I laughed out loud when the child from the 2018 movie showed up in the ending procession. Nice cameo kid. Hope you got paid.
Yeah, it was some weird shit. Nothing about that relationship worked for me.
Those questiopns are all reasonable. Michael was a John Wick immortal in the 2nd movie. I had hopes for a short while that the kid who became his disciple actually wouldn’t, and that would have been better writing. Alas, I was so naive.
Despite this being a groaner, I enjoyed… some of it. The tongue on the turntable ws a nice touch. As a child of the original Halloween, there was some satisfaction, despite how stupid it was, in seeing Michael properly disposed of at the end.
Also, the kid seems to be killing for sport a little bit (or developing a taste for it) and also driven by revenge. Michael Meyers is not driven by anything. He’s entirely inhuman and unrelatable.
I didn’t have the energy to talk about the procession. Hoo boy. the least cathartic catharsis ever.
Woke up today actually pissed off about Halloween Ends.
Needed more Big John and Little John.
Got my tickets for tonight. I’m excited to see how terrible this actually is.
Man, you guys have way more tolerance for obviously shitty horror than I do. It’s like the Hellraiser thread, where people are talking about movies in the franchise I didn’t even know existed and I’m just wondering why people kept watching after 2. What keeps you coming back to Halloween after the first couple of films (really just the first one)?
Because every now and then a terrible movie franchise will surprise you with Busta Rhymes karate kicking Michael Myers.