Hal­loween – first look review

Forty years since Lau­rie Strode met Michael Myers for the first time, the Hal­loween fran­chise has returned to its roots, ret­con­ning four decades and nine sequels/​reboots to make way for The Big One. With John Carpenter’s bless­ing, David Gor­don Green and Dan­ny McBride wrote the script (with Green also on direct­ing duties) for a straight sequel to Carpenter’s orig­i­nal 1978 slash­er, which intro­duced a gen­er­a­tion to knife-wield­ing weirdos in rub­ber masks.

With Jamie Lee Cur­tis repris­ing her icon­ic role and the weight of expec­ta­tions from hor­ror fans rid­ing on the lat­est vis­it to Had­don­field, Illi­nois, the pres­sure has undoubt­ed­ly been on Green, McBride and pro­duc­er Jason Blum to cre­ate a wor­thy addi­tion to the Hal­loween canon. Lucky for every­one, then, that this instal­ment is an absolute blast.

Hav­ing spent her entire adult life prepar­ing for the inevitable return of Michael Myers, Lau­rie is now one hell of a woman. She lives on an iso­lat­ed estate with souped-up secu­ri­ty fea­tures and spends her days sharp­en­ing her marks­man­ship, while her semi-estranged daugh­ter Karen (a fab­u­lous Judy Greer) attempts to get over the trau­ma of being raised by a woman fuelled by rage by rais­ing her own daugh­ter Allyson (Andi Matichek) very dif­fer­ent­ly. Mean­while, the bogey­man is found resid­ing in an asy­lum again, where he’s vis­it­ed by a cou­ple of reporters curi­ous to gain insight into the events of Hal­loween night 1978.

It’s only a mat­ter of time before Myers breaks free and returns to Had­don­field, where Lau­rie is ready and wait­ing. In return­ing to a tried-and-test­ed for­mu­la, Green and McBride pay ser­vice to the series’ loy­al fans – there are some extreme­ly fun nods to both the orig­i­nal film and its bevy of sequels – but isn’t afraid to chal­lenge hor­ror con­ven­tion by bring­ing a lot of humour to the script. It means that this ver­sion of Hal­loween feels fresh while still com­ple­ment­ing Carpenter’s film.

Cur­tis is a tri­umph as a bat­tle-hard­ened, world-weary ver­sion of Lau­rie. It’s sat­is­fy­ing to see her go toe-to-toe with her old adver­sary, but just as fun watch­ing the tense exchanges between her and Judy Greer. The two make a per­fect moth­er-daugh­ter act, while Matichek holds her own as the third gen­er­a­tion of Strode women. Giv­en that women tra­di­tion­al­ly get short shrift in hor­ror films, it’s a treat to see a film with three com­pelling female per­for­mances, and indeed a world in which women repeat­ed­ly prove them­selves more capa­ble and fear­less than the men around them.

In the age of the jump scare, Hal­loween takes a dif­fer­ent approach, pay­ing homage to the slash­ers of yore with impres­sive­ly gory prac­ti­cal effects and white-knuck­le fight scenes which – when com­bined with the wit of the script – makes for a wild ride. Most of all, it feels like Hal­loween has been made by a group of peo­ple who tru­ly under­stand and respect the source mate­r­i­al. It’s got a whole lot of heart, and gets to the real­i­ty of what makes a good hor­ror movie: a sol­id bat­tle between the forces of good and evil. Watch it on a big screen with a packed audi­ence – not because it’s too scary to watch alone, but for the thrilling shared experience.