Halloween (2018)

Friday the 13th is a fun time to enjoy a scare or a thrill. And, in the tradition of the 80’s guilty pleasure slasher films named for the holiday, I checked out the latest “Halloween” soft reboot from 2018. (Actually, not a reboot, but rather another direct sequel to the original. There have been at least three second parts in the series. Four, if you count the sequel to the actual reboot! It is a mess, even for a slasher horror series.)

One thing that jumps out at you watching this film is, it is not scary. Maybe off-putting, or perhaps disturbing, but not scary. In horror movies, you can have various types of “fear.” You have scary films that trigger a true fight-or-flight response. You have films that don’t trigger fear, but rather disgust or repulsion. You have classic horror, that make you think about consequences or deeper philosophical dangers more than just scares. And you have the more “roller-caster” variety, that lead you from one jump-scare to the next.

The original “Halloween” was a truly scary film on many levels—jump-scares to genuine terror to deeper questions. But this new film missed the mark. Perhaps it is too self-aware and stylistic to create the atmosphere necessary for fear. And even on a “torture-porn” disgust level, it has too much artifice. One is watching a movie play out, not experiencing a thrill or terror.

It tries. It has some of the best effects and artistic visuals of the whole series. And it tries to have a concept and a theme that it is wanting to deliver. That may be a part of the problem too. Laurie Strode in this film comes across as a crazy conspiracy theorist who abuses her daughter out of a fear of the evil she sees everywhere in the world. The problem is that she is proven right in her derangement. There is even a hint that victim and perpetrator are feeding each other. Perhaps the victim is as much a part of the problem as the evil threatening her. That is an idea with many troubling implications.

Perhaps parts 2 and 3 of this latest trilogy will expand on that thought. I don’t imagine it will be a convincing argument, however.

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