Series: Halloween

The Halloween franchise had delivered some pretty strong films with four entries under it's belt already, so a fifth chapter should be promising and a natural move. Sadly, the fact of the matter is that Halloween 5 is a major disappointment. While it isn't without some merit (emphasis on some), the entire film is a feature-length missed opportunity of epic proportions. Characters we loved in previous installments are now rendered impossible to connect with, lapses in series continuity are impossible to ignore and the story eventually commits the ultimate cinematic sin: instead of thrilling, it just becomes unbearably boring.(read more...)

After Halloween III: Season of the Witch became a box-office disappointment and left fans bewildered over the absence of the series' main villain, Michael Myers, producer Moustapha Akkad decided to bring the character back for the next installment. The resulting movie is an attempt to recapture the original film's atmospheric feel and update it for a newer audience. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers is an entertaining film and one of the better in a long line of sequels, though it lacks the suspense that made the first Halloween so successful. (read more...)

It would be best to consider writer-director Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's Halloween as a separate entity from its progenitor, allowing Zombie's film the space to create its own identity in the annals of horror. Unfortunately, Zombie can't appear to let go of the original, filling his film with references, duplicated shots and sequences, even as he tries to forge his own version of the tale. The result is equal parts Rob Zombie, Rob Zombie emulating John Carpenter, and Rob Zombie attempting to "fix" John Carpenter, a list which runs in order from what works best (although hardly perfectly) to what doesn't work at all.
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Halloween is one of the most subtle and effective horror films ever made. Frightening and intriguing, it leaves a lot of questions to which we have very few answers, especially concerning the invulnerability of Michael Myers (or, more accurately, “The Shape,” as he is called in the credits). Halloween II is an attempt to explore these questions. Through camerawork and dialogue, the film analyzes the Shape as he continues to wreak havoc, picking up where the first film left off. Because this means we must focus more closely on a murderer whose horror comes primarily from our inability to see him clearly (or at all), Halloween II is not quite as scary as the first, but it does illuminate the nature of the Shape and thereby nature of evil. (read more...)

Upon watching Halloween III, I learned that I have spent most of my life believing a very inaccurate principle. Namely, I thought mankind came to some sort of agreement the word “sequel”. It surely didn’t seem like one of those words open to interpretation like, say, “God.” Yet Halloween III, considered by hundreds of people employed at the Motion Picture Association of America to be a sequel of Halloween, indeed failed in my definition. This brings me to the ultimate conundrum in horror movie reviewdom.
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It's a dark, autumn night. You're alone in the house, and the wind is playing all sorts of tricks on your mind. You hear a noise. Sitting bolt upright, you check for a presence. Nothing. And then, in the corner of your eye... SOMETHING! If there was nothing there, than it's more than likely that John Carpenter put it there.

Confused? Good. Let's move on.(read more...)

After the nicely thrilling H20, there was the faintest glimmer of hope that maybe the Halloween series had turned itself around (having long ago given up on the dream that Moustapha Akkad would stop making sequels). Alas, Resurrection is back to dismal and vaguely offensive crap. It's a derivative movie actively working to tarnish the memory of John Carpenter's original classic.(read more...)