the HALLOWEEN MOVIES ranked, pt. 2: See Anything You Like?

   

7. Halloween II

  Rick Rosenthal manages to swipe the atmosphere of the original and somehow get away with it, albeit it's still obvious that it's on loan. It's as goofy as it is woozy and I used to think that made it boring but now it just effectively puts me in Laurie's headspace as they mine some great tension from her shambling. It's also a nasty, mean little sequel with--at this point in the franchise--uncharacteristically harsh violence. We also have The Shape in a filthy mask and Michael slashing away with bleeding eyes is great imagery. But the characters? The dialog? The contrived brother/sister twist? The lame Samhain lore? The way Rosenthal kicks the whole movie off by woefully undermining the ending of the original? Blegh. There is some unintentional foreshadowing to Looney Loomis with him rushing poor Ben Tramer to his death - makes me laugh every time. It's better than H20 by virtue of its atmosphere and tension but I don't find myself questioning why Carpenter has disowned it as an "abomination." I don't agree but I won't argue, either.

6. 2007

  This is almost tied with Halloween II but eeks out on top because Rob Zombie offers better direction than Rick Rosenthal and better characters and dialog than drunk John Carpenter (and most of the other writers of these movies). I appreciate how different his... everything is, even with all the armchair psychology. Well, it's different until it isn't. I like that he took time to humanize Micheal and then strip that humanity away. That said, the prequel section is far more compelling than the Remake section but what holds all of that afloat is his attention to character. Laurie is instantly charming but not in a way that stinks of desperation with quippy one-liners; she's outgoing and playful without being overtly repressed. I'm not a fan of Annie and Linda in the '78 original but here they're played and written with far more interiority; even Lindsay Wallace's Mom is given a sliver of character when Annie refers to her as a "lush who's gonna be out all night getting hammered." The Strodes are so wholesome, riding the line of being cutesy but never dipping into saccharine. The same goes for Tommy and Lindsay, their interactions with Annie and Laurie border on flat-out naturalism. But, yeah, that portion where it's a beat-for-beat remake just does. not. work. So, everything original shines while the mimicry couldn't be more obvious. This was never the movie he was meant to make, it was a Weinstein movie that he managed to give more to than it deserved. What he does next is truly his.

5. 2018

  This is a perfectly fine movie though it has its strengths and it has its weaknesses (mostly strengths). There are some baffling choices by David Gordon Green but some are so hilarious that they add to it (Sartain dramatically tossing Michael's mask in the backseat of Hawkins' cruiser) while others are so dumb that they subtract from it (Allison finding her Grandmother's mannequins in the woods, complete with zooms, push-ins, ghostly whispers and creepy laughter[?]). I like the character banter, I love Laurie's public meltdown at dinner, I like Michael killing like a machine, and I love that DGG turned a lot of 'nostalgic' imagery on its head by having Laurie and Michael switch places. And, as much as Sartain is just a plot-device to bring Michael and Laurie together, I still like him as a character; not only does he evoke my favorite Kooky Doctor, ala Part 5, but his 'turn' makes more sense after Ends. This might be the most entertaining, satisfying entry in the franchise with how crowdpleasing the climax is. It's fun and not in an ironic way, for once.

4. Halloween

  The original used to be my all-time favorite Horror Movie and then my all-time favorite Slasher and then my all-time favorite Halloween movie but, over the decades, it's wilted for me in every one of those categories. I can't stand Nancy Kyes' acting nor the dialog between her, Laurie, and Linda. It's not just garden-variety bad dialog, it's bad characterization that makes the pacing kind of a slog, with exception to the time we cut to Loomis and Brackett. The last act--while tense--is a bit tedious, too, with Laurie having multiple scenes with Michael where the repetition just annoys more than scares. But it's still effectively chilly, atmospheric, suspenseful, and creepy in spite of all of its glaring flaws. Carpenter, Cundey, Pleasance, Castle, Curtis, and Wallace made magic amidst all the filler. And that ending: one of the best endings to any movie ever, no matter the category.

3. Season Of The Witch

  My favorite part of Halloween III is Dr. Daniel Challis: a terminally boozy, slutty amateur detective devoid of charm or charisma that isn't slick. He's like if your Dad decided he wanted to be like James Bond. This dude would rather do anything than spend time with his kids or see his ex-Wife so he flings himself headfirst into a murder mystery (with the explicit desire to fuck his dead patient's daughter).

This isn't a cosmic horror movie, it's a coming-of-middle age comedy akin to The Weather Man or American Beauty - it just so happens to be about child-killing Irish doomsday cultists. Everyone talks about how bleak the ending is and why (for good reason, because it's apocalyptic and cruel) but it's kind of funny, too, in its irony: Challis ignores his kids to investigate this murder and ends up fruitless in his effort to stop the mass genocide of children. If he'd never gone and investigated this in the first place, he probably could have saved his children's lives or, at the very least, spent the smallest amount of time with them before they perished. Everything to do with this case reminds him of his kids and he hates it. It's not a coincidence that the most horrific scene in the movie is him being forced to watch a whole domestic family (Mother, Father, Child) be killed in a simulation of a living room. And at the end he has to kill the woman he's been fucking who's now just a robot serving limited functions. There's also that great scene where he and Ellie sneak by the scientists by walking a cart beside them: a Scooby-Doo maneuver in a scene of tension; All these years this movie never totally worked for me because I was looking for scares. Watching it now, laughing my ass off, it makes for one Hell of a dark comedy.

2. Ends

  I always wondered why David Gordon Green and his writers had Corey kinda break the 4th Wall in that shot with Jeremy's parents to say "It's Halloween...we're gonna have a good time tonight." I get it now: in these movies anytime someone says "it's Halloween--" it's usually followed up with "--everyone's entitled to one good scare," so it's almost like Green is telling us to curb expectations. And I'm not pinning a medal on it simply for doing something different, because I genuinely love this movie for many reasons, but a big part of its appeal is how fresh it feels. If Halloween Kills was messy and destructive, then this was a thoughtful rebuild; a somber character study of Michael Myers' protege? That's cool as fuck and they nail the landing. The title, 'HALLOWEEN ENDS,' has already been rendered futile by Miramax announcing another reboot [less than a year after this movie's release] but it's still a satisfying conclusion for me, one that raised the bar significantly.

1. H2 (Director's Cut)

  In 2009, before we got a decade+ of artsy horror movies about Trauma, Rob Zombie gave us the best one with his cut of Halloween II. It's the most immersive, textured, effusive, gruelling, brutal, and intoxicating entry in the franchise - featuring a hulking, "pants-shittingly scary" Michael Myers and Laurie Strode at her most Laura Palmer (it's no wonder the cult of fans who adore this movie call it Halloween: Fire Walk With Me).

What happens to a Final Girl after she survives-the-night? Instead of the stale stalk-and-slash that this franchise is known for, Zombie opts for a spiraling nightmare odyssey of PTSD. Scout Taylor-Compton's performance is harrowing and miserable, diving headfirst into waters Jamie Lee Curtis' Lauries only waded waist-deep. It's also an absolute banquet of visual sustenance with richly tactile grime, splashes of color, and harsh spotlights with piercing rays - all shot on film. What I love most about Rob Zombie's whole approach to horror is how he understands pain, both physical and emotional. When characters get hurt in his movies: they hurt. He lingers on pain and dying not in a sadistic way but because his characters are all absolutely real to him, so he treats their pain as such; Annie's death is agonizing because of how shocking it feels, how obscured it is, and because of Brad Dourif's Oscar-worthy reaction to it. Because of every bit of this and more, I fucking adore this movie, even if it's a hard watch to sit through - which is why I only watch it once a year.