Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Michelle Williams, Adam Arkin, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, Janet Leigh, LL Cool J.
Director: Steve Miner.
I dislike LL Cool J. In everything he's ever done. As such, I feel like I may have had a knee-jerk reaction to this post-Scream, Kevin Williamson-penned(which are two attributes that really never make me feel very good about life) reboot of the Halloween franchise, and may not have given it a fair shake. So, here I am trying to do exactly that.
The commercial telling me to "stay tuned after the feature" for an exclusive look at a Creed music video also does not fill me with confidence.
So, this is where the Laurie Strode narrative picks back up. After being written out of the original franchise storyline (or the Loomis narrative, as I call it), Jamie Lee Curtis makes a return to the franchise as Laurie. The unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on your general views of the sequels) part is that in order for Laurie to return-you may remember that part four explicitly states that Laurie was killed in a car wreck-they had to completely retcon the previous story out in it's entirety. This means that, while we can pretend that The Curse of Michael Myers didn't happen, all of Loomis' extended story is gone, only existing in an alternate reality with Jamie Lloyd.
Well, there's a pre-fame Joeseph Gordan-Levitt performing some awkward humor. A lot of movies never really get teens right, either by making them just small adults (which is probably closer to the reality) or obnoxious, jargon-spewing morons. Anyway, the scene isn't entirely wasted-visual puns of hockey-playing teen having an ice skate stuck in his face, because Michael understands irony-we at least get a basic plot point: Loomis's nurse is Michael's first target so he can gain access to information about Laurie's whereabouts.
What a coincidence: I, too, have a framed photo of Josh Hartnett on my desk.
While I've never forgotten that this was Josh Hartnett's debut film, it's another of those things that people like to bring up (like Paul Rudd in part 6), I forgot how generally impressed I was with him in it. I've always liked Hartnett, really, and always found it a little unfortunate that he really never got to be the prestige actor I think he was probably capable of.being. Not that he was unsuccessful as an actor, he just kind of stuck to genre work, and also got success FROM genre work (Rudd, for example, did not get famous off of part 6, but Hartnett got there from this film and The Faculty (which I should do for the blog at some point and is a great case of "great cast, mediocre film") which is impressive itself.
LL Cool J I am less impressed with. He's not an actor. I promise not to spend half this blog bitching about him, though.
While there isn't much of a real story happening, there is enough characterization to keep things afloat. Laurie's mental health and contentious relationship with her son gives enough strong moments of drama. Williamson's script is still way too reference heavy-sometimes to clever results, but sometimes not so much-with at least three references to Psycho in the first thirty minutes alone and by that I mean people actually mentioning the film, not any stylistic or story beat choices. Williamson does have a way with class room dialogue: the bit of Michelle Williams giving her (admittedly accurate and intelligent) analysis of Victor Frankenstein (didn't need the Young Frankenstein reference, even if it was cute) with it having actual greater meaning to Laurie. It's a smart scene.
I think too much time was spent on the "How will Michael get past the gate" problem. I'm fairly certain Michael probably could have climbed over the wall faster and easier than his labor-heavy trickery of getting LL Cool J to open the gate. But, whatever, he's in and hopefully we can move forward with the killing.
I go back and forth on the whole "Laurie is a pill-popping, functional alcoholic" thing. On one hand there is an element of truth to it-if you underwent significant trauma in 1979 that would probably be a thing, psychiatric treatment didn't really get particularly advanced or overtly effective until the late eighties- on the other I feel like it takes an something away from Laurie as a survivor. But, to be fair, the movie even kind of addressed it in the Frankenstein discussion: Laurie didn't actually confront Michael when attacked. She was saved by Loomis and never did really look him in the eye. Laurie was kind of pre-"final girl" mentality: she did fight back, but the absolute terror of that night would have left a considerable mark on a Seventeen year old.
The movie makes the leap to Michael caring about the age of Seventeen...I guess that's as good an answer as any for the "why now" conundrum. The concept of Josh Hartnett being the actual target is also not bad. It's even somewhat progressive. A lot of this movie is, actually: Laurie being an actual authority figure qualifies it, too: she may not be entirely functional, in fact she's kind of terrorized, but she is in a position of authority. Technically this need not be a reboot: nothing is mentioned that couldn't have still occurred. Laurie says she faked her death...you would just have to accept that our heroine abandoned a Daughter in the process. That'd be tough to swallow and still find her an acceptably identifiable hero, but it's there if you want to go with it.
Still can't escape some of the weaknesses of the slasher sub-genre, though: two kids are dead and I really don't know anything about them except Josh likes them...so their deaths are essentially meaningless and weren't terribly impressive or stylish. Michael just stabbed them. Meh.
There's something unsettling and even vaguely racist about LL Cool J getting shot by Laurie's boyfriend...maybe not so much at the time, but watching it today it's weird. White man shoots at vague shape in the dark, thinking it to be an assailant, and it's a black man. Yikes. He lives for some reason (allegedly due to a script change as a result of LL Cool J having a specific clause in his contract that he doesn't die in movies, also resulting in his surviving Deep Blue Sea and Mindhunters) but it's still weird. I'm not even sure why his character exists in it at all, really.
It was something of a messy second act (so many movies have that problem) but we've gotten to what we really came for: Laurie gets an axe and calls Michael out as the familiar Carpenter theme plays. The ensuring chase is a little awkward and isn't terribly thrilling...maybe because there isn't much suspense or adequate build-up. Given that the whole thing results in Laurie kidnapping Michael's seemingly death body and driving it away at gunpoint, I think the idea is that this is supposed to be maybe/kinda/sorta be a character study? It's certainly a possible interpretation, but I'm not sure I entirely buy into it.
The upcoming terrible sequel ultimately makes the suggestion that the Michael that she pins into a tree and beheads was actually an orderly or whatever that he had planted...this makes no sense whatsoever since we can see his eyes and there is no fear here whatsoever. But, whatever.
Final Thoughts: It's jumbled and messy like so many other nineties horror flicks...the build-up is mostly non-existent beyond some characterization for Laurie and her son, and even that finds itself never expanded on or resolved, and is mostly entirely dropped. There's no suspense, most of the deaths are random and committed on characters we don't know or care about, and the ending is a rushed dash to the credits with little meaning. It all boils down to one singular purpose: to have Jamie Lee Curtis in a Halloween movie again.
Final rating: Two and a Half Stars.
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