2018s Halloween Digs into the Poisonous Price of Righteous Female Anger

Theres something undeniably powerful about the original Halloween—a story so compelling that its inspired no fewer than nine sequels and reboots over the past four decades. The franchise has had its hits and misses since it began in 1978 as filmmakers as varied as Bad Boys director Rick Rosenthal and heavy metal musician Rob Zombie attempted to recapture the unsettling magic of John Carpenter and Debra Hills tale of the night teen babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was stalked by masked, escaped mental patient Michael Myers (Nick Castle).

But none of them have gotten quite so near the mark as director David Gordon Green and his co-screenwriters Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, the team behind what they call a “re-imagining” of the first film. As the fall leaves crunch once again under Curtis and Castles feet, Carpenters unforgettable score kicks in, and 2018s Halloween delivers a surprisingly poignant tale of inherited female trauma that both sheds new light on the sexual politics of the first film and pays nimble homage to the October night that started it all.

This new version skips right over the plots of the various sequels—in which Curtiss character died multiple times and was replaced by a daughter called Jamie—to find Laurie alive and very unwell, with a different daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), who wants nothing to do with her. Even Lauries curious and sympathetic granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) is put off by her grandmothers paranoid-seeming insistence that even four decades later, their family is not safe from the long-incarcerated Michael Myers (Castle, reprising his role for the first time since the original). Lauries fear is justified, of course, and as a pair of true crime podcasters (Jefferson Hall and Rhian Rees) use the fortieth anniversary of the first Myers spree as an excuse to dig into the case, the killer is once again set loose on Halloween night.

“Re-imagining” is the ideal way to describe a screenplay that repeats much of the original movie beat for beat, including a serendipitous car crash, gas station carnage, a mysterious sheet-draped figure, an unsuspecting blonde babysitter, and an overly-invested psychiatrist. Curtis snarkily refers to Dr. Ranbir Sartain (Haluk Bilginer) as “the new Loomis”—an overt tip of the cap to the late Donald Pleasances work in the franchise. Some of these nods to the original film get borderline cutesy, including a reenactment of the first films famous disappearing act.

But with every reference, Halloween 2018 adds a little twist and spin—from gender-flipping exchanges to, even more cleverly, reversing the Laurie and Myers roles. The film makes this intention plain with some dialogue about the blurring, over time, between victim and victimizer. But it didnt need to make the message that explicit; the impact of long-term trauma has turned Laurie from fresh-faced victim to an alienating monster in her own right. Still, shes a monster who deserves our empathy.

In 1978, Halloween creaked open the door for decades of slasher films that saw mostly male-wielded weapons slice into endless amounts of young female flesh. Since then, many takes on the genre have challenged the notion that womens bodies alone should be offered up again and again to serve the insatiable appetites of horror fans. But what sometimes gets lost in the Halloween legacy is the original films subtle commentary on what happens when rational female fears are dismissed. Teenage Laurie Strode knows she is being stalked by someone or something even before the horrors of that Halloween night, but she is gaslit by her girlfriends into believing shes overreacting to the threat. The true tragedy of the 1978 film is that these girls might have been safe if they had worked together.

Fast-forward several decades, and even though she has the literal scars to back them up, Laurie is told once again that her fears are hysterical and over-blown—this time, by her own female progeny. Lauries recollection of the violence perpetrated against her is undermined, invoking the cruel dismissals heaped on countless women who have come forward in the #MeToo era to allege misconduct against beloved celebrities, powerful politicians, and would-be Supreme Court justices. Laurie has also unintentionally passed her trauma down to her daughter Karen, turning this slasher flick into an unflinchingly woke tale about the unfairly poisonous price of justified female rage.

Where Halloween 2018 occasionally runs into trouble is in trying to blend that truly gripping emotional core with zippy, humorous interludes that smack of McBride and Fradleys previous collaborations on Your Highness and Vice-Principals. Sometimes the humor works—as with the irresistible Jibrail Nantambu, playing a wise-cracking, Calvin-esque member of the babysat. But other times, it jangles out of place. Halloween is at its strongest when it shines on Curtis, who is rarely in the mood for jokes.

As an iron-haired, gun-toting grandma, Curtis is far from the only 70s and 80s icon to be drafted back into a revered cult film role in this era of re-make mania. Theres something automatically empowering in this phenomenon—in simply seeing Carrie Fishers Leia, Curtiss Laurie, or, soon, Linda Hamiltons Sarah Connor grimly wield a blaster, knife, or shotgun. But what makes this return to Halloween feel especially resonant is the wide-reaching application of Michael Myers as an antagonist.

The Halloween franchise has faltered most egregiously in the past when it tried to explain Myers or, most foolishly of all, exist without him. So the 71-year-old Castle is a welcome presence, providing some eerie breathing and appearing in one key scene while stunt actor James Jude Courtney takes on the physical elements. We never see Myerss face, or hear his voice—much to the dismay of those meddling podcasters and the doctor, who recklessly seek to understand him. But as was the case in the original, both Myers actors are also credited as “The Shape.” The heavy, unrelenting clomp of his boots and the blank, ageless expression of his masked face make Myers, more than any other horror icon, an elemental and universal force of masculine violence.

In addition to reuniting Curtis, Castle, and Carpenter, another advantage Green had in making this version of Halloween is that, in a post-Stranger Things world, hes not at all required to distance himself from the old-fashioned vibe of the first movie. John Carpenter updated his original score for this outing, but not by much. And in this case, hewing close to the tone, look, and sound of the source material is a nostalgia-friendly advantage. Because of that, the updated sexual politics of this version stand in stark relief to those of the original.

Nowhere is that more evident than when original footage of a young Myers cutting up his sisters naked torso is briefly spliced into the new film—her blood-smeared, naked body looking very out of place in Laurie Strodes brave new world. In 2018, the women of Halloween wear baseball tees, mens suits, maternal sweaters, and, in Lauries case, a very iconic collared shirt as they band together as best as they can in the face of relentless male violence. This time around, its Myers who winds up being the vulnerable one.

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