Halloween (2018)

(MA15+) ★★

Director: David Gordon Green.

Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Virginia Gardner, James Jude Courtney, Nick Castle, Haluk Bilginer, Jefferson Hall, Rhian Rees, Toby Huss, Dylan Arnold, Miles Robbins.

"Shatner? Is that you?"

Much like its Big Bad, the Halloween film series just won't die. Forty years on from John Carpenter's groundbreaking original, which helped birth the slasher genre, we now have the 11th film in the franchise.

This sequel appears to be aimed at people like me who have only seen Carpenter's '78 prototype - the plot reportedly ignores the nine other films in the franchise (although it must be noted that the last two movies were a reboot and a sequel, while Halloween 3 was a standalone oddity). If I was a fan of the series who had invested in paying to see the other entries in the series, I'd probably be pissed off at such blatant disregard for what had gone before. But whatever.

Regardless of its retconning (apparently the other films are "stories people made up", as one character puts it), this Halloween certainly captures the tone and vibe of '78. But does it have anything new to say, or something worth saying? Not really.

As with the rest of the (now-ignored) series, the film centres on the ominous killing machine Michael Myers (played by past-Myers performers Courtney and Castle). After 40 years in a mental institution, Myers is transported to a new facility on Halloween eve but the bus overturns and Myers is let loose near his old stomping ground of Haddonfield, Illinois.

Meanwhile, Laurie Strode (Curtis), the solo survivor of Myers' 1978 rampage, has spent her whole life waiting in Haddonfield for a chance at revenge. When Myers comes, she'll be ready.

Regular collaborators Danny McBride, David Gordon Green and Jeff Fradley are definitely deferential to Carpenter and his original - they've even brought the 70-year-old director back as a composer and executive producer. And it's no wonder the film as Carpenter's blessing. It's faithful in to his visual style and storytelling, and neatly encapsulates the mood and spirit of the original.

But all this devotion to the Spirit of '78 means the film is unfortunately trapped in the past. While it does a nice job of flipping the script in terms of the "final girl" trope, this Halloween lacks innovation. It's also short on scares or anything to get people to the edge of their seats. I found myself being more appreciative of the filmmakers' efforts to recapture the vibe of the original than entertained or scared by the film itself.

Part of this disappointment is simply due to the passage of time. A good old-fashioned slasher film is one thing, and maybe that could have worked, but the horror genre has become so meta and self-reflexive in the past 40 years that playing it straight seems, well, old-fashioned. After the likes of Scream and The Cabin In The Woods, it's hard not to laugh out loud every time someone trips over nothing while being pursued by the glacially paced villain or when someone decides it's a good idea to investigate a bump in the night by themselves.

Shorn of the trappings of the genre, the filmmaking is solid. It's moody, with nice lighting and cinematography. There's a bravura long-take that follows Myers through a couple of houses on a kill-spree that's genuinely impressive while the ending almost ratchets up the tension enough to overcome the film's shortcomings.

It's worth noting a major another of those shortcomings, which is the opening. It involves two podcasters/journalists digging into Myers' story and it's one of the worst opening scenes to hit the big screen in a long time. It's laughably bad and it's only once the podcasters are out of the picture that the film starts to hit its stride.

Carpenter's score is one of the best things about the movie, and Curtis, Greer and Matichak give their all. But this throwback, as admirable as it is, just doesn't feel like anything more than a novelty throwback, and not a hugely entertaining one at that.