Halloween (dir. David Gordon Green, 2018)
I’ve liked many things that David Gordon Green has done in his almost comically varied career. George Washington was a promising debut, and while people were taken aback by his move into studio stoner comedies, Pineapple Express works just as well as an action film as it does a vehicle for Seth Rogen. I love his work in television with Danny McBride. Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals are two of the best comedies HBO has ever aired. He’s even worked with Tommy Doyle himself, Paul Rudd in the underseen Prince Avalanche. Admittedly, I’ve never seen All the Real Girls or last year’s Stronger, but I would like to based on his other work. I never quite expected him to branch into horror in spite of all this, but when I first heard that he and Danny McBride would work on a sequel to Halloween, my interest was piqued.
I saw it today, and I kind of loved it. This is the film that I wanted Halloween H20 to be and as great of a sequel as I could have possibly hoped for.
I will try to avoid discussing any specific plot points or spoilers other than those already in the trailer or marketing material because the film is still in theaters, but some information will be unavoidable due to the nature of the film’s place in the series continuity. It’s a direct sequel to the first film, ignoring not only the later entries that introduced different sets of children and druidic cults, but also the 1981 film that immediately followed the original.
Essentially, it’s been 40 years since the murders on October 31, 1978. Michael Myers has been sequestered in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium since that night, and Laurie Strode has been struggling with this random attack for her entire adult life. There’s no connection or family relationship between the two other than victimizer and survivor.
There are two major thematic thrusts in the film. The first is the intergenerational nature of trauma. Laurie’s traumatic experiences irrevocably imprinted on her daughter Karen (the great Judy Greer) as her mother’s paranoia and fear defined her upbringing. Karen maintains only a limited relationship with Laurie now, trying to raise her daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) in as normal of an environment as she can. It’s a classic pattern, and it plays out in the film in a very natural way even in these extreme circumstances. All three actresses give good performances in well-written parts.
The other is the nature of Michael Myers, or rather how we try to interpret his nature. While I will defend what Rob Zombie did in his films, I think Green, McBride, and co-writer Jeff Fradley made the right decision for their film in returning to John Carpenter’s original idea of the character. Michael Myers is The Shape. He’s a void, an emptiness that we feel with our own ideas. Whatever is happening in that darkness has ceased to be recognizable human, and any attempt to delve into it–be it from some charmingly terrible true crime podcasters (Jefferson Hall and Riann Rees) or from his new European psychiatrist Ranbir Sartain (Haluk Bilginer)–is doomed to failure.
Some people will no doubt have complaints about that, but the psychology of psychopaths isn’t hard to explain. They enjoy inflicting pain and domineering others. That’s it. Their brains don’t work in a manner that they should, and society needs to constrain their worst impulses through early identification, management, and if necessary containment. A fictional character like Michael Myers is only differentiated from the real thing in his silence, uncanny movement, lack of affect, and endurance.
Beyond all that I was impressed by the tone of the film. While I love Carpenter’s film, I’ve seen it too often over the years to be particularly frightened by it. This new film, though, is an unusually effective slasher film. It doesn’t do anything particularly new with regard to the form, but it’s all done in an unaffected manner. For instance, there’s a long take in the film, methodically following Michael Myers, that is completely unnerving to watch.
It’s a film about trauma, death, and motherhood, but it’s also very funny in the appropriate places. The characters, particularly the teenagers, are a riot. Some people may think they’re a little too polished, but I’m of the opinion that the people younger than me are natural performers due to always being online. Social media may be destroying us all, but it does teach you basic joke construction. Importantly, all this ceases the moment anyone’s in danger. It’s a delicate balance that I think they pull off quite well, especially considering the Halloween franchise isn’t particularly known for being deliberately humorous.
Having seen all eleven of these films now, I have a new and better appreciation for them. The first is an all-time classic, of course, but there was always something about the reputation of the others that put me off from them for a long time. Oh sure, Season of the Witch had that so-bad-it’s-good thing going for it, but I never met anyone invested in the story of Jamie Lloyd. They are all genre pictures, B-movies basically, but there’s a seriousness to the franchise that’s striking and unfamiliar to me, being more familiar with the likes of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. I suppose that’s because there’s a verisimilitude to them even at their most ridiculous. After all, Michael Myers isn’t the Boogeyman that everyone insists he is. He’s something just as bad if not worse: a man destroying lives in pursuit of only his own violent, inscrutable gratification.
October 26, 2018
oliveresque 