The Halloween franchise is often derided for its sequels, but apart from the two Rob Zombie abominations and the hopeless eighth entry (Resurrection), the films are decent enough for low-budget horrors of their times. So, two decades on from the acceptable Halloween H20: 20 Years Later we get this new entry which posits itself as a direct sequel to the original 1978 classic (ignoring all the other sequels), is released in cinemas in the actual Halloween month of October and - to this forty-year-long fan - is actually good. There is plenty of fan-pleasing going on, referencing various movies in the franchise in large and subtle ways, but with the return of Jamie Lee Curtis in this iconic role and owning the screen in every scene, excellent use of old and new score and making Michael a brutal killing force again, the 2018 Halloween is in many ways a bold and surprisingly elegant horror film that is intent on prioritising story and character effectively. There is a real determination to put an actual drama on the screen as opposed to a conventional teen-stalk-and-slash (although the attacks and gore are full-on), and some real cinematic ambition is evident, from the extended controlled use of near-silence that creates wonderful tension in some scenes, to the juxtaposition of the orange-hued warmth of Halloween with a terrific tracking shot of Michael on a neighbourhood killing spree. Admittedly, this film does not come close to the magnificent purity of Carpenter's original, and with three generations of Strode women jostling for story time the daughter and granddaughter could do with a little more development, but at the end of the day it is always about Laurie vs Michael, and overall this is an unusually well-written, ambitious, successful and enjoyable late-franchise horror film.
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