22/10/18

Talk about a daunting proposition.

‘Okay, we’re going to reboot one of the most famous horror movies of all time. We’re going to forget about the plethora of terrible sequels that have already reared their William Shatner-masked heads and we’ll bring Jamie Lee Curtis back to the role that made her famous. Oh yes, and for good measure we’ll try to ignore the fact that John Carpenter’s illustrious original is back in the cinemas, so anybody can see for themselves what made it one of the most imitated movies in cinema history.’

So, no pressure there.

The good news is that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s resulting film isn’t anything like as terrible as what has gone before. While it rarely achieves the thrills of version one, it offers some interesting twists on those classic scenes and manages to demonstrate how the horrors that Laurie Strode underwent as the world’s most ill-fated babysitter have certainly left their mark on her. There’s also a ‘twist’ that I don’t see coming, mostly because it’s so risible, but let’s pass over that.

Forty years have (quite literally) gone by since Michael Myers’ infamous killing spree in the little town of Haddonfield. Laurie Strode (Lee Curtis) has managed to survive two failed marriages and social workers removing her daughter from her care, and now lives alone in a rambling house. She seems to have mutated into a kind of suburban Sarah Connor, multi-locking all of her doors and housing a personal armoury that would take down an approaching army. She is convinced, you see,  that one day, Michael Myers will return and when he does, she wants to be ready for him. All this adds to the strain on her relationship with her now adult daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), and with her teenage granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak). Michael is currently locked up in a secure psychiatric unit under the ministrations of Doctor Sartain (Haluk Bilginer), who, perhaps unwisely, allows a couple of British podcast makers to interview  him – but, since Michael hasn’t spoken a word since his arrest, that doesn’t make for great broadcasting material.

But then an attempt is made to move Michel to a more secure unit and… well, I don’t think it’s exactly a spoiler to say that soon enough, he’s on the loose again and is in possession of that mask and some navy blue overalls. (That’s still Nick Castle wearing the outfit, by the way.) The resulting rampage manages to generate some thrills, especially in an extended sequence where Laurie hunts Michael through a dark house but, whereas in the first film ‘The Shape’ had some sense of purpose, now he just seems to want to kill indiscriminately and the resulting higher body count serves to make us care less about each successive murder. What’s more, this is a good deal more visceral than its predecessor, which – to my mind at least – also dissipates some of the tension.

But still, there’s plenty to enjoy – if that’s the right word. Lee Curtis is terrific as a once meek woman now transformed into something much more assertive and it’s lovely to hear Carpenter revisiting his most famous score, in collaboration with his son, Cody. If nothing else, this beats all those other sequels, prequels and reboots into a cocked hat, resulting in a decent horror movie that manages not to crap all over the heritage it has been handed.

Maybe now though, we might let this franchise go and admit that nobody is ever going to measure up to what we saw in 1978.

4 stars

Philip Caveney