Halloween

Dir: David Gordon Green

2018

**

After failing to develop a new Halloween film in time, Dimension Films lost the production rights and good riddance to them. They failed to make a decent Halloween film during the time they had it and it looked like a sad way to end a popular series. Miramax got the rights back and teamed up with Blumhouse Productions who are affiliated with Universal. Blumhouse are responsible for recent horror franchises such as Paranormal Activity, The Purge, Sinister, and Insidious. They also produced the masterpieces Whiplash, Get Out and BlacKkKlansman and they’ve also got M. Night Shyamalan making great films again. I personally thought that the last Halloween film, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, was utter rubbish and a tragic way to end the franchise but as much as Blumhouse could be the ones to bring the story back to life, I really had no enthusiasm for another installment, whether it be re-make, re-boot or prequel. That was until I learned that Jamie Lee Curtis was coming back – forty years after the original, to correct the series and give it its proper send-off. It was then officially announced that original co-creator John Carpenter would return as composer, executive producer, and creative consultant. They had me at composer. Nick Castle returning as Michael Myers (aka The Shape) was the icing on the cake. I usually hate it when film makers tell us all to forget certain sequels had ever happened but the news that Halloween would be a direct sequel to the original 1978 version was both intriguing and refreshing. It kind of made sense and essentially, we were only asked to forget three films ever happened (out of ten), two of them being fairly rubbish anyway. The franchise is a mess but this was the best scenario and no one was going to go and watch yet another re-boot. The appointment of director David Gordon Green intrigued me further, he isn’t known for his horror but I thought the mood in his films such as Joe and George Washington could lend themselves to an atmospheric horror and his script for Goat is pretty dark too. I bought my ticket and went to the cinema open-minded and without knowing too much about it on purpose. I was ready to be thrilled and scared all over again, like I was with the original. I was popcorn-ready, the film’s title sequence was excellent with Carpenter’s score, the original orange typography of the first film and a brilliant reverse film of a decomposing Jack-o-lantern pumpkin in the background. Then I saw the words that nearly made me throw my popcorn in the air in disgust: co-written by Danny McBride. I know he’s friends with David Gordon Green but seriously, I didn’t see that coming and if I had I wouldn’t have bought the ticket. Was McBride’s script any good? No, it wasn’t. Who would have guessed that the writer of The Foot Fist Way and Your Highness wouldn’t be able to write a capable Halloween sequel. It beggars belief. The premise is that Michael Myers was arrested at the end of the first film and has been in a maximum security hospital for the mentally ill for the last forty years. Meanwhile, Laurie Strode has been living in fear that Myers will one day escape and hunt her down. She has spent her life building a fortress for her and her daughter to live in, her obsession resulting in two divorces and social services taking her daughter away from her. Now that her daughter is grown up, she fears for the safety of her granddaughter also. The story takes off with true-crime podcasters Aaron Korey (Jefferson Hall) and Dana Haines (Rhian Rees) as they travel to Smith's Grove Sanitarium to interview Michael Myers, who was captured after Dr. Samuel Loomis shot him off of the Doyle house balcony. Dr. Ranbir Sartain, who has been treating Michael since Loomis' death, informs them that Michael is able to speak but chooses not to. They meet Myers in the outside section of the hospital in a scene that looks like a cross between Richard Lester’s Chess scene in The Three Musketeers, the work of Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum and a sugar-free version of Tarsem Singh’s early work. Myers is standing in a square, chained to a large block of concrete. There is a dreamlike feel to the scene, a bit like when we meet Hannibal Lecter for the first time, but in a surrealist painting – David Gordon Green trying to be all Ingmar Bergman basically. Aaron fails to get Michael to speak, even after brandishing his mask and mentioning Laurie Strode’s name. How and why he has the mask is fairly absurd, it makes for an interesting scene but it is sadly the first and last. I think Green and McBride forget that in asking us to forget all but the first first ever happened, they also erase the infamy of Myers himself. Of course Laurie Strode would still be traumatised but in this version, as is pointed out, they are not brother and sister, so there is no real reason why he would target her, as we are also reminded that his murders are indiscriminate. So which is it? Laurie Strode in 2018 is basically Sarah Conner in Terminator 2. Anyway, Myers escapes from the Sanitarium – as is totally expected – during a transfer. It is so expected that they don’t even show how his transport crashes, releasing the prisoners. What they fail to address however, is why the security is so low. He is transported in one little school bus, after years of living in high security. The beginning sequence suggested the terrible danger of stepping within meters of him when he’s surrounded by armed guards and chained to a block of concrete, so to then stick him in a bus with only a couple of officers is a dumb step down. The development of the new characters is pretty rubbish too, with many characters featured disappearing from the story and others never followed up (they clearly want a sequel) and Haluk Bilginer is no Donald Pleasence/Sam Loomis (but by casting a ‘foreigner’ the producers clearly think it’s enough). We really get nothing from Laurie Strode other than that she’s developed a tough exterior, leaving very little for Jamie Lee Curtis to get her teeth into. Will Patton plays his character well, convincing us that he really was the arresting officer from the first film but none of the other original players look like they’re really up for the fight. Curtis gives more performance in the production stills for the movie than in the movie itself. Her fortress house, which she has been building for forty years, is an absolute joke. Why did she fill it with mannequins? Remote-control escape hatch? Are you kidding? This might be the dumbest entry of the franchise so far and that is saying something. Myers does wander into a house and kills a babysitter for good measure but it doesn’t fit within the story, the structure of the film is really messy and none of it flows. The ending is overly smug and very unoriginal. I’ve never been as bored watching a horror film, knowing exactly what was coming next and not having the least bit of concern for the characters. It is perhaps the first time in the franchise where Myers isn’t in the least bit scary. John Carpenter says he got involved to put the story to bed, stating that this is definitely the last one but the producers say they’ll definitely be another one if the film does well – which it has. Jamie Lee Curtis thinks the film is ace and has praised the story no end but then she also said that about H20 and lets not forget Halloween: Resurrection. If they really wanted fans on their side they should have cast Danielle Harris as Strode’s daughter, that would have been pretty cool but the studios still don’t get what made the original so great, they never did and they never will. Time to call it a day.

Hereditary

Dir: Ari Aster

2018

*****

There have been a few decent horror films made in the late 2000s and early 2010’s but by and large, the bad ones make the okay ones look better than they really are. The genre is awash of terrible releases, more so than any other genre, other than perhaps Christmas movies. In some respects I thought 2011’s The Cabin in the Woods was the horror film to end all horror films but sadly I was wrong. Not that cabin in the Woods was scary mind, it is just that it made light of bad horror films and horror clichés. The clichés continued however, until 2017’s Get Out led the way for a new type of horror. 2018’s A Quiet Place added an interesting element to the genre and it looked as if the industry was beginning to up its game. The problem however, is that as good and unique as these films are, they’re still not scary enough. An idea haunts far more than a jump scene ever does and this is often forgotten. I have found films such as Under The Skin, Bone Tomahawk and Green Room more frightening than films more closely regarded as horrors over the last few years. The genre needed something else, something a bit special but not completely nontraditional. It needed Hereditary. It might be the best horror film since The Shining. Horror films come in all shapes and sizes, I like comedy horror and ones with old-school special effects personally, but managing genuine terror is difficult. Hereditary is genuinely terrifying. Director Ari Aster, who at this point has only made short films, could be the next Stanley Kubrick. Aster, who has specifically sited films such as Rosemary's Baby, Cries and Whispers, Don't Look Now, Carrie, Ordinary People and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover as influences, stated that he didn’t see the film as a horror, but rather  "a tragedy that curdles into a nightmare”. Nightmare is right. I think what we consider horror these days is a matter of opinion, personally I find ideas and suggestions often far more effective than masked men jumping out of closets but I definitely consider Hereditary a horror, one of the highest quality. The film is cinematic and atmospheric. The score by Colin Stetson is considered a character in itself and is treated as such by Aster, who approached Stetson before anyone else. Effective horror films need a balance of several components, such as creepiness, suspense, intrigue, dread, surprise and originality – Hereditary has all of these. It never relies on cheap jump scenes and thankfully Aster kept all the special effects simple and old school. It is a relief to see such a creative horror film without it using CGI. The film revolves around miniature-model artist Annie Graham (Toni Collette) who lives with her husband, Steve (Gabriel Byrne), their 16-year-old son Peter (Alex Wolff), and their 13-year-old daughter, Charlie (Milly Shapiro). At the funeral of her secretive mother, Ellen, Annie delivers a eulogy explaining their fraught relationship that was full of secrecy. A few days later, Steve is informed that Ellen's grave has been desecrated, while Annie thinks she sees an apparition of Ellen in her workshop. At a support group for bereaved, Annie reveals that the rest of her family suffered from mental illness that resulted in their deaths. Later that week, Peter lies that he is going to a school event when in fact he is going to a party. Annie forces him to take Charlie with him, which he does even though neither he or Charlie want her to. While socialising at the party, Peter leaves his sister to take drugs with a girl he likes. Unsupervised, Charlie eats some chocolate cake containing nuts, which she is allergic to, and falls into an angioedema attack. Peter drives her to a hospital in panic, while Charlie leans out of the window for air. Suddenly, Peter swerves to avoid a dead animal and Charlie is decapitated by a telephone pole. The family grieves following Charlie's funeral, heightening tensions between Annie and Peter. Peter is then plagued by Charlie's presence around the house. Annie is soon befriended by a support group member, Joan. Annie tells her she used to sleepwalk, and recounts an incident in which she woke up in Peter's bedroom to find herself, Peter, and Charlie covered in paint thinner with a lit match in her hand. Joan teaches Annie to perform a séance to communicate with Charlie. Annie wakes from a nightmare and convinces her family to attempt the séance. Objects begin to move and break, terrifying Peter, and Charlie seemingly possesses Annie until Steve douses her with water. Annie suspects that Charlie's spirit has become malevolent. She throws Charlie's sketchbook into the fireplace, but her sleeve also begins to burn. She retrieves it and heads to Joan's apartment for advice, but Joan has vanished. Annie notices that Joan's welcome mat resembles her mother's craftwork. She goes through her mother's possessions and finds a photo album linking Joan to Ellen, and a book with information about a demon named Paimon, who wishes to inhabit the body of a male host. In the attic, Annie finds Ellen's decapitated body with strange symbols on the wall written in blood. At school, Peter becomes confused and slams his head against his desk, breaking his nose. Annie shows Steve her mother's body and the sketchbook. Annie begs Steve to burn the sketchbook so she can sacrifice herself to stop the haunting, but Steve assumes she has gone mad, accusing her of desecrating Ellen's grave herself. When Annie throws the book into the fireplace, Steve bursts into flames instead. Annie becomes possessed. Peter awakens to find his father's body. Annie chases him into the attic, which is decorated with cult imagery. Levitating, Annie beheads herself with a piano wire as naked coven members look on. Peter jumps out of the window. As he lies on the ground, a light enters his body and he wakes up. He follows Annie's levitating corpse into Charlie's treehouse, where Charlie's crowned, decapitated head rests atop a mannequin. Joan, other coven members and the headless corpses of his mother and grandmother bow to him. Joan swears an oath to him as Paimon, stating that he has been liberated from his female host, Charlie, and is free to rule over them. It is by far the scariest film I’ve seen in ages. The initial scare is brutal and I didn’t think the film would match it but it does. The graphic horror moments are controlled and well paced throughout the film. There really is something for every fan of the genre, except of course humour. The performances are absolutely perfect. Toni Collette, who had told her agent that she didn't want to do any more heavy, dark films and only wanted to do comedies, loved the Hereditary script so much she couldn't turn it down. I can’t think of anyone else who could have done her character justice. Gabriel Byrne is perfectly cast as the steady down to earth father and husband and Alex Wolf and Mily Shapiro are so impressive in their performances. Literally every element of the film is perfect. Toni Collette has said in interviews that Ari Aster is the most prepared director she's ever worked with. Ari goes for scares that are emotionally justified, rather than relying solely on traditional horror scare-jumps. He wrote detailed biographies and backstories for all of the characters before even writing the screenplay. Aster started building a network of potential collaborators for this film years before the project had been greenlit and he designed a 75-page shot list for the cinematography before they even had locations scouted. This is what talent looks like. In Peter's first scene at school, the words "Escaping Fate" is on the chalkboard with the teacher discussing it. This is a reference to 1978’s Halloween, where the main character discusses the same thing in class. A tribute to the king of horror John Carpenter, someone I believe Aster could be as big as.

The Greasy Strangler

Dir: Jim Hosking

2016

*****

Jim Hosking and Toby Harvard’s The Greasy Strangler is one of the most disgusting, uncomfortable and depraved films I have ever seen. I think I liked it. I’ve never been one for so called ‘gross-out’ comedies and shock-for-shock-sake films generally leave me cold, irritated and whatever the opposite of shocked is. Hosking and Harvard’s film however had me transfixed. I don’t think I ever stopped asking why but soon enough it didn’t really matter, I was down the rabbit hole and I had no intention of leaving. My wife couldn’t bare more than a few minutes of it and she missed all of the worst parts. The Greasy Strangler is proof that originality and interesting characters can make just about any idea watchable. Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels – John Travolta’s hairdresser in real life) runs a disco-themed walking location tour in his town, alongside his son Big Brayden (Sky Elobar). Ronnie allows Brayden to live with him on the condition that Brayden prepares excessively greasy food for him. Ronnie is a pathological liar who fabricates stories about disco groups like the Bee Gees, as well as his supposed friendship with Michael Jackson. Brayden is slow but not as stupid as he seems and aspires to be a space fantasy author. Ronnie asserts that Brayden drove his mother away, though Brayden says that she left Ronnie for a man named Ricky Prickles. Ronnie and Brayden frequently call each other "bullshit artists" when they disagree with one another. It is annoying but I guarantee you will call someone a bullshit artist within hours of watching the film. At night, Ronnie completely covers himself in grease and strangles residents of the town (becoming known as "The Greasy Strangler"), starting with three people he kicked out of his tour group, for heckling him on free refreshments they were promised as part of the tour. After his killings, he cleans himself of the grease by standing in a car wash run by a blind man named Big Paul (Gil Gex). During one of the disco walking tours, Brayden meets a woman named Janet (Elizabeth De Razzo), and the two begin a romantic relationship. One night, Ronnie buys a hot dog from a vendor and forcibly covers it in grease, against the vendor's pleas. Later, as the vendor is defecating in his trailer, Ronnie strangles him through a window, causing his eyes to pop out of his head, which Ronnie cooks and eats. Brayden and Janet have sex, and the next morning, Ronnie attempts to seduce Janet by eating a grease-covered grapefruit. Ronnie takes Janet out to a discotheque, threatening to evict Brayden if he does not allow them to. Ronnie attempts to kiss Janet, but she resists, saying that she may be in love with Brayden. Ronnie kills Oinker, one of Brayden's friends, and goes to the discotheque with Paul. Against Brayden's wishes, Ronnie has sex with Janet, and he and Brayden have a heated argument the next day. Ronnie and Janet have sex again, and when Brayden confronts them, they mock him, prompting him to run from the house in despair. One night, Brayden confronts Janet in the kitchen and admits that he is in love with her. Ronnie overhears this, covers himself in grease, and pretends to stand in the car wash, allowing himself to sneak up on Paul and strangle him. He decapitates Paul with a nearby saw and dances with Paul's head. The next morning, Brayden calls a detective named Jody and reports that Ronnie may be the Greasy Strangler. Jody comes to the house the next day, and Brayden and Janet show him a spot of oil left behind on the carpet as evidence that Ronnie is the Greasy Strangler. Downstairs, Jody concludes that the oil is meaningless circumstantial evidence, and demands that they end all inquiries about Ronnie having committed the murders. Jody removes his glasses in a mirror, showing that he is Ronnie in disguise. That night, Janet declares her mutual love for Brayden, and they decide to get married. Ronnie, hiding under the bed, reveals himself, claiming Janet as his lover and evicting Brayden. Janet replies that Brayden can stay at her residence, and Ronnie leaves. He re-enters, covered in grease, slaps Brayden, and grabs Janet by the arm, leaving with her. Brayden covers himself in grease as well, and follows Ronnie and Janet to a movie theatre, where Ronnie is strangling her. Brayden strangles Janet instead, causing her eyes to pop out of her head, which both he and Ronnie consume. The next day, on a beach, Ronnie reveals that he cares for Brayden, despite his annoyance with him, and says that he would rather be with him than co-owning a discotheque with John Travolta in New Orleans. They bond over, in hindsight, their disgust with Janet. They cover themselves in grease and head to a forest where they murder Ricky Prickles, and then witness themselves be executed by firing squad, watching as liquid and confetti explode from their heads. They venture deeper into the forest, still covered in grease, and violently shake wooden spears at the camera in a primal manner. While the film is provocative in terms of taste, it survives in that it is genuinely funny and not just funny out of shock. You could argue that it is a post-modernist deconstruction of just about any contemporary mainstream film out there but many viewers (who aren’t concentrating on such things) would strongly disagree. It’s also a brilliant contemporary horror - but with excellent old-school horror techniques. Putting aside whether one likes it or not, you can’t overlook just how sublime the direction and cinematography is and just how well it is edited. People have commented that it is like an early John Waters film but I disagree, it is so much better and original than that. Hosking and Harvard have made other films look ridiculous in comparison, which is amazing considering their’s is an off-kilter work of absurdism. Weirdly, the film is also rather simple for a surrealist piece, making me think all the more that this is a swipe at the state of modern cinema – and current cinema audiences – what they do and don’t accept. It is an unpleasant masterpiece, although less unpleasant once you realise that all that grease is in fact yummy tapioca pudding.

Tales of Halloween

Dir: Neil Marshall, Darren Lynn Bousman, Axelle Carolyn, Lucky McKee, Andrew Kasch, Paul Solet, John Skipp, Adam Gierasch, Jace Anderson, Mike Mendez, Ryan Schifrin, Dave Parker

2015

**

Tales of Halloween is an anthology of ten interlocking short stories that revolve around the night of Halloween. The directors range from well known to inexperienced and the cast are a mix of horror icons (all directors) and some of the worst actors working today. I expected fun, no masterpieces, just short, sharp and scary shorts that offered something new and punchy. Sadly, this wasn’t the case. Some of the films are good but most of them are poor copies of well established classic horror films – this is the Halloween equivalent of the dreadful Christmas films Hallmark churn out every year. I’m actually starting to prefer Christmas nuts over Halloween enthusiasts. The horror greats that are involved should hand their heads in shame. The ten stories take place in the same unnamed suburban American town and is pointlessly narrated by a radio DJ (Adrienne Barbeau) – an idea borrowed from A Christmas Horror Story but obviously a tribute to John Carpenter’s The Fog. The first film, Sweet Tooth, is Written and directed by Dave Parker. Mikey (Daniel DiMaggio) has just finished trick-or-treating around his neighborhood and come home with a bag full of candy. His parents (Greg Grunberg and Clare Kramer – the same characters both played in 2013’s Big Ass Spider) have left him in the care of his babysitter Lizzy (Madison Iseman), who has invited her boyfriend Kyle over to watch the film Night of the Living Dead. As Mikey begins to enjoy the candy he's collected, Lizzy and Kyle share the urban legend of "Sweet Tooth"; long ago, a boy of Mikey's age named Timothy was denied his trick-or-treat candy by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Blake, but a curious Timothy discovered that the parents kept and ate all his candy themselves. Enraged, Timothy killed both of his parents and ate all the candy, including the ones already in their stomach, and thus became Sweet Tooth, a demon who appears each Halloween looking everywhere for candy. Mikey is rattled by this story and decides to go to sleep early, much to Lizzy and Kyle's amusement. They decide to make out and eat the candy, before being attacked by Sweet Tooth himself, which Mikey overhears. The ghostly being heads toward Mikey's bedroom but Mikey has left a bar of chocolate for Sweet Tooth on the floor to take. That, combined with the fact that Mikey hasn't eaten any candy, spares him from death. Later, Mikey's parents come home to find Lizzy and Kyle's grotesque corpses, with Mikey standing nearby exclaiming that they ate all his Halloween candy. It is part Candyman and part Halloween, it’s one of the better shorts but it will probably be best remembered for featuring fan favourites Madison Iseman and Greg Grunberg. The Night Billy Raised Hell was written by Clint Sears and directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III & IV). Billy Thompson (Marcus Eckert) absurdly tries to start trick-or-treating really early in the afternoon, prompting his big sister Britney (Natalis Castillo) and her boyfriend Todd (Ben Stillwell) to trick him into playing a prank, that, according to both teenagers, had been going on for years. They prepared an egg for Billy to throw at Mr. Abbadon's (Barry Bostwick) house, who's notoriously stingy and never gives out candy for the children across the years, but Billy was caught red-handed by the man of the hour, while his sister and her boyfriend fled. Billy was ushered into Mr. Abbadon's house, where he says he's going to teach Billy a lesson, and takes Mordecai, a little boy of Billy's age who has the same Halloween costume (red devil) as him. Mr. Abbadon then lets Mordecai, in a costume and mask similar to Billy, to wreck around the neighborhood, from doing harmless pranks like spray-painting the walls into the more bloody terrors, like stabbing a rude neighbor who gave him toothbrush instead of candy, and then later on tricking the same neighbor into stepping to a bear trap, severing his foot. The duo even hijacked Adrianne Curry's car along the way. After all the ruckus, Mr. Abbadon returns to his house to a tied Billy and releases him, and reveals that he is the Devil himself and under the mask Mordecai is also the Little Devil. He lets Billy go, only for Billy to be arrested outside by a swarm of waiting police from the previous terror caused by Mordecai in his Halloween costume. It’s a neat idea but is poorly executed. I was excited to see Barry Bostwick and expected an over the top performance from him but it just didn’t work for me. It was daft, just not quite daft enough and I expected a lot more from Bousman. The third film, Trick, has a lot more going for it. Written by Greg Commons and directed by Adam Gierasch, the story starts on a seemingly peaceful Halloween night, with friends Nelson (Trent Haaga), Maria (Tiffany Shepis), James (John F. Beach) and Caitlyn (Casey Ruggieri) who are lounging around Nelson's house, smoking pot. As Nelson goes to greet a girl trick-or-treating, the group is alarmed when the girl stabs Nelson multiple times in the abdomen, gravely injuring him. Panicked, Maria goes to her car to drive Nelson to the hospital, only to be attacked by four kids in costumes. Maria flees, but the injury causes her to drop dead on the house's pool. By this time, Nelson has succumbed to his injury and dies as well. James tries to find help, only to have his face burned by yet another trick-or-treater, and she completes her attack by stuffing his mouth with rat poison, killing him. Caitlyn, the only adult left, flees to the backyard, where she hides in a shack. It is then revealed that Caitlyn, Nelson, Maria and James are all psychopaths and have been kidnapping kids and gouging their eyes out for their amusement. The group of kids finds the shack, which turns out to be the place they tortured the previous kids, and cornered Caitlyn. A girl, whose one eye has been gouged by the adults, executes Caitlyn with an axe on her head. It’s a great twist ending and the initial attack comes from nowhere. It’s a great idea, but it is totally wasted by the fact that none of the actors can actually act. It is rushed and cheap when it could have been something pretty unique – dare I say it, it could have led to its own feature length film but as it is here its such a wasted opportunity. The middle stories are all a little odd. The Weak and the Wicked doesn’t fit with any of the other films at all. Written by Molly Millions and directed by Paul Solet, it sees three bullies, Alice (Grace Phipps), Isaac (Booboo Stewart) and Bart (Noah Segan) as they proceed to torture a kid after trick-or-treating (Jack Dylan Grazer), but are interrupted by a teenager of their age in a devil costume (Keir Gilchrist). The teenager hands Alice a drawing of the Devil and utters that the Devil will come to aid the weak if they're wearing his costume. Alice dismisses the picture and begins to chase the teenager away with the other bullies to the other side of the city, where the teenager stops by a burnt-down caravan. In a flashback when Alice, Bart and Isaac were kids, they had set the caravan on fire, which belonged to the teenager, with his parents inside it at the time. As the bullies beat the teenager up and prepares to light him on fire, Bart and Isaac are attacked by an unseen force. When Alice turns around, the devil himself has showed up, looking exactly like the teenager’s costume. As Alice is killed by the devil, blood violently splashes to the teenager's face, who smiles in satisfaction. The blood hits the young actor hard, it must have really hurt. It’s a little too serious and doesn’t quite fit with the other stories. The caravan looks dirty in the present scene, even though it is shown burning up in the flash-back scene. It tries and fails at being clever and the devil looks rubbish. Axelle Carolyn’s Gim Grinning Ghost is about as amateur as it gets. As Lynn (Alex Essoe) prepares to leave her mother's (Lin Shaye) Halloween party after hearing her mother recount a ghost story, she encounters strange occurrences on her way home. First her car uncharacteristically breaks down in the middle of the road, forcing her to finish her trip by foot. While walking, she senses that a shadowy figure, the one from her mother's story, is following her. Terrified, she runs into the safety of her house, and believes the figure has not followed her to her house. As Lynn settles to a couch to watch a film, her dog suddenly gets nervous and leaves the room. Lynn smiles and leans back to the couch, only to find out that the ghost is sitting beside her. It is boring, predictable and the opposite of scary. The fact that it features a cameo from Stuart Gordon – one of my all time favourite horror directors - is heartbreaking. Lucky McKee’s Ding Dong confused me. Rewinding to the previous year, we see Jack (Marc Senter) and his wife Bobbie (Pollyanna McIntosh) watch as children trick or treat on Halloween night. Bobbie is distraught by the fact she has no children of her own, to which Jack tries to cheer her up by dressing their dog as Gretel. This leads things to get heated and ends up with Bobbie suddenly turning into a red demon and clawing Jack's face with her long, devilish nails. In the present time, Jack and Bobbie have prepared to greet trick-or-treaters, dressed as Hansel and a witch respectively, to Jack’s worry. Even though everything goes normally, with Bobbie excitedly performing a skit to the delight of the children, something feels uneasy between the couple every time there's children on their front porch. Finally, when a boy also dressed as Hansel is visiting the couple's house alone, Bobbie prepares to lead him inside, but Jack, aware of his wife's intent, alert the boy's mother, who's looking for him. A disheartened Bobbie goes back inside, and Jack persuades her to stop what they're doing, telling her that it wouldn’t be right to have children of their own with the abusive way she treats him. It is then revealed that Bobbie is a witch and enjoys eating children, and when Jack reveals he's secretly had a vasectomy to prevent a pregnancy, she becomes distraught and furious. She drags Jack into the house's oven, which resembles hell, and ends up melting herself. It’s badly written and badly performed, although I do quite like Pollyanna McIntosh. Andrew Kasch and John Skipp’s This Means War is basically a Halloween version of Deck the Halls. Boris (Dana Gould) has proudly finished his Halloween-decorated house. But when children are about to greet his house, they are lured away because of his neighbor, Dante (James Duval) has set-up a rock and gore-oriented Halloween decorations on his house, complete with loud rock music blasting from the speakers. Boris walks up to Dante's yard to ask him to turn the volume lower, but Dante and his colleagues just laugh at him and mock his decorations. Enraged, Boris wrecks the sound system and halts the music, but Dante exacts revenge by planning to throw a huge bucket of blood to Boris' slick Halloween decorations. As Boris runs up to stop Dante, the latter splashes the blood on the former instead, and declares a war. Spectators begin to crowd as the two fight, placing bets and egging them on until the police come. Boris charges Dante towards a sharp piece of standing wood, killing both of them instantly. Deck the Halls is a pretty bad film, it was copied by Hallmark a few years later who took the premise, hired cheaper actors and renamed it Battle of the Bulbs. It is an awful film, one of the worst ever made in fact. This means war is considerably worse. Friday the 31st was a bit of light relief, written by Mike Mendez and Dave Parker and directed by Mendez, the film is a return to silly – something the anthology was in dire need of at this point. A deformed serial killer (Nick Principe) who resembles Jason Voorhees hunts a girl dressed as Dorothy for Halloween (Amanda Moyer). The girl runs to a barn where she discovers several of the killer's victims, among them her friend, Casey. The killer hunts her down to the barn, and when she manages to escape and flee, he kills her by throwing a spear through her chest. As the killer celebrates the slaying, a UFO beams down a small alien that tries to trick-or-treat. The killer proceeds to stomp over the tiny alien, seemingly crushing him, but the alien instead turns into goo and possesses the victim's body, chasing the panicked killer into his barn. The possessed girl and the killer then proceed to attack each other with sharp objects, which eventually concludes with both of them decapitating each other. The alien then leaves the girl's decapitated head to teleport back to his spaceship, taking the killer's head with him. It is stupid, gory and fun and a million times better than the rest. Ryan Schifrin’s The Ransom of Rusty Rex is probably the most intelligent of the stories. When they spot millionaire Jebediah Rex (horror legend John Landis) letting his son Rusty (Ben Woolf) out for trick-or-treating, former bank robbers Hank (Sam Witwer) and Dutch (Jose Pablo Cantillo) set out their plan to kidnap the millionaire's son. After succeeding doing so, the kidnappers tie up a still-masked Rusty into a chair and call his father for a ransom. However, the father seems overjoyed that his son has been kidnapped and promptly hangs up the phone. Hank calls him one more time to discuss about ransom, but the father coldly tells them they can have his son. Exasperated, the kidnappers find out that the son is actually a deformed monster that clings to the people near him. They tried to sink him down the river, but he came back to their lair. Hank calls Jebediah once more, only to be told that Rusty has been holding Jebediah and his wife hostage for five years as he would not leave them, and thanked the kidnappers for taking him away from them. Hank and Dutch once again tied Rusty and sets him on fire, but as Hank comes back from buying food, Rusty, who has gotten hungry, has eaten Dutch up to his head. Hank screams, the film ends. It is half an idea, the first half being good and the second half poorly written. The final story, Bad Seed, is written and directed by Neil Marshall, the film’s headlining horror director. After a man has his head bitten off by a massive pumpkin he has just carved, Detective McNally (Kristina Klebe) investigates the crime scene. At first she refuses to believe the description of the victim's wife, but after the forensics team member, Bob, confirms the killer was indeed a carved pumpkin, she works to put a stop to it. The pumpkin proceeds to eat a trick-or-treating child and terrorizes the neighborhood, which has already suffered from the events portrayed earlier in the film. McNally manages to track the killer pumpkin down to a backyard, where it attacks her; though she initially runs out of bullets, Bob appears with a shotgun, and she is able to destroy it. Among the broken pieces of pumpkin, she finds a sticker from a company called Clover Corp, headed by a Professor Milo Gottleib (played by legend Joe Dante), advertising the pumpkin as a 100% organic super-pumpkin. McNally and Bob visit the Clover Corp. headquarters and discover thousands of genetically-modified pumpkins, all potentially dangerous, waiting to be sold. The initial pumpkin attack was fun but by this point the film was really starting to drag. This was no the pay-off I had been hoping for. If the pumpkins would have gone around town killing every character we’d seen throughout the movie then it would have been great but as it was it was fairly rubbish, especially from talent such as Marshall. They achieved a lot on a small budget but nothing here is of a high quality. What the film makers would describe as ‘tribute’ I would describe as theft. It is a horrible am-dram style mess of horror clichés and half ideas. It would have been far better if the stories had been linked in some way but that would have required creativity and time and it didn’t seem that the people responsible had either. Watch a real horror film this Halloween instead of this nonsense.

Ghost Stories

Dir: Andy Nyman, Jeremy Dyson

2018

***

I found Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson’s 2018 horror film Ghost Stories to be quite intriguing, although it does feature rather too many horror clichés for my liking. It is based on Nyman and Dyson’s 2010 stage play and it stars Nyman reprising his role from the play as a man devoted to debunking fraudulent psychics, and who is tasked with solving three unexplained paranormal events. I have no idea how it worked as a play but I do wonder whether it worked better. The story begins with Phillip Goodman talking to camera. Goodman is a well-known professor and television presenter whose show is devoted to debunking fraudulent psychics, which he regards as his life's work in order to stop people's lives being ruined by superstition the way his family's were. We are shown an old Super-8 film of Goodman's strict Jewish father throwing his sister out of the family home for dating a South Asian man. This doesn’t quite have the effect it probably should. We learn that Goodman is single and rather lonely and even though he feels he is doing good, those that are fooled by psychics are angry at him, rather than the psychics, for shattering their illusions. He talks about his idol, a famed 1970s paranormal investigator called Charles Cameron who has been missing for decades under mysterious circumstances. Within seconds of film, Goodman is invited by Cameron to visit him. Now sick and impoverished, having lived in a squalid static caravan, the old man asks him to investigate three incidents of supposedly real supernatural ghost sightings. He believes he has been wrong all these years and that Goodman’s work is contemptible. The real identity of the man is obvious from the start due to poor make-up, which hurts the overall story somewhat. The first case is a night watchman, Tony Matthews (Paul Whitehouse), whose wife has died of cancer and who feels guilty that he stopped visiting his daughter, who suffers from locked-in syndrome. The set up and character development is brilliant and Whitehouse is on top form but unfortunately, the segment turns into run-of-the-mill wobbly camera nonsense as we see him being haunted by the spirit of a young girl while working in a disused asylum for women. It isn’t quite the clever ‘unexplained’ happening that the audience/Goodman is promised. The second victim of a supernatural sighting is a teenager, Simon Rifkind (Alex Lawther), who is obsessed with the occult and has a poor relationship with his parents. His introduction drags on with Goodman walking around his very un-spooky house. Lawther however is brilliant in his performance and is totally believable as a frightened teenager on the brink of breakdown. In his flashback, we follow him in his car as he is driving back from a late party. Said party must have been led deep in the woods as this is where Simon is driving. After a lapse in concentration, Simon hits something (the devil apparently) and his car breaks down. I think he was then attacked by a giant tree but it is a bit unclear. Goodman, although unsettled by the second case, believes that each of them had an obvious rational explanation: the supposed victims imagined them, based on their own neuroses. The third case is of a financier in the City, Mike Priddle (Martin Freeman), who was plagued by a poltergeist while awaiting the birth of his child. His wife's ghost appeared to him as she died giving birth to an (it is implied) inhuman child. It is the best and most scary of the three tales, Freeman is as good as the other three actors and you wonder how the story will end. Thankfully, the film takes a turn for the better as the financier suddenly commits suicide with a shotgun while talking to Goodman. Goodman returns to the 1970s investigator, who tears a latex mask off of his face, revealing himself to be Priddle – which was no surprise as it was clearly Freeman from the very beginning. Goodman at first believes that he is the victim of an elaborate hoax, but reality soon breaks down altogether. Priddle leads Goodman back in time to the scene of a childhood incident in which he watched two bullies entice a mentally handicapped boy into a drain, where he died of an asthma attack. A series of numbers, that have appeared throughout the film, are explained to be written inside the drain the boy died in. Goodman has felt guilty all his life about his failure to rescue the victim. The decaying corpse of the bullied boy appears, tormenting Goodman and leading him to a hospital bed, where he is made to lie down. The ghoul lies on top of him and forces his finger into Goodman's mouth as Goodman cries "no, not again", implying this is a recurring event. In the real world, Goodman is comatose in hospital with tubes in his mouth. He suffers from locked-in syndrome after a failed suicide attempt in his car. All the characters and events Goodman has experienced were inspired by the staff and objects in his hospital room. The doctors incorrectly believe that his persistent vegetative state allows him no awareness of his surroundings. The senior doctor predicts that Goodman is "here for keeps", without chance of recovery, and as he leaves the room says to his junior colleague, "I hope his dreams are sweet". It is a clever ending that makes the film worth watching but only just. The numbers thing was a bit rubbish to be honest and each story alone are nothing special. It’s a bit of a mix of ideas that don’t mix brilliantly together but the pace was quite refreshing and it certainly wasn’t predictable, even when it felt a little clichéd. The truth of it is that the film was written by the least talented member of The League of Gentleman. Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith have made similar sort of programs/film over the years that have been utterly brilliant and Ghost Stories feels like a sugarless version of the work they’ve been doing for the last ten years or so. The performances are excellent, accept from co-writer Nyman, who is just okay in the lead role. The UK TV Trailer for the film contained the spelling error ‘Ghost Storeis’ in big red letters. This was an intentional error in reference to the tagline 'the brain sees what it wants to see'. This sums up the film really: not as clever as it thinks it is and tries too hard.

Nosferatu the Vampyre (Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht)

Dir: Werner Herzog

1979

*****

The word ‘remake’ and Herzog don’t sound right together at all but, in 1979, the great Werner showed the world exactly how to remake a classic. While the basic story is derived from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, Herzog made the film primarily as an homage remake of F. W. Murnau's seminal silent film Nosferatu made in 1922, which differs somewhat from Stoker's original work. The makers of the earlier film could not obtain the rights for a film adaptation of Dracula, so they changed a number of minor details and character names in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid copyright infringement on the intellectual property owned (at the time) by Stoker's widow. A lawsuit was filed, resulting in an order for the destruction of all prints of the film. Luckily, some prints survived, and were restored after Florence Stoker had died and the copyright had expired. By the 1960s and early 1970s, the original silent film returned to cinemas and was enjoyed by a new generation of moviegoers. Herzog considered Murnau's Nosferatu to be the greatest film ever to come out of Germany and was eager to make his own version of the film, with collaborator Klaus Kinski in the leading role. In 1979, by which time the copyright for Dracula had entered the public domain, Herzog proceeded with his updated version of the classic German film, which could now include the original character names. It was filmed on a minimal budget with a crew of just sixteen people. Herzog could not film in Wismar, where the original Murnau film was shot, so he relocated production to Delft, Netherlands. Originally Herzog intended to film the Transylvanian scenes in Transylvania and even scouted and decided upon locations, but the Romanian government under the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu would not allow a the production of a film that associated Vlad II. Dracul - the namesake of the Bram Stoker's vampire - with anything but a heroic national hero. Parts of the film were shot in nearby Schiedam, after Delft authorities refused to allow Herzog to release 11,000 rats for a scene in the film – indeed the rats turned out to be a problem. Dutch behavioral biologist Maarten 't Hart, hired by Herzog for his expertise of laboratory rats, revealed that, after witnessing the inhumane way in which the rats were treated, he no longer wished to cooperate. Apart from travelling conditions that were so poor that the rats, imported from Hungary, had started to eat each other upon arrival in the Netherlands, Herzog insisted the plain white rats be dyed gray. In order to do so, according to Hart, the cages containing the rats needed to be submerged in boiling water for several seconds, causing another half of them to die. At the request of distributor 20th Century Fox, Herzog produced two versions of the film simultaneously, to appeal to English-speaking audiences. Scenes with dialogue were filmed twice, in German and in English, meaning that the actors' own voices (as opposed to dubbed dialogue by voice actors) could be included in the English version of the film. Herzog himself said that the German version was more "authentic”. The story begins in Wismar, Germany with estate agent Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz). His boss, Renfield (Roland Topor), informs him that a nobleman named Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) wishes to buy a property in Wismar, and assigns Harker to visit the Count and complete the lucrative deal. Leaving his young wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) behind in Wismar, Harker travels for four weeks to Transylvania, to the castle of Count Dracula. He carries with him the deeds and documents needed to sell the house to the Count. On his journey, Jonathan stops at a village, where locals plead for him to stay clear of the accursed castle, providing him with details of Dracula's vampirism. Harker ignores the villagers' pleas as superstition and continues his journey unassisted ascending the Borgo Pass. Harker arrives at Dracula's castle, where he meets the Count, a strange, almost rodent-like man, with large ears, pale skin, sharp teeth, and long fingernails. The lonely Count is enchanted by a small portrait of Lucy and immediately agrees to purchase the Wismar property, especially with the knowledge that he and Lucy would become neighbors. As Jonathan's visit progresses, he is haunted at night by a number of dream-like encounters with the vampiric Count. Simultaneously, in Wismar, Lucy is tormented by night terrors, plagued by images of impending doom. Additionally, Renfield is committed to an asylum after biting a cow, apparently having gone completely insane. To Harker's horror, he finds the Count asleep in a coffin, confirming for him that Dracula is indeed a vampire. At night, Dracula leaves for Wismar, taking with him a number of coffins, filled with the cursed earth that he needs for his vampiric rest. Harker finds that he is locked in the castle, and attempts to escape through a window with a makeshift rope. The rope, fashioned from bedsheets, is not long enough, and Jonathan falls, severely injuring himself. He awakes on the ground the next morning, stirred by the sound of a young Gypsy boy playing a violin. He is eventually sent to a hospital and raves about 'black coffins' to doctors, who then assume that the sickness is affecting his mind. Meanwhile, Dracula and his coffins travel to Wismar by boat, via the Black Sea port of Varna, thence through the Bosphorus and Gibraltar straits and around the entire west European Atlantic coast to the Baltic Sea. He systematically kills the entire crew, making it appear as if they were afflicted with plague. The ghost ship arrives, with its cargo, at Wismar, where doctors – including Abraham Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast) – investigate the strange fate of the ship. They discover a log that mentions their perceived affliction with plague. In turn, Wismar is flooded with rats from the ship. Dracula arrives in Wismar with his coffins, and death spreads rapidly throughout the town. When Jonathan is finally transported home, he is desperately ill, and does not appear to recognize his wife. Lucy later has an encounter with Count Dracula; weary and unable to die, he demands some of the love that she gave so freely to Jonathan, but she refuses, much to Dracula's dismay. Now aware that something other than plague is responsible for the death that has beset her once-peaceful town, Lucy desperately tries to convince the townspeople, but they are skeptical and uninterested. She finds that she can vanquish Dracula's evil by distracting him at dawn, but at the expense of her own life. She lures the Count to her bedroom, where he proceeds to drink her blood. Lucy's beauty and purity distract Dracula from the call of the rooster, and at the first light of day, he collapses to the floor, dead. Van Helsing arrives to discover Lucy, dead but victorious. He then drives a stake through the heart of the Count to make sure that Lucy's sacrifice was not in vain. In a final twist, Jonathan Harker awakens from his sickness, now a vampire, and arranges for Van Helsing's arrest for the murder of Count Dracula. He is last seen traveling away on horseback, garbed in the same fluttering black as Dracula, stating enigmatically that he has much to do. Kinski's Dracula make-up, with black costume, bald head, rat-like teeth and long fingernails, is an imitation of Max Schreck's makeup in the 1922 original but Kinski’s performance is very much his own and not Schreck impression. In order to get the restrained performance out of Kinski that Herzog desired, he reused a trick from the making of Aguirre - the wrath of God. While Kinski wanted the play Dracula as more energetic, Herzog would provoke Kinski into a massive tantrum so he would be exhausted when the time came to shoot a scene. The makeup artist who worked on Kinski was Japanese artist Reiko Kruk. Although he fought with Herzog and others during the making of other films, Kinski got along with Kruk and the four-hour makeup sessions went on with no outbursts from Kinski himself. A number of shots in the film are faithful recreations of iconic shots from Murnau's original film, some almost perfectly identical to their counterparts, intended as an homage to Murnau and his original film. The opening sequence was filmed by Herzog himself at the Mummies of Guanajuato museum in Mexico, where a large number of naturally mummified bodies of the victims of an 1833 cholera epidemic are on public display. Herzog had first seen the Guanajuato mummies while visiting in the 1960s. Rather shockingly, on his return in the '70s he took the corpses out of the glass cases in which they are normally stored. To film them, he propped them against a wall, arranging them in a sequence running roughly from childhood to old age. It was the the second of five collaborations between director Herzog and actor Kinski and, by all accounts, it was the happiest film they made without any infamous outbursts. It is the best kind of remake in that it is it’s own film as well as being a faithful and courteous tribute. F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu is a grainy classic saved from the ashes and Herzog’s is that vision brought to life in bold colour. It is beautiful film and a fitting tribute. It should be noted that the 1988 Italian horror film Nosferatu in Venice, featuring Kinski in the title role once again, is an "in-name-only" sequel.

Halloween
Dir: Rob Zombie
2007
***
So how does one go about remaking a classic horror film? The answer is always – you don’t! However, they always do because people like me are suckers and completists and are glutton for punishment. That said, there were a few elements to Rob Zombie’s re-boot that did appeal. Firstly, it would help us forget Halloween: Resurrection. Secondly, it stared Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Sam Loomis – which was a particularity nice bit of casting. To be fair to Rob Zombie, he had made two impressive horror films by this point; House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. They’re an acquired taste but I thought they were pretty good fun and something alternative to the rather samey horror films of the early 00s. Zombie's "re-imagining" follows the premise of John Carpenter's original, with Michael Myers stalking Laurie Strode and her friends on Halloween night. Zombie's film goes deeper into the character's psyche, trying to answer the question of what drove him to kill people, whereas in Carpenter's original film Michael did not have an explicit reason for killing. Dimension announced that Zombie would be creating the next installment in the Halloween film series in 2006. The plan was for Zombie to hold many positions in the production; he would write, direct, produce, and serve as music supervisor. Bob Weinstein approached him about making the film. Zombie, who was a fan of the original Halloween and a friend of John Carpenter, jumped at the chance. Before Dimension went public with the news, Zombie felt obligated to inform Carpenter, out of respect, of the plans to remake his film. Carpenter's request was for Zombie to "make it his own". Zombie announced that his film would combine the elements of prequel and remake with the original concept, and insisted that there would be considerable original content in the new film as opposed to mere rehashed material. Zombie's intention was to reinvent Michael Myers because, in his opinion, the character, along with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Pinhead, had become more familiar to audiences, and as a result, less scary. The idea behind the new film was to delve deeper into Michael's backstory and add "new life" to the character. Michael's mask was given its own story, to provide an explanation as to why he wears it, instead of having the character simply steal a random mask from a hardware store, as in the original film. Zombie explained that he wanted Michael to be true to what a psychopath really is, and wanted the mask to be a way for Michael to hide. He also wanted the young Michael to have charisma, which would be projected onto the adult Michael. In addition, he decided that Michael's motives for returning to Haddonfield would be more ambiguous, explaining, "Was he trying to kill Laurie, or just find her because he loves her?" In all honesty I do think Zombie achieved what he set out to but after seeing it I think the character worked originally due to all of the unanswered questions. The greatest weapon any horror villain has is his mystery. Zombie also made a point that Michael would NOT be able to drive a car in his version. This kind of lost me, as to this point he was the only masked killer who did drive and I always thought it was hilarious when he did. The new Michael Myers was a different villain, he was hard to get used to but on retrospect I quite liked him. Tyler Mane is cool, I’ve met him a few times now and he is probably my favorite of all the shapes. I think re-boot fatigue really hurt 2007’s Halloween because in all honesty, it was the better of all the ‘re-imagend’ films the 00s were so full of. Unsurprisingly, the film begins in Haddonfield, on Halloween. Having already exhibited signs of psychopathic tendencies, ten-year-old Michael Myers (Daeg Faerch) murders a school bully his older sister Judith, her boyfriend Steve, and his mother's boyfriend Ronnie (William Forsythe). Only his baby sister, Angel Myers, is spared. After one of the longest trials in the state's history, Michael is found guilty of first-degree murder and sent to Smith's Grove Sanitarium under the care of child psychologist Dr. Samuel Loomis (Malcolm McDowell). Michael initially cooperates with Loomis, claiming no memory of the killings, and his mother Deborah (Sheri Moon Zombie), visits him regularly. Over the following year, Michael becomes fixated on papier-mâché masks and withdraws from everyone around him, even his mother. When Michael kills a nurse as Deborah is leaving from one of her visits, she is unable to handle the situation and commits suicide. For the next fifteen years, Michael (Tyler Mane) continues making masks and not speaking to anyone. Loomis, having continued to treat Michael over the years, decides to move on and closes Michael's case. Later, Michael escapes from Smith's Grove, killing the sanitarium employees in the process. He kills a truck driver for his clothes, and makes his way back to Haddonfield. On Halloween, Michael arrives at his now-abandoned childhood home, where he recovers the kitchen knife and Halloween mask he stored under the floorboards the night he killed his sister. Meanwhile, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) and her friends Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) and Lynda Van Der Klok (Kristina Klebe) prepare for Halloween. Throughout the day, Laurie witnesses Michael watching her from a distance. Later that night, Laurie goes over to babysit Tommy Doyle (Skyler Gisondo). Meanwhile, Lynda meets up with her boyfriend Bob Simms (Nick Mennell) at Michael's abandoned home. Michael appears, murders them, and then heads to the Strode home, where he murders Laurie's parents, Mason (Pat Skipper) and Cynthia (Dee Wallace). Dr. Loomis, having been alerted of Michael's escape, arrives in Haddonfield looking for Michael. After obtaining a handgun, Loomis attempts to warn Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Brad Dourif) that Michael has returned to Haddonfield. Loomis and Brackett head to the Strode home, with Brackett explaining along the way that Laurie is really Michael's baby sister, having been adopted by the Strodes following their mother's suicide. Meanwhile, Annie convinces Laurie to babysit Lindsey Wallace (Jenny Gregg Stewart) so that she can meet with her boyfriend Paul (Max Van Ville). Annie and Paul return to the Wallace home and have sex; Michael kills Paul and attacks Annie. Bringing Lindsey home, Laurie finds Annie on the floor, badly hurt but still alive, and calls the police. Michael attacks Laurie and chases her back to the Doyle home. Loomis and Brackett hear the 911 call over the radio and head toward the Wallace residence. Michael kidnaps Laurie and takes her back to their old home. He tries to show Laurie that she is his sister, presenting a picture of them with their mother. Unable to understand, Laurie stabs Michael before escaping the house; Michael chases her, but Loomis arrives and shoots him. Recovering, Michael recaptures Laurie before she can leave and heads back to the house. Loomis again intervenes, but Michael subdues him. Laurie takes Loomis' gun and runs upstairs, but Michael corners her on a balcony and charges her head-on, knocking both of them over the railing. Laurie finds herself on top of an unconscious Michael. Aiming Loomis' gun at his face, she fires just as Michael awakens. It’s not exactly a million miles away from just about every other horror franchise plot, in fact, it’s about as simple as it gets. I quite liked the character development side of the story but what I hate about it is that this is what I refer to as Heavy metal horror. I like my horror films to be creepy but this film is far more in your face and a little too brutal. Before I was scared of Michael Myers, now, much like the band Slipknot, I just see him as a guy stomping around in a mask. They should have killed Laurie or something to make it different, it’s not all bad but I don’t think Zombie ‘made it his own’ as much as Carpenter suggested. The Brad Dourif and Malcolm McDowell team-up was pretty sweet though.

Halloween II
Dir: Rob Zombie
2009
*
I tried to be as positive about Rob Zombie’s 2007 remake of Halloween but it really didn’t deserve a sequel. I think he has a great eye for visuals but he got the tone wrong and his story left a lot to be desired. The 2009 follow up is nothing short of atrocious. It is possibly one of the worst films I have ever seen. There are plenty of terrible horror films out there, the ones I generally hate the most are the ones that have had no money spent on them but they have amazing posters. The fraudulent horrors if you will. They are usually made by studios who spend half their time making horror films and the other making Christmas films – occasionally delving into the talking puppy genre. You can see them coming a mile away and you only have yourself to blame for getting hooked in. Halloween II on the other hand had some money behind it and a big studio. There were few aspects of the first film that warranted a sequel but I understand it was left with unanswered questions, so there were a few who wanted to know what happened next and the franchise itself would always attract the hardcore fans but I have no idea what it was about Zombie’s 2009 script that made the studio think this would make a good film. It is beyond awful. Much like the original Halloween, the second film follows where the last one left off. In a flashback, Deborah Myers (Sheri Moon Zombie) visits her son, a young Michael Myers (Chase Wright Vanek), at Smith's Grove Sanitarium. She gives him a white horse statuette as a gift. Michael says that the horse reminds him of a dream he had of Deborah's ghost, all dressed in white and telling him she was going to bring him home. Moving ahead fifteen years, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton) is wandering around in shock after having shot an adult Michael (Tyler Mane) as seen at the end of the last film. Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Brad Dourif) finds Laurie and takes her to the emergency room. Meanwhile, the paramedics pick up Annie Brackett (Danielle Harris) and Michael's psychiatrist Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), who are still alive after being attacked by Michael, and take them to the hospital. Michael’s body is taken in another ambulance by EMTs Gary Scott (Richard Brake) and Alan Hooks (Dayton Callie). While Hooks and Scott converse, the ambulance crashes into a cow. Hooks dies in the crash and Michael awakens and decapitates a disoriented Scott. Fast-forward two years after the events of the first film, Laurie is now living with the Bracketts. Michael has been missing since last Halloween and is presumed dead, while Laurie has been having recurring nightmares about the event. While Laurie deals with her trauma through therapy, Dr. Loomis has chosen to turn the event into an opportunity to write another book. Elsewhere, Michael, who is still alive, has been having visions of his mother's ghost and a younger version of himself, who instruct him that it is time to bring Laurie home, so he sets off for Haddonfield. As Michael travels to Haddonfield, Laurie begins having hallucinations that mirror Michael's, which involves Deborah's ghost and a young Michael in a clown costume. Her hallucinations also begin to include her acting out Michael's murders. Meanwhile, Loomis goes on tour to promote his new book, only to be criticized by the public, who blame him for Michael's actions and for exploiting the deaths of Michael's victims. When Loomis' book is released, Laurie discovers that she is really Angel Myers, Michael's long-lost sister. She goes to a Halloween party with Mya (Brea Grant) and Harley (Angela Trimbur) to escape how she is feeling. Michael appears at the party and kills Harley, then goes to the Brackett house and fatally wounds Annie. When Laurie and Mya return to the house, they find Annie, who dies in Laurie's arms. Michael kills Mya and then comes after Laurie, who manages to escape. Sheriff Brackett arrives home and finds his daughter dead. Laurie flags down a car, but Michael kills the driver and flips the car over with Laurie still inside. Michael then takes the unconscious Laurie to an abandoned shed. The police discover Michael's location and surround the shed. Loomis arrives and goes inside to try to reason with Michael. Inside, he finds Laurie, who is hallucinating a younger Michael holding her down, and tries telling her that no one is restraining her. Just then, Deborah instructs the older Michael that it is time to go home; Michael attacks Loomis and kills him. Stepping in front of a window while holding Loomis' body, Michael is shot twice by Sheriff Brackett, and falls into the spikes of some farming equipment. Apparently released from her visions, Laurie walks over and tells Michael she loves him, then stabs him repeatedly. The shed door opens and Laurie walks out, wearing Michael's mask. Later, Laurie sits in isolation in a psychiatric ward, grinning at a vision of Deborah. Producer Malek Akkad, who had produced every Halloween film since the fourth installment, told Zombie "'Don't feel hindered by any of the rules we've had in the past. I want this to be your vision and I want you to express that vision." – so Zombie ignored him and made a fairly flat remake that felt like every Halloween film made, only worse. Zombie decided to focus more on the connection between Laurie and Michael, and the idea that they share similar psychological problems. He wanted the sequel to be more realistic and more violent than its 2007 predecessor. He also wanted to show the connection between Laurie and Michael, and provide a glimpse into each character's psyche. This is handled badly, with no character ever convincing us of their actions. When it came time to provide a musical score, Zombie had trouble finding a place to include John Carpenter's original Halloween theme music. Although Carpenter's theme was used throughout Zombie's remake, the theme was only included in the final shot of the sequel. For me this tells you everything you need to know about the film. There is no mystery, no creeping and no terror. Myers is just a giant mass-murderer on a killing mission. It’s a boring and unoriginal horror that ends up being more splatter than slasher. Zombie is clueless to the rule that what you don’t see is always far more scary. He doesn’t allow the audience to use their own imagination because he hasn’t got one himself. I can’t help but think the nonsense regarding Michael’s mother was written just as an excuse to feature his wife once more. I hated Laurie Strode and Dr. Loomis in this version and I wasn’t at all scared by Michael. Brad Dourif’s performance and the cameo by Margot Kidder were the only redeeming features of this god-awful film. The Weird Al Yankovic scene is painful to watch. The joke here is that Rob Zombie originally stated he would never do a sequel to Halloween, until the studio decided to make it. Then he signed on to write and direct, because he didn't want someone to ruin his vision. Ha! He pretty much killed the franchise and made the worst Halloween film of the series – which at this point is quite an achievement.