Halloween

 The original 1978 Halloween has launched exactly a dozen sequels and remakes since it was released more than forty years ago. Its success arguably spawned the whole slasher genre, even if it didn't invent it.
 It remains the best.

 Because it was made before the slasher genre it helped popularize solidified its rules, Halloween seems like a more normal, more respectable movie than your Friday the 13ths and whatnot (and yes, I know the first F13 movie is much more of a respectable thriller than its reputation would lead you to think, but it's a bit of an outlier).

 Halloween begins in Haddonfield, Illinois, 1963, with a wonderful scene where a voyeuristic camera is nosing around the Myers family home, Black Christmas-style. The unseen assailant picks up a knife and kills a big-breasted 'teen'. When the parents arrive and the camera pulls back, we find out that the murderer is a cute six-year-old boy in a clown costume.

 It's a genuinely upsetting scene with carefully built tension that highlights just how much thought and craft director John Carpenter, already in the middle of an unimpeachable run of genre movies, put into the horror elements; Next year's underrated The Fog would illustrate this beautifully as well.

 Fifteen years and an iconic title scene later, we cut to a couple of medical professionals making their way to a remote sanitarium. One of them is Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) who will sort of act like Michael Myers's hype man throughout the movie, talking about just how Michael is 100% pure concentrated evil to anyone within earshot.

I should just start using this for all Halloween posts.

 When they get to the facilities, they find all the inmates wandering around free. Michael Myers steals their car and drives off into the night.
 The good doctor has Myers's number (666-6666, presumably) and knows his hard-on for evil will lead him back home where he can kill more people. Dr. Loomis will be in the periphery of the movie, doing some slight Giallo-style investigation into EVIL's movements and trying to whip Haddonfield's law enforcement into some sort of response.

 But here the movie starts focusing on its true protagonists - high-schooler Laurie Strode (played by Jamie Lee Curtis when she was nineteen) and her friends. She does look a bit old for the role, but consider her (also supposedly high-schooler) friends Annie (Nancy Kyes) and Linda (P.J. Soles) were both pushing thirty at the time. Anyhow; Laurie is the virginal, straight-laced final girl, Annie is the assertive mean girl, and Linda is the party girl, but they're all more rounded, funny characters than you'd get later on with the bigger ensembles future slasher movies would require to ensure a higher body count.
 Their dialog is a bit stilted but relatable, and there's a lot of focus on their adventures and misadventures before Michael finally comes home.

 As Halloween night (and EVIL) arrives Laurie and Annie are babysitting kids in houses across the street from each other, and Linda has plans with her boyfriend to come in for a visit later. When the carnage finally starts it's good, with lots of fakeouts and some good scares. Very good use of the background, always leaving space for Michael to pop up at any moment.
 It's extremely tame compared to what will come later; the bodycount is pretty low, and the movie isn't really built around the murders as much as the other films that will follow in its footsteps. The concept of 'kills' as a cool gore-drenched setpieces is nowhere to be seen here, but there's plenty of gruesome kicks (Mike can get pretty playful with his victims) and a whole lot of stalking.

 It's got its problems, sure. My main issue is that as menacing as Myers is (played by Nick Castle - future director of The Last Starfighter!), he's got a bit of a glass jaw and goes down very quickly when attacked. He does get back up eventually, though. Guess this had a lot more impact before we knew The Shape as an unkillable, relentless hulk.
 There's also the common issue with older movies where the genre has evolved beyond them; as mentioned before, this movie can seem downright quaint and a little slow in comparison to most modern horror. And a little stilted in general to modern eyes.

 Still, there's so much to like here!
Jamie Lee Curtis's very believable dread and terror. The little touches that serve to humanize the characters peppered throughout the script (my favorite being the hilarious bit where stuffy Dr. Loomis loosens up and decides to give a few kids a scare). Dean Cundey's crisp cinematography, which looks great to this day. Carpenter's immortal score and patient screw-turning.
 It's an exceedingly well crafted movie that has every right to be considered a classic

 

Halloween Ends

 The new Halloweeen trilogy has definitely been a ride. It began by doing away with all the previous installments except for the first one and delivering a very satisfying, mostly traditional slasher sequel. Then for its own sequel it took a hard left, featuring some strange choices (which I thought were exciting) and some of the goriest, most upsetting kills in slasher-dom.

 Halloween Ends again takes an unexpected turn. It's a much more traditional slasher than Kills ever tried to be, but it also keeps willfully subverting expectations, sometimes at its own expense.

 Director David Gordon Green accrued some serious cred with his early movies, mostly with the brilliant George Washington, which earned him frequent comparisons with Terence Malik (back when everyone spoke of Malik in hushed reverential tones.) He's done plenty of good movies since, but before he became the Halloween guy, he also made a couple of stoner comedies (one of them quite good, one of them very, very bad.)

 It's this stoner period that I keep coming back to when thinking of Halloween Ends. It's completely unfair, but I can't help it but to imagine David Gordon Green and his buddy Danny McBride (who shares writing duties) getting well and truly baked before mapping out these movies. The wild swings and reversals and inconsistencies and dropped themes and threads make a lot more sense to me that way, as do the ponderous, overwrought meditations on Evil.

  

Yeah, I get that it's based on Loomis's rants on the original Halloween. Still, though.

 After a nasty short prelude that introduces a new main character, this latest installment picks up four years after the events of Halloween Kills. Michael Myers, while still at large, has seemingly vanished, and Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) has turned over a new leaf and decided to move out of Murdertrap Deathhouse and rejoin polite society with her granddaughter (Andi Matichak).

 New character Cody is also trying to rebuild his life after accidentally killing a kid in the pre-title scene. He's been acquitted of murder, but the residents of Haddonfield at large remain as shallow, short-sighted and judgemental as ever; Cody and Laurie meet as he's being mercilessly bullied by a group of marching band nerds, of all things. Laurie rescues him and decides to play the matchmaker and introduce Cody to her granddaughter Allison.

 Allison and Cody hit it off, to say the least. For some reason Allison latches onto Cody with a psychotic intensity; Unfortunately, while both of the actors are OK there's no chemistry there and their courtship is very poorly written. Except for a scene with Sebadoh and Dead Kennedys songs... man, I wish the parties I've gone to played Sebadoh and Dead Kennedys. Anyhow, and it's SPOILERS from now on, the circumstances pile on poor Cody so that he eventually snaps and starts stabbing people to death - at first involuntarily, but slowly getting a taste for it. And Michael Myers might be playing tutor.

 It's not that weird a setup for a slasher movie - yes, Friday the 13th did something similar - but having to shoehorn Myers in, and trying to play it like there's no supernatural elements... it doesn't ruin it exactly, but he's a big spanner in the works.

 The carnage is great, as always. Who would have thought the director of All the Real Girls would move on to be a respectable purveyor of gore? The kills aren't quite as gruesome or upsetting as in, um, Kills, but there are some show-stoppers here (there's a particularly nasty one with a blowtorch, and a record-skipping scene that is a definite keeper). There's a bit too much emphasis on knives, so it gets a little repetitive, but hey.

 While the movie is a bit on the slow side, it does carry momentum and, fueled by its unpredictability, quite a bit of energy. Things escalate until (of course) it's Laurie vs. Myers again; like so many other things in this new trilogy, the logistics and underpinnings are clumsy and half-baked, but it brings everything to a satisfying conclusion that, yes, seems very final. Halloween ENDS, as the end credits helpfully point out.

 I didn't find it as appealingly weird as its predecessor (for my money, the best of this new bunch) but I enjoyed it, warts and all. It's as part of this new trilogy, and especially as a sequel to Kills, that this last installment fails the hardest, since while it keeps the characters and some plot threads (sometimes very minor) and gives them a satisfying resolution, it ignores everything the other movies seemed to be setting up.
 It's not a huge problem if you consider it as a stand-alone film, though. I'll go to bat for it.