With the Halloween holiday looming, my fiancée and I decided to host a movie marathon this weekend, wherein we watched every single movie from the
Halloween franchise. In case you're wondering which ones were good and which ones were not, here's my take on every last one of them:
Halloween (1978) - Run Time: 91 mins. - Released: 10/25/78 - My Rating: 9/10 - As is the case with most movie franchises, the original is still easily the best one to date. It introduces the world to serial killer Michael Myers when the six year old stabs his 17-year-old older sister Judith Myers to death on Halloween night 1963 at their home in Haddonfield, Illinois. After this happens, he's shipped off to Smith's Grove Sanitarium for 15 years, while his younger sister Angel Myers has her name changed to "Laurie Strode," gets adopted by a foster family (unbeknownst to her), and grows up just down the street from the old Myers home. When Michael comes trying to finish off his bloodline, he finds Angel, now known permanently as Laurie, babysitting Tommy Doyle, and a showdown that ends up encapsulating more than just the two of them ensues.
Halloween II (1981) - Run Time: 92 mins. - Released: 10/30/81 - My Rating: 8/10 - This movie picks up where the original left off, which is with Dr. Sam Loomis shooting Michael Myers in the chest six times with a revolver, forcing the big lug to fall backward out a second-floor window onto the grassy pavement below, and saving Laurie Strode in the process. However, when we pan back out to the yard, Michael's body's no longer there, and so the news instantly reports that an escaped mental patient who is armed and dangerous is on the loose in Haddonfield. As for Laurie, she ends up getting treated for the wounds she received during the first film at nearby Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, which of course becomes the scene of this movie's final showdown, where Laurie shoots Michael in the face twice, blinding him and allowing her to escape, while Dr. Sam Loomis sets ablaze the room he and Michael are in. A pretty good sequel, its major contributions to the franchise was its explanations of whom exactly Laurie Strode was, why Michael Myers was interested in killing her, and the fact that it let us know that Michael's parents were killed on the way to visiting him one night at the asylum, although it doesn't really delve further into that, so we're left to assume this happened by way of a car accident.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982) - Run Time: 98 mins. - Released: 10/22/82 - My Rating: 6.5/10 - Technically, you can leave this movie out of your Michael Myers movie marathon since it has nothing to do with him, but you'd be missing out on a pretty good Halloween film if you did that. People don't like this movie in droves simply because Michael's not in it and it departs from the slasher genre of horror movies. However, John Carpenter never intended for Michael's shelf life to extend passed 1978. His original goal was to tell a different "spooky" Halloween tale around the Pagan holiday every year, but since the first tale he told did so well, it first took another 92 minutes to tie up the loose ends of part one since enquiring minds wanted to know, and then it didn't allow him to ever move past Michael Myers' story onto the next one, with the lone exception of this film, which people widely panned out of sheer frustration from having lost one of their favorite horror movie villains. In other words, the franchise took on a life of its own after this film. In case you're thinking about renting this one, though, I'll very quickly summarize it for you. It deals with a Halloween mask company called the Silver Shamrock Company, which has an ad campaign on television with a super catchy jingle, and appears on the surface to be nothing more than a Halloween costuming corporation with a factory in a town called Santa Mira, California. However, once our main characters Dr. Daniel Challis and Ellie Grimbridge, the daughter of the movie's opening scene victim, go investigating what happened to Harry Grimbridge on the night of October 23, 1982, they find out that there's much more than meets the eye with this "evil" organization. Turns out, the guy running the Silver Shamrock Company practices witchcraft and has created a way to make all the children in the world his sacrificial lambs on October 31st in order to celebrate Halloween "correctly," the way it hasn't been celebrated in over 3,000 years. His plot is to use the catchy jingle to kill the children as they wear his company's masks (something it will achieve by having the jingle activate a mind-melder in the form of the company's logo on the back of the masks), and his company employs clones to eliminate anybody trying to expose his company's wicked scheme. That's the good part. The corny part? To make all this happen, it uses a stolen portion of Stonehenge for the magical powers it possesses. I hope Conal Cochran at least appeased his Wiccan gods before being obliterated because our Neolithic ancestors would certainly not be happy with him!
Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) - Run Time: 88 mins. - Released: 10/21/88 - My Rating: 7.5/10 - Just when you thought Michael had been blinded by two gun shots to the face and burned to death in a fire, you come to learn that this is not the case. Apparently, he and Dr. Loomis both only ALMOST burned to death, and now have the scars to show for it – Dr. Loomis on his face, and Michael on his hands and arms (although possibly on his face, too, but we can't confirm that much because he's always wearing that painted-white Capt. Kirk mask!). So now, Michael Myers, once thought to be an invalid, apparently regains his sight and movement, and is extra ticked off! His sister "Laurie," however, still feared him enough to fake her death in a car accident and relocate to Summer Glen, California, under the assumed name "Keri Tate." (This, we learn, much later on, in the film Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later.) So as far as this film and its two sequels are concerned, there's presumably no Laurie Strode for Michael to hunt down. So, "what bloodline is he looking to end now," you ask? That of Laurie Strode's daughter, Jamie Lloyd, also an orphan taken in by another family, now seven years of age, and Michael's biological niece. The acting in this film's borderline bad, but I guess the plot makes sense, somewhat. And if nothing else, the action in this film makes it totally watchable, and the ending is quite possibly the best one in the franchise's history. The thing you have to know here is that everyone in the Myers' bloodline apparently has a bond where they can feel one another coming, and so his niece is aware he's after her, even before she ever meets him. With the help of her foster sister Rachel, the two have a great showdown with Michael, that eventually sees all the cops and rednecks in the town unload their entire arsenal on Mr. Myers, which makes Michael fall backwards into what-looks-like an open grave, but truly isn't. Just when you think Michael's finally dead and buried, you see a masked camera view walking up the Lloyd household stairs and you watch as the maternal figure in the family gets stabbed presumably to death by a pair of scissors in the family's bathroom. However, in a surprise twist, it's not Michael doing the stabbing, it's his niece Jamie – dressed as a clown, just like Michael had back in 1963 – doing it this time, and she's just one year older than Michael was when he did his first killing. It would now appear that the entire Myers family is insane!
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989) - Run Time: 96 mins. - Released: 10/13/89 - My Rating: 3/10 - Once again, just when you think he's dead, he comes back home! This time, after falling into his shallow grave, Michael apparently rolled out of a hole in the back of it and into a stream, then floated down it until he washed ashore at a fisherman's hideaway alongside the small body of water. Barely able to stand anymore after taking 10 bajillion bullets, Michael quickly collapses, but the fisherman, who has clearly never watched his local news(!), nurses him back to health for a year, only to be repaid with a snapped neck and immediate death thereafter. Michael puts his mask back on, and we're off to the murder races once again. He's still seeking his niece Jamie, whom we're now told is nine years of age (even though the math is wrong – she was seven in the last movie + one year of Michael's nursing = she's eight, right? – nope, she's nine, don't ask me how), and she isn't very hard to find, since she was sent to a Children's Clinic after her thankfully-failed attempted homicide on her foster mother. Apparently, nobody in her foster family dislikes her for attempting to kill the mom because they're all super happy to see the now-mute and barely-able-to-walk kiddo at the clinic. This movie makes little sense, since Rachel quickly dies via scissors to the chest, and her best friend Tina, whom we've barely just met, is the person Michael best feels is going to lead him to Jamie, so he goes after her at the tower farm. Using her telepathic skills, however, Jamie realizes her uncle is now en route to Tina, so she and her super-cute little friend Billy go to try and save the day. Now that she can not only walk again, but actually sprint to get there, little Jamie gets there in no time, and the showdown between her and Michael begins. It eventually works its way from the farm to the Myers house, where ten thousand cops and Dr. Loomis have set their booby trap for Michael to walk right into a haze of gunfire like in the previous film, only this time the cops inexplicably flea the scene on account of one of the little girl's visions – this time, those visions pertain to her friend Billy and something bad happening to him – leaving only Dr. Loomis and Jamie behind, which is of course the perfect time for Michael to strike. This is when Dr. Loomis makes the dumbest decision ever made in this entire franchise, which is really saying something considering somebody had to approve the release of this horrible fifth installment, and that's to try to reason with Michael by walking right up to him in the middle of another one of Michael's killing sprees and asking him to put down the knife and get control of his rage. Michael was not amused when Dr. Loomis tried to grab his knife, so he cut him and proceeded to chase Jamie once again. Later, Jamie, not being the brightest herself, doesn't learn from Dr. Loomis' mistake of trying to appeal to Michael's humanity, and attempts to do so again, only this time her uncle seems to be listening to the pleas – that is, until she touches his mask, at which point his anger kicks back in and the chase continues. It isn't until Dr. Loomis, who apparently survived his stabbing, re-appears, that the day is saved. He shoots Michael with a tranquilizer gun, then continues beating him to a pulp with a wooden plank until the doctor himself suffers a stroke. The sheriffs come in and take Michael away to a holding cell to later be transferred to a maximum-security prison, but before they can, some stranger in black shoots up the Sheriff's Station and allows Michael to escape once more. Jamie, of course, feels this telepathically, and wakes up screaming "no!" in terror. The end.
Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) - Run Time: 87 mins. - Released: 09/29/95 - My Rating: 5/10 - This was Donald Pleasence's last film before his death, and also the introductory film for one Mr. Paul Rudd, who plays a now-all-grown-up Tommy Doyle, the same kid Laurie Strode had babysat in the first film. Fast forward to this one, and since Laurie's foster father Mason Strode never could sell the house, Mason's brother moves his family into the old Myers home without telling them who used to live there, and a strange Tommy Doyle, who's become obsessed in tracking the boogeyman he'd seen as a kid, is now living at a boarding home across the street from the Myers house under the watchful eye of one Mrs. Blankenship (because it totally makes sense to move across the street from a guy who absolutely terrifies you!). The movie opens with Jamie having been abducted by the mysterious "Man in Black," impregnated by who knows whom, and having just given birth to her first child, a little baby boy. In order to avoid having to raise the child amid this mysterious man's cult life, a nurse helps the now-older Jamie (played by J.C. Brandy, a different actress than the one who played the role in parts four and five) escape with her baby. Michael quickly catches up to Jamie and kills her, but not before Jamie was able to hide her baby at a deserted bus station and make a frantic, albeit ignored, call seeking help, to a local radio DJ, that made it onto the aire. Having heard the call, since he's been tracking all things Michael Myers-related, Tommy Doyle figures out the whereabouts of the child, and goes to retrieve the baby. After doing so, he warns a now-retired Dr. Loomis that Michael's back again, and the murdering spree begins anew, with Michael returning to his old house in search of his new relative, but also to clear it out of its new inhabitants. One thing leads to another until we learn the mysterious "Man in Black's" identity, which is that of Dr. Terence Wynn, the chief administrator of Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where Michael had been incarcerated as a boy. We also learn that Mrs. Blankenship is one of his "Cult of Thorn" members, that they've been housing Michael since helping him escape, and that they are seeking and harnessing the evil power of "Thorn" (the strange symbol Michael has on his hand) because it means the dawn of a new age, and Jamie's baby represents the arrival of said age... or something like that. To be honest, this movie's kind of confusing, but takes an interesting turn with the addition of a strange cult and a weird ancient mythological meaning behind the Myers family. The ending's also left somewhat ambiguous and confusing, as in the final scene/showdown, Tommy injects Michael with a corrosive liquid and beats him into unconsciousness with a lead pipe. Dr. Loomis, Tommy and friends are then about to escape, when Dr. Loomis tells them to go on without him because he has "a little business" to tend to. Back inside the building, Michael's mask is found lying on the floor of the lab room, as the screams of Dr. Loomis can be heard in the background leaving us to wonder what the heck has become of all these people. Although I don't think they harnessed the power of good storytelling in this film, the potential for a good film was certainly there. But since pretty much everyone was confused by this supposed-to-be-non-thinking slasher film, for our next chapter, instead of getting a continuance on this bizarre cult storyline with some potential, we instead got...
Halloween H2O: 20 Years Later (1998) - Run Time: 86 mins. - Released: 08/05/98 - My Rating: 7/10 - ... which was essentially the teen movie version of a Michael Myers film, equipped with everything a Late '90s teen film had to have: (the introduction of) Josh Hartnett, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Dawson's Creek's own Michelle Williams, a rapper on the decline now attempting to act (LL Cool J) and many pop culture references, including subtle nods to the Scream franchise (remember in Scream when the teens are sitting around the living room at the house party watching the original Halloween movie? Well, in this film, Michelle Williams' character and her friend are watching Scream 2 in their dorm room, in one of the greatest instances of art-imitating-art, which is even a subject of discussion in that movie's opening film class sequence) and the original Psycho movie (Janet Leigh, who played the main protagonist Marion Crane in THAT film, discusses bad things possibly happening to her colleague Laurie Strode, which of course is played by her real-life daughter Jamie Lee Curtis, before getting into the same car Marion drove in the 1960 horror classic, while a very faint and subtle version of Bernard Herrmann's Psycho film score briefly plays in the background). Also, I guess because there was so much nonsense to wade through between the ludicrousness of Halloween parts four through six's plot lines, this 1998 film's creator messed up with the timeline. Despite the fact that Laurie Strode would've had to have had her daughter Jamie at 20 years of age (if Jamie was seven in 1988, as they claimed in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, she would've been birthed in 1981; Laurie was born in 1961, making her two, as explained in Halloween II, when Michael killed Judith in 1963; Translation: Laurie birthed Judith at 20 years of age), her son in this movie (played by Josh Hartnett) would've also had to be born when Laurie was 20 years old (since this was 20 years after the events of Halloween 1978, making it 1998, and Josh Hartnett claims to be 17 in one scene, placing his birthdate within the year 1981). Aside from that lone major mathematical mistake, or – if you explain it away as the two (Jamie and Josh's character John) being twins – the improbability of the state taking away only one of Laurie's two children and leaving her with the other one, this movie is still a relatively enjoyable one. The plot is watered down so that everyone can definitely understand it, as every slasher film really should be, but action-wise, this one goes for gold. Explaining once and for all what's become of slightly-paranoid Laurie Strode, Michael's younger sister, we catch up with her, now in her Late 30's and working as the headmistress of a private boarding school, and her son, and the usual power struggle between mother and son ensues... until the two have to work together because Michael has finally put his investigative skills to work and tracked her down in Northern California. However, when Michael returns this time, he has a rude awakening: Despite having hidden from him for so long, Laurie Strode is no longer afraid of her brother, and aims to finish this murdering fiasco once and for all in the ultimate face-off. She's so intent on doing this, in fact, that she not only pushes him out a window to a concrete floor two flights below, but then hijacks the ambulance he's placed into, only to drive him out to the woods and chop off his head. Maybe Michael can die by way of decapitation. Maybe.
Halloween: Resurrection (2002) - Run Time: 94 mins. - Released: 07/12/02 - My Rating: 1/10 - Or, maybe not. Apparently, before Laurie hijacked the ambulance, Michael woke up, slashed an EMT's larynx, switched wardrobes (mask included) with him, and placed him in the bodybag. That guy who's head got cut off wasn't Michael at all, it was some random EMT that apparently didn't know how to signal "I'm not Michael!" with his hands, so of course he got his head chopped off for his lack of effort. This, despite the fact that there would've had to have been two Michael Myers' masks because Michael's clearly seen dumping his mask on the floor in the flashback, but this dude was clearly wearing it at the end of the last film. Blooper much? LOL! Nonetheless, Laurie feels so bad for having decapitated some random dude, that she's been in an insane asylum since the end of the last film, not talking to anybody, just staring out the window all day long, waiting for Michael to seek his revenge, at which point she'll try to remove his mask before finally killing him once and for all, only for him to grab her when she goes for it and throw HER off the side of the mental ward's roof to HER death instead. End of Laurie Strode. Michael continues on... although it makes no sense for him to do so, since his sole purpose is to end his bloodline, and he now has. Oh yeah, and did I mention that this movie came out in an era obsessed with "reality television?" The only reason I mention this now is because the rest of this film takes place at the Myers home, where they are about to begin filming a reality T.V. show starring random people walking around Myers' old home investigating it. I guess Michael's not a fan of reality television? Either that, or he just doesn't like sharing his home – he's living in a tunnel under his old home now, by the way! – with random people? Either way, he poops on their party, rains on their parade, or whatever other cliché fits nicely here, as he shows up and starts killing the likes of text-happy Bianca Kajlich (Rules of Engagement's Jennifer Morgan), Busta Rhymes (I guess because LL Cool J already got tired of filling the washed-up rapper turned actor role?), and others, until the latter kicks his ass, Wat Chun Lee-style, and eventually electrocutes Michael presumably to oblivion, and/or into the remade Halloween world of Rob Zombie. In this film, the action was quick and non-stop, which I appreciated, but that was about where the good stuff ended. The rest was just hogwash.
Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) – Run Time: 109 mins. - Released 08/31/07 - My Rating: 6/10 - After so much unnecessary crap had been done with this franchise in recent years, it really was time to reboot and re-imagine the whole thing. Enter Rob Zombie. Starting from scratch, Rob attempted to retell John Carpenter's classic tale about a mysterious soulless monster born to an affluent Midwestern family who stalks teenage babysitters including his own sister, mercilessly killing everyone in his path and never uttering a single word to anyone, making him an impossible case study even to the most accomplished and seasoned psychologists. The problem most people have with this film is that Rob Zombie didn't do any of that! Instead, Rob Zombie made up an entirely new backstory for Michael – the same one pretty much every real-life serial killer has: his mom's a stripper, his dad's an alcoholic jerk, his promiscuous older sister treated him meanly, the kids at school bullied him and so he found some empowerment in the killing of defenseless little animals – until all that graduates to newer, more extreme levels of antisocial behavior, wherein he ends up tying-up and stabbing his abusive stepdad, beating his teenage sister's boyfriend to death with a baseball bat, caressing his sister's leg and then stabbing her right in the gut with a butcher knife, and beating down his schoolyard bully with a humongous tree branch. In other words, Rob essentially took a classic American slasher flick and turned it into a white trash festival, but then again, wasn't that to be expected from a man who has essentially made his entire directing career from "redneck"-ifying everything he touches? You'll also recognize the cast from this movie, as it's exactly the same as the cast from every Rob Zombie movie to date: Sheri Moon Zombie, William Forsythe, Sid Haig and Ken Foree, just to name a few. In fact, in typical Rob Zombie fashion, his wife who can't act worth a lick was cast as the maternal figure to this mama's boy version of Michael, and therefore given most of the lines in the early scenes, all of which she spits out with as much soul as a mannequin. Also in typical Zombie style, he cast a very famous face from an odd movie we all know and love – in this case, A Clockwork Orange's Malcolm McDowell – and makes him a character in the film. Unfortunately for poor Malcolm (and the late Donald Pleasence before him), both of whom are actor's actors and did try their best to make chicken soup out of chicken S#!+, Dr. Loomis is still one of the most under-developed characters in cinema who only seemingly exists to motivate the various police departments to chase after Michael, and to remind them all of his soulless eyes. Now, for a little-known fact about the first Halloween film: no blood was ever shown on film. The creepiness came from the suspense of having a no-motive soulless monster walking around with evil on his mind and no real reason for it. In this film, gore is all you have. There's no suspense, there's no creepy Michael mystique to scare us, there's just blood and porn everywhere, since Rob essentially used this film as an excuse to leave blood-strewn bodies of naked women at every turn, making this title fall more under the "porn gore" genre than an actual "slasher" flick. It's not scary, it's just pointless, and though it did attempt to fill in some of the holes of the original film (How did Laurie end up getting adopted by the family just down the street from Michael's, and how did nobody know who she was? What was Laurie's new family like? How did Michael's mom react to his insanity, and how'd she die? What caused Michael to kill, and where'd he get his mask from? Etc.), it left brand-new questions unanswered (When did Michael Myers start talking? Why does this kid think he can disappear by simply putting on a mask? When did Dr. Sam Loomis start looking at Michael as a cash cow via book sales, instead of as a very needy soul to save? How does a little blond kid who as a child seems so friendly with people who ain't picking on him turn into an oversized retarded redneck with greasy black hair that talks to no one and wants to kill everyone?). Rob also took some liberties with the film, such as pushing the date of Michael's first murderous incident back four years for no apparent reason, other than maybe it was too hard to find a six year old who can play such a wide range of emotions in Hollywood? However, it ain't all bad, as the film's cameos range from Machete's Danny Trejo to Rock & Roll High School's Clint Howard. There's also a lot of subtle nuances and homages to the original. For instance, and I think a lot of people missed this one, the character of Annie Brackett was played by an original Halloween cast member in Danielle Harris, who as a little girl, had played Laurie Strode's daughter Jamie Lloyd in parts four and five of the franchise. This time around, she – thankfully! – did a much better acting job. Also, the music that was played throughout the movie, such as The Chordettes' "Mr. Sandman" and Blue Öyster Cult's "Don't Fear The Reaper," stayed true to the original film. I also liked Rob's own additional musical inputs, such as Alice Cooper's "Only Women Bleed" playing softly in the background during the Annie and Paul sex scene ("black eyes all of the time, don't spend a dime, clean up this grime, and you there down on your knees, begging me please, come watch me bleed!") … the subtlety of that one made me smile a bit. But then again, we all liked Rob when he was a musician. Maybe he should've stuck to that because, as a director, he's unfortunately very one dimensional. Finally, the last good thing he did was that during the closing credits, Rob remembered to pay homage to Moustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born filmmaker who produced the Halloween horror movie franchise, who had died in November 2005 of wounds sustained from a triple hotel bombing in Jordan. Nevertheless, this movie still doesn't work, since it is the end result of what happens when you try to explain and humanize a monster who is best served with a mysterious presence, so that he can be an otherwise unexplainable creepy anomaly. I can kind of see where Rob was going with this film and I think it might've even worked had another director with more vision tackled it, but with Rob Zombie, we were destined to end up with the same old redneck song and dance (e.g. foul-mouthed dialogue, unncessary porn scenes, excessive gory violence, and so on). The sad part is, he didn't even learn his lesson, as he went on to make an even worse Halloween film just two years later, basically for no other reason than the studio throwing a lot of money his way!
H2: Halloween 2, a.k.a. Rob Zombie's Halloween II (2009) – Run Time: 105 mins. - Released 08/28/09 - My Rating: 2/10 - Despite having two years to read a few of the many negative reviews about his last film and correcting what he'd done wrong, this film makes it abundantly clear that Rob just doesn't care about making a good product because the same mistakes he made in part one, he remade here, only this time, since fans had already pointed them out to him, they weren't as forgiving about it. First off, this movie starts out with an excerpt about the image of a white horse meaning purity. We get that Michael sees his mom as the symbol of all that is pure, but we really don't care! Nothing about a Michael Myers film should even attempt to be that (pretentiously) artsy. Secondly, and once again, gross imagery, vulgar language and shock value dialogue does not a horror movie make, especially not a classic like this one that gets its scares by doing less rather than more, by rarely really even showing blood and yet messing with your mind far greater than had it done so, by not humanizing (or even trying to explain) an almost supernaturally sinister monster. It would appear from watching this film and all his others that Rob Zombie just doesn't get that fact, as one of the very first scenes in this film shows excessively bloody medical procedures being performed on people. We kind of figure going toe-to-toe with a soulless, knife-wielding monster and getting stabbed repeatedly will leave you in that state, we really didn't need to see it. Totally unnecessary! Also, how are you supposed to root against Michael when everyone he's killing appears to be even more despicable than him as a person? In the last film, he had insane asylum workers raping a woman patient. As if that wasn't gross enough, this time Rob Zombie one-ups himself by giving us two dead body transporters talking about having sex with a corpse ("What's the difference between jam and jelly? You can't jelly your c**k up that girl's @$$!"). This is the kind of juvenile, rednecky dialogue that just doesn't make us sympathetic toward Michael's victims, which believe it or not, Rob, would infinitely make their deaths more torturous for us had we been. It's 2015 now, it was 2009 when this movie came out – we've already seen just about everything that's to be seen, we're now completely desensitized, nothing you can do or say is going to shock us anymore. Not giving us the constant gore and porn we've come to expect from today's society would scare us more than giving it to us. Get with the times, man! Another thing that really ticked me off about this movie was the fact that Michael has become just a caricature of some ridiculously tall, unbelievably strong bad guy, as was especially evidenced by him flipping a car over with his bare hands while Laurie sat in it near the end of the movie. Everything that once scared me about Michael is nowhere to be found in this over-the-top WWF/WWE version of him. (I know Tyler Mane was never employed by the WWE, but he was employed by WCW, and trained by Stu Hart, among others, so it's pretty much the same thing.) To me, just about any tall redneck with a knife can now be Michael Myers. He's no longer unique. That's the scariest thing about this film: Rob Zombie managed to turn a boogeyman into a laughable bad guy caricature – talk about the ultimate demystification! Also, why is it that Rob brought back the two worst actors from his first film? Well, one of them is his wife, so I guess we know why he did that (it's not like anyone else is offering her acting gigs!), but as for Scout Taylor-Compton, who turned self-reliable and highly respected Laurie Strode into a whiny little priss in the last film, why'd she get rewarded for that performance by becoming the lead this time around when you've got friggin' Malcolm McDowell waiting in the wings with a character who we've waited 31 years to actually learn something about?! Seems like a wasted opportunity to me, although I did enjoy hearing Malcolm utter the phrase "nice and sparkling clear" again in what I'm sure was a homage to his days of ultraviolence, my little droogs! Meanwhile, Daeg Faerch, the little kid that played young Michael in the 2007 film, who was really the only saving grace as far as the actors were concerned in Rob Zombie's first experiment with this franchise, got replaced by some kid that looks nothing like him just because he'd grown some since the last film? Sometimes I wonder if Rob wasn't purposely trying to make a bad film here to get himself kicked off the studio's pressure project. Well, if he was, kudos to him because... it worked. But seriously, Michael doesn't even stalk his victims anymore, he just beats the crud out of them at the most predictable times for about two seconds until a bloody corpse is revealed, so at what point in this film is anything actually supposed to scare us? And the ending, where little teenage girl Laurie is the one who finally kills big giant man-beast Michael, then tells him she loves him, comes out of the shed wearing his mask and ends up in an asylum herself, seeing the same dumb artsy images of her real mother walking a white horse, has got to be the dumbest ending to any Halloween film yet, even outdoing Busta Rhymes' ninja warrior showdown with Michael in the eighth film of the franchise before his "What's wrong with you people? Michael isn't a sound bite!" speech.
All in all, we had a nice relaxing time going through all these to get ready for Halloween. However, this is only the first weekend where we're doing a horror movie countdown for our favorite holiday.
Next weekend, we'll tackle all four
Scream films.
Stay tuned!
P.S.: In case you haven't yet heard, 2016 might bring us a new
Halloween film,
Halloween Returns, which will chronologically take place after the first two original films and will reportedly ignore all the others, probably rightfully so. I know it's probably going to stink, but oh well, now that I'm all caught up, you know I'm going to want to stay that way, so I'm on board with it, no matter what. However, I'm really hoping that they don't run Michael's legacy into the ground again by coming up with some newer, even more ridiculous ideas than they've done in the past (e.g. the reality show, the "Man in Black" and his "Cult of Thorn," the artsy white horse crap, etc.).
