pumpkin person rating: 6/10

Went to see this last night.  Unlike Hellfest which I saw with a group of coworkers, I went to see this film alone so I wouldn’t be disturbed.  Unfortunately the 7 pm showing was so packed with white people that I couldn’t get a seat that was both in the back of the theater, and in the middle of the theater, and with no people sitting near me.

I decided to watch the 1978 Halloween at 7 pm (even though I’ve seen it so many times as a kid I still have virtually every word of dialogue memorized) since I’ve never seen it in a theater and then reserved myself a great seat for the 10:55 pm showing of Halloween 2018.

But as more and more people entered the building, I worried even at the later hour I’d be crowded between other viewers which would be problematic because I needed the seat beside me for popcorn and snacks.

One nice thing were the reclining chairs which I figured out how to use immediately, even as most others in the theater struggled.

The only thing I loved about the movie was the performance of Jamie Lee Curtis and the look of Michael Myers.  I loved the way he looked with the mask on.

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And I was freaked out by the way he looked with the mask off.  Of course we never completely see him with the mask off, but we do view just enough to see that after 40 years in the mental hospital, Michael is old and grey, yet very tall, robust, strong, and bearded.

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Just the thought of someone who looks like that spending 55 years in a mental hospital and not speaking a word in all that time, only to escape and brutally kill people is incredibly creepy.

The marketing for this film made much of the fact that they were bringing back Nick Castle who played masked Michael Myers in the first film but apparently that was just a way to lure the hardcore white fan boys to the theater, and in reality,  James Jude Courtney played Myers for 99% of this film and Castle was just a consultant with a brief cameo.  I assume that at 5’10” and 170 lbs, Castle is just not big enough to scare audiences in 2018, so they replaced him with the 6’3″ 210 lb Courtney.

But other than nailing the physical appearance of Myers and his mask, this film was mediocre.  The script by  David Gordon Green , Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBride.was poorly organized with too many unneeded characters and subplots, and the whole thing felt rushed and poorly paced, and the ending was just lame.  I don’t think most of these guys have much experience making horror, but the genre gets so little respect that if you’ve made a good film of ANY kind, it’s assumed you can make a good horror film.

Despite their mediocrity, it looks like Halloween 2018 will be a box office smash thanks to great marketing, gushing critics, the star-power of Jamie Lee Curtis, and the non-discerning public, and so we’ll probably get a sequel by the same film makers.

However I did find one critic on the internet (Cody Leach) smart enough to see this film for the disappointment it was.