‘Halloween’
This week of 1,000 trailers comes to its climax (First Man will be the epilogue) with the much-anticipated teaser for the new Halloween movie. As previously noted, this David Gordon Green-directed and Green/Danny McBride-penned slasher is a straight-up 40-years later sequel to the original 1978 Halloween. That means, if you take this flick as the new continuity, it wipes out everything after John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s trailblazing sleeper smash. That means Michael Myers has been out of action since the climax of the first movie. So that’s no “Michael and Laurie are siblings” connection and no “Dr. Loomis spends the end of his life tracking down his respective Moby Dick” story.
It, also, amusingly enough, retcons Halloween: H20 which itself wrote out every Halloween sequel after 1981’s Halloween II. The Jamie Lloyd trilogy (Return of Michael Myers in 1988, Revenge of Michael Myer in 1989 and Curse of Michael Myers in 1995) just can’t any respect around these parts, which is sad since they are all better than Halloween: Resurrection. And, yes, I have become one of those punks who now views Halloween III: Season of the Witch as the best Halloween sequel, although I can certainly understand why that one “doesn’t count.” At least this time it has been 16 years since a non-Rob Zombie Halloween flick.
I will always remember the reception about Halloween H20, in that it essentially created fabricated nostalgia for a franchise that had only been “gone” for just under three years. Sure, they had Jamie Lee Curtis back in action (20 years after the first Halloween) and the Kevin Williamson connection tied it into Scream, but this wasn’t a long-gone cinematic classic made anew a generation or two later. This was the first time I could remember marketing inherently creating nostalgia for something that had barely been gone.
Think the “new model, old parts” marketing of 2009’ Fast & Furious, the “your favorite X-Men now mingling with the new cast” sell of X-Men: Days of Future Past (just eight years after The Last Stand) and the fourth season of 24 which wrote out 90% of the older characters and then slowly brought them back to “Wohoo, he’s back!” audience approval. And yeah, we got convinced into thinking that the first Halloween movie in, uh… 2.5 years, was a seminal event to the tune of a $55m domestic gross (around $107m adjusted for inflation) on a $17m budget from a $24.7m Wed-Sun debut in 1998.
Amusingly enough, nine years later, we got the Rob Zombie Halloween movie which roared with a $30.5 million Fri-Mon debut over Labor Day 2007 but quick-killed for a $58m domestic total, or almost identical (sans inflation) to the 1998 “big deal” sequel. Speaking of which, I am curious how this film is going to play out compared to the divisive first Halloween remake. With the caveat being that I disliked the film upon my one theatrical viewing 11 years ago, it today earns brownie points for being its own interpretation of an iconic property.
Moreover, for better or worse, Zombie film’s violence is truly horrific, with an emphasis on blood, gore, pain, suffering and muscular brutality that makes the original franchise’s violence seem almost PG-13 in comparison. In that sense I will be interested to see how this new film straddles the line between the mostly bloodless original, the “barely edited for TV” carnage of the sequels and the truly horrific carnage of the 2007/2009 movies. And since I don’t think this is supposed to be a lighter, campier, more kid-friendly Halloween movie, well, I am curious what they came up with.
Halloween, starring Nick Castle as a 61-year old Michael Myers, will open on Oct. 19, 2018. I wonder if it’ll be part of this year’s AARP Films For Grownups festival.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
