The only thing scary than these movies is their level of quality.
Disregarding all entries of the franchise, save for the
original John Carpenter classic, “Halloween (2018)” manages to avoid the
pitfalls of the series’ increasingly pervasive sense of cheapness and trashiness
by allowing its director David Gordon Green, along with bringing Carpenter back
in a key advisory role, to apply real filmmaking to the exploits of Michael
Myers to legitimate impact.
Set 4 decades after Myers terrorized the small town of
Haddonfield, Illinois, the wake of his massacre has left entire fields of true
crime investigators and psychologists hungry to figure out what drives his psychosis,
while the sole survivor of his rampage, Laurie Strode (reprised by Jamie Lee
Curtis), struggles to reconcile her need to come to terms with her trauma for
the sake of her health and her family’s happiness, with her desire to see him
again to kill him herself as a means of seeking catharsis.
The previous attempt to reboot the “Halloween” franchise
came in the form of the short lived Rob Zombie directed “Halloween (2007)” and “Halloween
II (2009).” Although Zombie’s sensibilities as a director tend to be fairly
limited, resulting in two thoroughly unpleasant, excessive, revolting, and
borderline abhorrent pieces of disposable cinema, those films do share a key
and noticeable common ground with Green’s current reboot.
That similarity being that an idea is clearly present from
the onset of the story that serves to layout a compelling and rich groundwork that
ultimately goes wasted in favor of turning the film those ideas are featured in
into a lesser cookie cutter slasher flick that its original superiorly codified.
The first third of “Halloween (2018)” is an almost jaw droppingly
brilliant deconstruction of the slasher genre that captures the theatricality,
atmosphere, and sense of mythology that bred a pop cultural golden age for it
to begin with but filters it through a stark lens of humanity and drama so profoundly
that it almost comes off as the sort of revisionist post-modern genre faire
that typically resurrects interest in its subject matter not unlike what “Unforgiven”
did for westerns or films like “Logan” and “The Dark Knight” for the superhero
genre.
Michael Myers’s portrayal as an enigma to the world, possessing
an aura of malicious chaos and ill intent conveyed through some surprisingly
effective cinematography choices and a round of shockingly subtle performances
make him far more scary standing still in chains than he ever has been holding
that signature knife.
As stellar as that eeriness is however, this may very well
be the first film in the “Halloween” series in which the true star of the show
is its drama.
The reality that Laurie Strode has to live after surviving such
a traumatizing incident at such a young age is not a pleasant one and the movie
doesn’t shy away from that. Her paranoia towards teaching her family self-defense
skills to help them seize the safe state of mind that she had ripped away from
her by a threat that she couldn’t fight off is gripping and a harsh reminder
that trauma doesn’t just go away after its initial chaos has blown over.
Her self-destructive obsession with being prepared for
assault and unconsciously wishing to relive the experience for the sake of
ending it the way she desired alienates her family, who struggles to cope with
the damage of such an upbringing while questioning whether or not helping her
proper is a lost cause.
Jamie Lee Curtis knocks her return to the role out of the
park with a performance that is far more nuanced than any of the schlock
written in previous sequels attempting to link Laurie and Michael on a familial
level to perpetuate potential drama.
If the first 35 minutes or so of “Halloween (2018)” could be
isolated into its own feature, it would be the perfect sequel to the original
that nobody knew could ever be made while also easily being one of the best films
of the entire slasher genre.
Unfortunately there’s another hour or so to fill in which
the movie burns off its substantial storytelling credibility to simply be just another
“Halloween” flick.
Once Michael Myers makes his escape, the film makes a sharp turn
into a decidedly schlockier territory, loaded to the brim with horror movie clichés
that have been parodied into oblivion, which when coupled with the
stylistically late Twentieth Century middle-American aesthetic and synth
musical score courtesy of Carpenter in an effort to tie it into that first film
as tightly as possible, gives off an almost surreal viewing experience of what
feels like a mediocre 35 year old movie that anachronistically contains
technology of the modern era.
The dialogue goes downhill, the focus shifts to infinitely less
likable characters, and contrivances and coincidences gradually pile up in sloppy
mounds that really left me baffled as to why so much effort was put into such a
prime setup for a fizzle of a climax that makes less sense the more it
continues and a second act that would barely work as a spoof of the slasher
genre in the vein of “Scream,” with almost no thematic threading to the rest of
the movie.
It's the cinematic equivalent of having a 3-Star Michelin chef supplied with the most prime ingredients of every food group prepare a free meal for you of your choice only to have him make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
5 Shatner Masks out of 10
What you see in “Hellfest” is ultimately what you get out of its marketing; a bad, lazy, trashy, seasonal thriller for the less discerning that barely meets the production and running time standards of a theatrical release despite home media having spent the last decade or so carving out a market for ironic viewings for which this film is ripe.
To the credit of the filmmakers, the movie does at least
actively strive to not take itself but so seriously.
Its college aged crowd of 6 protagonist archetypes,
including the hard working smart shy girl, the punk Joan Jett-esque rebel girl,
the girl in between the aforementioned sensibilities, shy girl’s cute and funny
but shy boyfriend, and the 2 dude bros, would be far from the most compelling
characters of film even if you locked them down to a small specific bubble of
direct to video releases of the week that they came out, in the horror genre.
The actors do at least have a decent chemistry with one
another however and the movie does get by for a while on the charm of selling
its concept of the ultimate spectacular house of horrors operating with a meta game
of maze solving to get to the real part. If you’re into theme parks in any
capacity, you may find yourself wishing at least once that “Hellfest” was a
real thing.
That cool stylish concept however does not translate into
narrative execution.
It’s clear that the film is hoping that the pageantry of the
park’s smoke and mirrors sweeps up the audience to distract them from the
stupidity and flimsy nature of its own premise of having a slasher do his
business under the guise of being a part of the attraction.
While there’s a moment or two that shows promise in the
impact this method of stalking and murdering could have, what ultimately
unfolds is just a checklist of genre clichés arrogant enough to think that the
cool gimmick of a stylish setting makes up for the underwhelming kills of
fairly underwhelming characters that completely waste the R-rating given to it
to the point where I was actively wondering whether or not the film was PG-13.
I’m not so pretentious as to think that every piece of media
has to have an eye towards storytelling first but the level to which “Hellfest”
indulges within its own festivities at the expense of anything actually
happening only to have what does happen land anticlimactically in badly edited
quick cuts featuring embarrassing practical effect work is pretty telling of
the eschew sensibilities at play that should have seen this one go straight to
a streaming service where it belongs.
4 Liability Lawsuits out of 10
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