Halloween (2018)
HORROR-THON 2022 • HOUSE PARTY
7.5/10
DIRECTOR: David Gordon Green
STARRING: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak
RELEASED: 2018
RUNTIME: 1 hour, 46 minutes
WATCH ON: Peacock, Amazon, Apple TV, Fandango At Home
SCARE LEVEL: Medium-high
LAURIE’S HOME SECURITY SETUP: Wild
This Halloween throws out every sequel in the franchise. Forget the sister reveal, the cult, and the hospital chase. Everything after the 1978 original never happened. What’s left is one woman who has spent forty years waiting for Michael Myers to return.
It’s been 40 years since Michael’s Halloween night murders in Haddonfield. He’s been locked in a psychiatric hospital and hasn’t said a word the entire time. Two true-crime podcasters show up to provoke him with a mask, and it goes as well as you’d expect.
-
Laurie Stroke did not move on. She turned her house into a fortress with locks, floodlights, guns and a hidden basement. Her daughter Karen thinks she’s paranoid, and her granddaughter Allyson just wants a normal family.
Then the transfer bus taking Michael to a new facility crashes on Halloween eve, and Laurie gets to find out whether her decades of prep were worth it.
MY HUMBLE OPINION
Jamie Lee Curtis as a survivalist grandma is honestly a pretty good reason to watch. She’s angry and shaky and fully committed. Every time Laurie is on the screen, the movie has a spine. The movie also flips the original in a way I loved. In 1978, Michael stood in the backyard watching Laurie. This time she’s the one at the window.
The podcaster subplot and some of the teen side characters drag. But the last act at Laurie’s compound is great: three generations of Strode women setting a trap.
Want to see where it started? I covered the 1978 original for the Horror-Thon in 2021. Up next in the trilogy: Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends.
FUN FACT FOR YOUR NEXT DINNER PARTY
The pumpkin in the opening credits was created with a real pumpkin placed in front of a camera over a period of weeks until it rotted and slumped down. The footage was then reversed and edited to give the illusion that the pumpkin was rising on its own.