The original Halloween was a low-budget thriller that recognized there was a time and place for the violence and that less is more. This version of Halloween has no sense of such things, instead believing that violence, grim and unrelenting, is all that it takes. Torture porn. The laughable attempts at character building do little except establish a white trash world where sadism is the norm and all the authority figures -- psychiatrists, school principals, mother and father figures -- are so corrupted, their only interest is themselves.
By comparison, Michael Myers seems almost normal, but that's like saying Stalin by comparison to Hitler seems almost normal. The deck is stacked way too much in favor of any ugly world in which only ugliness can flourish. So when you watch Halloween -- unless you get off on the ugliness and brutality -- you have nothing to root for and, therefore, nothing to care about. Michael Myers isn't Frankenstein's monster. In this movie, he's barely Michael Myers.
Instead, he's merely an excuse for the carnage. Even Sam Loomis is a shell of the character in the first movie, a venal, twitchy, and ultimately ineffective twerp of a man. Casting Malcolm McDowell in the role didn't help, though given he once played H. G. Wells with a high degree of sympathy, it's sad he musters nothing here.
This version of Halloween more or less follows the same plot as the original, only there are more victims and a lot more blood. The dialogue is often inane, and the scenes come across more like hard rock music videos with no sense of anything but the moment. In fact, you could watch each scene separately and never feel like the lack of something resembling a story matters. Laurie Strode is a whiny know-it-all Millennial, so you'll be rooting for Michael Myers.
By comparison, Michael Myers seems almost normal, but that's like saying Stalin by comparison to Hitler seems almost normal. The deck is stacked way too much in favor of any ugly world in which only ugliness can flourish. So when you watch Halloween -- unless you get off on the ugliness and brutality -- you have nothing to root for and, therefore, nothing to care about. Michael Myers isn't Frankenstein's monster. In this movie, he's barely Michael Myers.
Instead, he's merely an excuse for the carnage. Even Sam Loomis is a shell of the character in the first movie, a venal, twitchy, and ultimately ineffective twerp of a man. Casting Malcolm McDowell in the role didn't help, though given he once played H. G. Wells with a high degree of sympathy, it's sad he musters nothing here.
This version of Halloween more or less follows the same plot as the original, only there are more victims and a lot more blood. The dialogue is often inane, and the scenes come across more like hard rock music videos with no sense of anything but the moment. In fact, you could watch each scene separately and never feel like the lack of something resembling a story matters. Laurie Strode is a whiny know-it-all Millennial, so you'll be rooting for Michael Myers.