HALLOWEEN (2018)

Apparently this is the best of the many Halloween sequels, in which case I shall give all the others a wide berth.  Because although it was kind of fun to catch up with the gang some four decades after the original, this film never reaches any great heights.

It is rather typical of the whole film that the two journalists we are introduced to at the start don't contribute anything to the subsequent plot, nor are their deaths particularly memorable.

The most shocking aspect of the film might be that Laurie Strode is now a grandmother, and her relationships with her daughter and granddaughter give the film some much needed emotional heft.

Inevitably their menfolk prove expendable, and the three women end up facing Michael Myers alone; the police, it hardly needs saying, don’t do much to help throughout.

The climax is not that exciting though decent enough but prior to this there's even less to get the pulses racing, it all feeling a bit formulaic.

There is one surprising plot development halfway into the running time, which sadly was snuffed out quite quickly.

Whoever scheduled Myers to be transported the night before Halloween deserves to lose their job for sure.  Disappointingly we don't see how he causes the bus to go off the road so that he can get away.  Maybe it might be hard to make such an escape convincing since Myers' only abilities seem to be that he is very hard to kill, and surprisingly elusive given that we never see him move quickly.

Combine this with his silence and general lack of personality and you have rather a dull nemesis, which may have contributed to my 'meh' reaction to this rather unnecessary sequel.

But at least it was nice to see Jamie Lee Curtis in fine gun-toting form. 

RATING: x Find Something Better To Do