Halloween Ends

It is a trilogy, so that means it is supposed to end, conclusively. Of course, in horror, they have a habit of turning into quartets and quintets, as in the case of Scream. In this case, the Halloween rights will revert from Blumhouse to Malek Akkad, the son of the original producer, Moustapha Al Akkad, following the completion of David Gordon Green’s retconned trilogy. Laurie Strode thought she finally trapped Michael Myers in Halloween (2018), but the bogeyman escaped to take his revenge on the entire town of Haddonfield in Halloween Kills. Four years later, Strode and her granddaughter Allyson Nelson are still wondering if and when Myers will return to kill again, which of course he does in Green’s Halloween Ends, releasing today in theaters and on Peacock.

Myers’ last Halloween rampage was a brutal one. Amongst his victims was Strode’s daughter Karen Nelson. Since then, Strode has relaxed a little, finding therapeutic value in writing her memoirs. She is still a bit of an outcast, so she has sympathy for Corey Cunningham, who accidentally killed the bratty kid he was babysitting on a non-Michael Myers Halloween a few years earlier, during the unsatisfying prologue.

Nelson is also interested in the moody Cunningham, but their dating attempts constantly lead to confrontations with Haddonfield’s bullies. After one particularly nasty beating, the town’s most notorious outsider takes Cunningham under his wing. Soon, he and Myers are hunting together, but he still pursues a relationship with Nelson, even though Strode can sense he is under Myers’ influence.

Compared to the previous films in Green’s Halloween trilogy, Ends is a major disappointment. Whereas the first two films were big, grandly chaotic, and intensely exhausting, the new film just feels small. Kills graphically depicted the way Myers’ evil precipitates the entire social breakdown of Haddonfield. End half-heartedly tosses around themes of trauma and recovery, but it is more of an afterthought than a driving concern. For franchise fans, Cunningham also takes far too much screen-time away from Myers.

Halloween (2018)—Because It’s Halloween (2020)

Don't you wish Star Wars would follow Michael Myers’ example? The franchise’s best received film since the 1978 original simply retconned away every other sequel with a casual conversation. Was Laurie Strode actually Myers’ sister? Nope, that was just the stuff of fake news and urban legends. Strode has spent her life waiting for Myers to take another stab at her and he finally does in David Gordon Green’s Halloween (2018), a Blumhouse production, which screens at the IPIC Fort Lee, the closest thing to a Manhattan theater these days.

Strode always knew Myers would come back, so in the forty since his initial rampage through Haddonfield, she raised her daughter survivalist-style, so she would be prepared to defend herself, much like Sarah Connor did in Terminator 2. Karen Strode (now Nelson) always resented her mother’s crazy paranoid upbringing, just like John Connor, but she tries to understand how her mother was affected by the trauma of 1978.

Proving the unfailing stupidity of bureaucrats, someone schedules Myers’ long anticipated transfer from the late Dr. Loomis’s asylum to a maximum-security prison on the day of Halloween. Of course, Myers escapes, leaving a trail of bodies behind him. However, Strode has made full use of her time to prepare for him. Frankly, she doesn’t have much use for the cops, including veteran Deputy Hawkins, who was there that fateful night with Dr. Loomis. She will take care of Myers herself, as soon as her family is safely under guard, hopefully including her unaccounted for granddaughter, Allyson.

Rob Zombie, you’ve been dunked on. Green wiped away all the sequels and reboots (except maybe the in-name-only Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which has always been the oddball outlier)—and nobody mourns for them. Instead, Green and his co-screenwriters Jeff Bradley and Danny McBride go back to what made the original so effective. They make Haddonfield and its homes feel like real places, so Myers’ brutality has a much more visceral impact as a result. In addition, there are hat-tips (including an audio recording of Donald Pleasence’s Dr. Loomis), echoes, and parallels of the classic first film that fans will appreciate.

The defiance and resilience of Jamie Lee Curtis’s portrayal of Strode is another major payoff for the franchise faithful. She is the first to admit she made mistakes, but it is clear she refuses to be a “victim.” Honestly, this film makes a compelling case for 2^nd Amendment rights (despite an early firearm mishap that really doesn’t ring true). Obviously, waiting for the cops when stalked by hulking psycho killer is not a winning strategy.

Knives Out: Daniel Craig Investigates Famous Suspects

If a suspicious character is not played by someone famous, chances are that person is not the murderer. That is why Agatha Christie movies used to have little pictures of the cast running along the bottom of their lobby posters. It showed off how many suspects there were. Winking homage is paid to those films in Rian Johnson’s Knives Out, which opens today nationwide.

Johnson’s screenplay is all about its twists, so some caginess is in order, to prevent spoilers. It is safe to say Harlan Thrombey, a celebrated mystery novelist and patriarch of a wildly dysfunctional and elitist family is about to die a premature death. Marta Cabrera, his private nurse is probably the only one who truly mourns him. The cops assume it is an open-and-shut case, but Benoit Blanc, an eccentric Southern gentleman private detective has reason to suspect otherwise. An unknown client hired his services to investigate, which is rather suspicious in itself.

Much to her surprise, Cabrera finds herself pressed into service as Blanc’s Watson. Of course, it becomes increasingly awkward for her, because she harbors her own secrets. Needless to say, everything is not as it seems.

There is quite a bit of clever misdirection going on throughout the film. It would be no fair telling, but rest assured the big reveals are all quite satisfying. The knowing humor is also mostly rather sly, but there are times when the scoldy class warfare messaging should have been throttled down. This is supposed to be larky fun, not a Theodore Dreiser adaptation.

Fortunately, Daniel Craig always keeps things snappy when he is on-screen, delighting viewers with Blanc’s impossibly lazy drawl. Honestly, that accent deserves some kind of award. It is also great fun watching him effortless shift from genteel charm to gleeful cunning.

Frankly, it is rather impressive that Ana de Armas can keep up Craig and the rest of the colorful ensemble as the almost fatally nice Cabrera. Of course, only Blanc can withstand the withering attitude Jamie Lee Curtis projects as the tartly cynical eldest daughter, Linda Drysdale. She is a totally believable chip off the block that is Christopher Plummer’s uber-yankee Thrombey (and really ought to have more screen time, but she makes the most of what she gets). Likewise, Plummer has the appropriate lordly presence, but he has some surprisingly engaging humanizing moments with De Armas.

Yet, Don Johnson might just score the biggest laughs as the venal and pretentious son-in-law, Richard Drysdale. Honestly, Johnson has yet to get the credit he deserves for his comedic chops (check out his razor-sharp cornpone turn in Cold in July, if you doubt it).

John Carpenter’s Halloween

Two films released in the late 1970s had a disproportionate influence on the movie business in the 1980s. Stars Wars was one. This is the other. It inspired an army of imitators, a platoon of inferior sequels, and what is still considered the most violent Atari game ever. Its place in history has been codified by its selection for the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry—and its still scary. John Carpenter’s Halloween screens tonight in New York and probably somewhere near you, because its Halloween.

For some reason, all the parents in Haddonfield, IL always choose to enjoy a date night on Halloween, leaving their children in the care of sitters. Ordinarily, that means good money for Laurie Strode and her friends, but this year they will be stalked by a monstrous psychopath who has just escape from a criminal insane asylum. You know his name: Michael Myers. You also recognize his iconic William Shatner mask.

Logically, Myers should not be such a superman, since he has sat silently in an apparent catatonic state since murdering his older sister on a fateful Halloween at the tender age of six. Unfortunately, there is nothing logical about pure, unalloyed evil. Dr. Samuel Loomis understands that. He is a headshrinker with a license to practice and to carry, the latter because Myers so profoundly freaks him out. He will follow Myers back to his old hometown of Haddonfield, where the escaped patient will become obsessed with Strode.

Even in 1978, the screenplay, co-written by Carpenter and his producing partner Debra Hill, was not exactly revolutionary, but the way the elements combined was like lightning in a bottle. First and foremost, it is impossible to overstate how much Carpenter’s music adds to the overall vibe of mounting fear. It is not just the instantly recognizable opening theme. The entire soundtrack potently enhances the mood and worms its way into your ear.

Halloween also establishes the signature look of Carpenter’s films, thanks to Dean Cundey’s soft yet sinister lensing. In many ways, Halloween resembles an evil Norman Rockwell painting. Frankly, it is weird that there haven’t regular Cundey retrospectives, since he also shot films like The Thing, Jurassic Park, Psycho II, and the Back to the Future trilogy.

John Carpenter’s The Fog

It is odd John Carpenter’s immediate follow-up to Halloween does not hold higher esteem in horror fans’ hearts, because it co-stars Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Janet Leigh. They all have their share of screaming to do, yet their respective characters are pretty proactive, especially by the standards of early 1980s horror. This is indeed the perfect time to reconsider Carpenter’s The Fog (trailer here) when it opens in its 4K restored glory this Friday at the Metrograph.

One hundred years ago, the seaside Northern California town of Antonio Bay was founded. Not so coincidentally, there was also a notorious shipwreck just off the coast around that time. Mr. Machen, the town’s story-teller relates the sad tale of how the Elizabeth Dane was lured into the rocky shoals during an unusually foggy night, but the truth is even worse.

Through some sort of supernatural fluke, Father Malone discovers his great grandfather, who was also the town minister, played a role in those events one hundred years ago. It so shakes him, he refuses to give the benediction at the town’s centennial celebration, organized by busybody Kathy Williams. She is usually best when in full multi-tasking mode, but Williams is concerned her fisherman husband has not returned to port. Of course, he is one of the first victims of the fog—and the angry spirits from the Elizabeth Dane that travel within it.

Radio DJ Stevie Wayne spends most of her time in her lighthouse broadcasting studio, but she is one of the first townsfolk to figure out the fog for what it is. Fisherman Nick Castle and Elizabeth Solley the pretty hitchhiker he recently picked up also realize something sinister is afoot when they discover the missing trawler and the grizzly remains of one of the crew. Alas, poor Castle lost a brother, but Solley should more than make up for it.

It is amazing how lean and effective The Fog is at a whisker under 90 minutes, yet Carpenter and his co-screenwriter producer Debra Hill still invest in considerable character development early on. That effort pays dividends later, because we come to care about Wayne, Solley, and Castle. In fact, to a large extent, the film is shaped by the relationship brewing between Solley and Castle, as well as Wayne’s telephone flirtation with weather service meteorologist Dan O’Bannon (one of several in-joke references to former Carpenter collaborators, in this case his co-screenwriter and effects designer on Dark Star).

The Fog is wonderfully atmospheric (and notably bloodless). It totally feels like a John Carpenter film, thanks to the director’s characteristically eerie score and the reliably evocative lensing of his longtime cinematographer, Dean Cundey (unfortunately both were missing from the disappointing The Ward). Frankly, the notion of giving it the crisp 4K treatment is somewhat debatable—after all, it’s called The Fog.

Barbeau is absolutely terrific as Wayne. She constantly kicks up the film’s energy level, even though most of her scenes were filmed alone. Curtis is in her scream queen prime, which means Solley is extremely likable and attractive. Leigh is also quite a force of nature playing Williams, who is a real character with important plot point business (rather than an excuse to get mother and daughter in the same film). It is a delight to see John Houseman chew the scenery as old Machen, but the real surprise is how good Tom Atkins is as Castle. He would become a regular supporting player in the films of Carpenter and George Romero, but his humorous light banter with Curtis suggests he really should have had more leading man opportunities.

Say what you will about Antonio Bay, but Wayne’s KAB-FM was one hip radio station. Primarily, she spun jazz, because it was cheaper to license. As a result, there are a lot of groovy sound library cuts to be heard in the background, including tracks composed by David Lindup and Robert Cornford (both of whom were known for working with Johnny Dankworth). The basic premise is pretty ridiculous, but Carpenter’s tight execution and his totally committed, first-class cast convincingly sells it every step of the way. Very highly recommended for horror fans, The Fog opens this Friday (10/26) in New York, at the Metrograph.