"HALLOWEEN" SHAPES UP

       
          Forty years later, and still cutting-edge.
          John Carpenter's smash indie hit spawned sequels, inspired imitators, and established an iconic character so laconic he makes Eastwood's Man With No Name seem chatty.
          Carpenter derived his idea for the William Shatner mask-wearing, butcher knife-wielding Michael Myers, aka The Shape, in some measure from the girl in the 1960 film Eyes Without a Face. Equally essential to the filmmaker's aesthetic, and also from 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
          When Halloween was released, Psycho was regarded as the high-water mark of suspense. Carpenter pays the film homage by casting, in her first film, Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Janet Leigh, the star of Psycho.
          What Hitchcock did for taking showers, Carpenter almost did for babysitting.
          In this new vision, which scraps all of the films except for the first one, we find Michael Myers preserved in an asylum, where for forty years he has been a silent object of study. Researchers wanting to meet him even attempt to goad him. His being quiet and unable to express himself except with weapons once every few decades drives them crazy.
          To the young people in Haddonfield, the local legend of Michael Myers, who stabbed a handful of people Halloween night forty years prior (having  murdered his sister when he was six because she was brushing her hair topless in her room), pales in comparison to the customary violence of the world normalized in intervening years.
          Only Laurie Strode, who survived the violence, understands the danger involved in the event that Michael Myers ever gets free.
          Which he does.
          Echoes of Sarah Connor from Terminator 2 aside, Curtis' Strode is a self-described "basket case" obsessed with the need to never be a victim again. That said, her resolve extends to the women in her family--her daughter and her granddaughter. Whereas the 1978 movie showcased the "senseless violence" of a killer without a cause, the 2018 film concerns three generations of women uniting against an abuser.
          Unfortunately, John Carpenter isn't the director. (Although he and Curtis produced it.) Yet for that matter, he didn't direct Halloween 2 (1981). Whether the latter or this new vision takes second-place to the original is up for debate, but neither exceeds the source material.
          Fans of the franchise know what to expect from the hallowed lore: from the mildly curious tilt of Michael's masked head, to the inevitable demise of Unlikable Teens, Halloween digs deep into the cinematic bowl and freely disperses treat after treat, even managing to throw in a few surprises.
          Well worth the watch.



HALLOWEEN
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis,
Judy Greer,
Andi Matichak,
James Jude Courtney,
Nick Castle,
Haluk Bilginer,
Will Patton,
Jefferson Hall
Directed by David Gordon Green
Written by David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, Jeff Fradley
Based on characters created by John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Runtime 106 minutes


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE