I went to a movie yesterday. It’s the well-received latest entry into the Halloween franchise. Michael Myers, or Laurie Strode’s brother, escapes while being transported to some hellhole mental facility. Mayhem ensues. Laurie Strode on the warpath. Boom!
No spoilers from me, I promise.
A lovely day, yesterday. A touch cloudy but no rain, not really any wind. Sun. I went to the first showing. There was about two or so other folks there.
I arrived during previews. Saw the one for Glass, the sequel to Unbreakable or the third in the trilogy. Unbreakable, Split and now, Glass. Bruce Willis, James MacAvoy, Samuel Motherfucking Jackson. Um, yes. Yes, please. I don’t care what the story is. Or if there’s a story. Oh and Sarah Paulson. I’m hooked. I’m charmed. I’m big eyes and wanna see that.
Some preview for a movie that already came and went like a wet dog fart on a rainy day. Blarg.
Halloween starts up. Two earnest British podcasters seek to interview Laurie Strode’s brother, who remarkably, doesn’t talk. So he’s rather an odd choice for a podcast. Ahem. They’re into examining old crimes or something, for fresh angles. Whatever.
When does the rampaging start??
There’s some good stuff happening right off the bat. The new Loomis is an earnest sort, who cautions caution with Myers. He’s not, however, in the Loomis mold. As in Myers should have been quietly killed eons ago.
We only see Myers from the back, or slightly from the side. We never see the face. Which is highly effective. We see this boogie man has aged. Now. Is he a real man or something else? As anyone who’s sat through all the Halloween movies knows…he’s been stabbed, shot, stabbed and shot, blah blah, and always gets up again. Like an Energizer bunny playing Jesus. A really awful version of Jesus. Ahem!
Yet, he gets captured, somehow, alive,. placed back into some mental hospital to await escaping for yet another round of hide the big knife in the stupid teens.
Seriously, if you start taking apart the Halloween movies, you won’t enjoy them. That’s pretty much true of any movie lately. They seem to run on people not doing that, ever.
Don’t look too closely at the structure! Okay, I won’t!
But.
I enjoyed this outing.
My first glimpse of Jamie Lee Curtis in her most famous role…tears. She had lost everything, she lives holed up in the woods, behind lock and key and bars and video surveillance. She’s paranoid, twitchy, grim, overly prepared. She’s waiting. She’s in that closet from the very first movie that started all this madness– waiting with a coat hanger twisted into a weapon. Except this time she’s got America’s choice for any problem– a gun. Lots of guns. A cache of guns. We see her practicing. She’s rigged her house as well, for defense and offense. The state took her daughter away. Laurie has a granddaughter.
Oooh, it’s going to be the Strode women against their own brother, uncle and great-uncle. It’s family versus family.
When I realized this, tears. Tears.
You see, yesterday. In America. A bunch of bombs were sent to various high-ranking Democrats, news agencies blamed for all the fake news, and George Soros, who’s allegedly behind everything to do with protesting or immigrants or…yeah. Almost thirty seconds after this was reported, conspiracy theory/ies. The Democrats sent these bombs to themselves to drum up voters to vote for them.
Sympathy bombs.
None of the bombs went off, after all. They were, however, live actual bombs.
Now, I read where the IRA, in the seventies, were also inept and clumsy at sending out bombs at first. Then they got super-good at it. They improved. So.
I’m watching a traumatized older woman taking on the thing that traumatized her. It digs into some primal areas.
I watched a woman testify before the entire country about abuses done to her, then watched as that same woman got turned into a demon. Who now can’t go home because of credible death threats.
I watch as Nuremberg-like rallies demand an end to America as we know it, and embrace a one-party system with the boot on the neck of anyone who doesn’t agree with them on everything.
I watch as the basic framework of my country get torn down, turned into kindling, then get a match set to that kindling. Whooosh.
I watch as minority groups get targeted. The latest is transgender people.
I feel helpless and powerless. All the damn time. Anxious and angry and ready to embrace not only a vote them out mentality, but a I want to hurt them mentality.
See those that are humiliating and hurting others so gleefully right now be hurt and humiliated themselves. In public. So I can applaud and cheer.
I want so and so led off in handcuffs to the nearest federal prison. I want them led off naked. I want to see them whipped and chained and naked and trembling and afraid.
But hey, back to the movie!
It’s a deeply satisfying movie. It hits all the horror movie boxes quote well.
Menacing villain figure. You can’t get more iconic than Michael Myers. When he puts on that mask, you give a sigh of happiness. There it is! Ah!
We care about the people that are in harm’s way. There’s a great scene between the granddaughter’s friend and the kid she’s babysitting. It’s warm, honest, funny and sweet.
We get to know the sheriff, who was Laurie Strode’s babysitting charge on that infamous night. Now grown up and facing the same monster on the same holiday night.
We experience the skepticism and then utter terrifying belief of the two podcasters as they have their moment with Myers. It’s a doozy.
And then there’s Our Heroine, the equally iconic Laurie motherfucking Strode.
She’s mad, mean, focused and ready for business.
Hot damn!
She’s not shouting masculine-ish belligerent slogans into the air this fucking time. Oh no. She’s waiting to act.
The time for chest-pounding antics is over. She’s loaded for bear. A boogie man bear.
Yes, I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. There were hints and outright LOOK AT THIS RIGHT HERE moments that hearkened back to the original. I didn’t roll my eyes at the dialogue. Much. There were clunkers, sure, but not that many that I remember.
There was actually not that much gore. Some but far less than other lesser made movies that skipped the scares in favor of showing gallons of faked blood.
This movie centered on two players who thirsted to face each other. And it worked. Oh did it work for this watcher.
So, my country might be on the brink of an actual second civil war but at least the Halloween movie got most of it right. That’s something. I’m glad I went. I’m a Jamie Lee Curtis fan from way back. I haven’t been to a horror movie at an actual theatre since…can’t remember when. I want to see Star is Born, yet I went to Halloween.
Which evoked the oddest emotional responses of actual tears.
Maybe I’m mourning for my country while watching an older woman take on the actual boogie man. Taking on her own brother. With her own daughter and granddaughter at her side.
Maybe I got a bit wet-eyed over watching an actual family feud taking place before my eyes. Fought with weapons, screams, blood and fire.
I really do hope this is the last Halloween movie. That this is end of it. That everyone now gets to rest. In peace.
ANN WUEHLER 