Provokr Pick: Halloween
Jamie Lee Curtis Is Back For Blood
To the young and uninformed, Halloween looks like just another horror movie. It’s easy to overlook just how important that 1978 film was to the development of the genre. John Carpenter is one of the best filmmakers to ever do it, and Halloween was the movie that put him on the map. The image of Michael Myers, armed with a butcher knife, picking up a teenager with one hand and pinning him to the wall with one hard stab of his blade is a seminal scene in the pantheon of all cinema, not just horror.
Freddy Kruger might be more of a showman, Jason Voorhees may be the more creative killer, and Leatherface was more palpably psychotic, but no horror icon can instill pure, unadulterated fear the way Michael Myers does.
Of course, this mostly only applies to the original film. While 1981‘s Halloween II is considered by many to be a worthy follow-up, and the divisive Halloween III: The Season of the Witch lacked Myers completely (in a failed effort to turn the franchise into an annual anthology series), most of the rest of the series has been justifiably forgotten. Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later – which ignored parts IV through VI, picking up after Halloween II – was a surprisingly worthy finale to the series (courtesy of Scream and Tell Me A Story writer, Kevin Williamson), but even that was ruined by the insanely terrible Halloween: Resurrection. Two Rob Zombie-directed reboot films followed, which offered a new spin on the Myers mythos, but ultimately failed to usurp the original.
It came as something of a surprise when horror studio Blumhouse announced they were making a direct sequel to the original Halloween film. Simply called Halloween, the new movie ignores every film in the franchise except for the 1978 original; the trailer even makes a joke about the revelation in Halloween II that Michael Myers is the long-lost brother of Laurie Strode, with the characters debunking that plot point, stating, “that was only a rumor.”
By all accounts, Halloween is shaping up to be a worthy successor to the throne of the timeless original. Forty years after she first fended off “The Shape,” Jamie Lee Curtis returns as Laurie Strode – but this time, she’s ready for him. Strode was changed by her battle with Michael Myers in 1978, and the trailers for the new film show her as a rugged survivalist, armed with a house full of guns and a vigilante’s desire for revenge on the man who killed so many of her friends, all those years ago.
For generations, horror movies have kind of had it both ways, with women simultaneously being dim-witted, bikini-clad fodder for gory kills, but also usually the final survivor who staves off the killer until the next sequel. It’s clear that tired dynamic won’t be a part of the new film, with Curtis’s Laurie Strode geared up to take on Michael Myers in a winner-takes-all duel to the death. Adding to their forty-year relationship is the amazing fact that actor Nick Castle, who played Myers in in the original film, is also returning for this sequel, adding an extra layer of gravitas to this ultimate grudge match. The character is mainly played by James Jude Courtney, but having Castle in the suit and mask, even for a few scenes, adds an extra layer of authenticity to the proceedings.
Blumhouse has a strong reputation for giving its writers and directors a strong degree of creative freedom compared to other production companies. Essentially, their strategy is to spend very little money on their films, but to stay hands-off during the creative process. Halloween carries a budget of only $10 million, but director David Gordon Green and co-writer Danny McBride were essentially given free reign to do whatever they wanted. It’s an astounding show of faith from the studio, since Green and McBride as best known for comedies like Pineapple Express and Your Highness, not white-knuckle horror films like Halloween… That being said, Blumhouse does have an unfortunate habit of throwing in a cheap jump scare at the end of so many of their films, a trend which has hurt movies like Sinister and its sequel, but they’ve hopefully learned to ease up on that brand of nonsense.
Halloween is an important movie. It’s not another cheap sequel intended to wring every last penny out of a played-out brand. Halloween is a tribute to one of the greatest horror movies ever made, crafted by true fans with the consent and involvement of the original master himself, John Carpenter. He didn’t just sign off on the film, either; Carpenter composed the score for the sequel, even updating his legendary Halloween theme with a brand new, chill-inducing arrangement.
While it’s a sure bet that Halloween is intended to captivate and terrify, we strongly recommend the film to non-horror fans. It’s one thing for a scary movie to have a female protagonist, but it’s a Provokr movie when that woman is 59 years old, armed to the teeth, and itching for the opportunity to send her arch-nemesis straight to hell.
Halloween is in theaters now.
