Premise: Halloween did really well, so let’s do it again.
Watching the Halloween movies reminds me some of when I wrote fantasy novels in middle and high school. I had this big series with a complex mythology that I worked on with my cousin. We spent years crafting backstories, organizing events, and deepening the mythology. Sadly, I have very little evidence of these stories anymore because I kept writing them, then throwing them away when I had an idea of how to do them differently.
It would be nice if the Halloween Franchise was some 13-film franchise that followed some masterplan and/or all tied together, but that’s not the way it is. It’s a franchise with repeated stops and starts. While the initial idea is great, they keep picking and choosing what to continue with. Maybe it needs Laurie Strode. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe Laurie and Michael need to be related. Maybe they don’t. Maybe the sequel should pull from the original movie. Maybe it should continue from the second. Maybe it should be a clean reboot. It’s kind of nice to know that creatives at the highest levels* are just as unable to stick to a story as I was as a teenager. Granted, they at least completed their movies and I just have unfinished drafts in folders.
*I’m considering people who can make a living pursuing their creative endeavors as “the highest levels”. Get pretentious all you want, but they’re still in the top 1% in terms of creatives living the dream.
Halloween of course also has the problem that sequels were never a consideration when they made the original. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch is more what they had in mind until the original Halloween became such a monstrous hit that a true sequel was a necessity. Halloween II does play like a movie that’s trying to figure out how this is a franchise. It doesn’t know what to do with Laurie. She no longer has the wool pulled over her eyes from the beginning, so they have to figure out how to use her. They aren’t quite ready to turn Jamie Lee Curtis into a badass, especially because this takes place on the same night. So, she’s left in limbo for much of this.
This has the closest feel to the original movie for obvious reasons. It has a lot of the original cast and crew on board. The movie is OK. Suffers from comparison to the original. The score doesn’t drive it as much. The kills are decently interesting. I like setting so much of it in a hospital. I wish I could be more interesting in my takes on this. It makes sense why this isn’t considered cannon for all the later sequels.
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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