Halloween Ends

 Year: 2022

Director:  David Gordon Green

Screenplay:  Paul Brad Logan, Chris Bernier, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak, Rohan Campbell, Will Patton, Kyle Richards, James Jude Courtney

Running Time:  111 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Four years have passed since serial killer Michael Myers' (Courtney) latest bloodbath, and the residents of the small town of Haddonfield are starting to heal.  Corey Cunningham (Campbell) who accidentally caused the death of a young boy he was babysitting, has since become the town pariah.  Allyson (Matichak), whose parents were killed by Myers and has since been living with her grandmother Laurie Strode (Curtis), befriends Corey.  After being savagely beaten up and left for dead by some bullies, Corey encounters but survives a weakened Michael Myers, and takes it upon himself to continue Michael's murderous legacy.

Halloween Ends is the thirteenth film in the Halloween franchise, and the third and final instalment in the trilogy directed by David Gordon Green which began with Halloween (2018) and continued with Halloween Kills (2021).  The Green series carries on from the original Halloween (1978), discarding the previous umpteen sequels, and Halloween Ends is supposed to be the final Halloween films, although I, for one, very much doubt that it will be.  Halloween Ends is a disappointing entry in the series.  While it does have some very good things in it.  It feels as if the film was intended to be a serious examination of trauma, grief and guilt, but they needed to add Halloween horror elements to make it fit into the series.  The stalk-and-slash horror elements doesn't fit with the more serious and darker aspects.  Another thing is that Michael Myers barely appears in the film.  The main antagonist is Corey who kind of becomes a Michael Myers protege, and he even seems to have Myers' ability to appear and disappear suddenly, as well as surprising strength.  Corey even gets his glasses broken  early in the film and seems to manage without them with no problem whatsoever and nary a stumble.  The performances are good, particularly from Jamie Lee Curtis, and there are some enjoyable set pieces, but the whole film is not scary and, worst of all, is kind of dull.

Jamie Lee Curtis and James Jude Courtney in Halloween Ends

Everything Everywhere All at Once

 Year:  2022

Directors:  Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Screenplay: Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert

Starring:  Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis

Running Time:  139 minutes

Genre:  Science-fiction, action, comedy

Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) is having a very bad day.  The laundromat she runs with her husband, Waymond (Quan), is struggling; her elderly father Gong Gong (Hong) who has effectively disowned her has arrived from China to be cared for by Evelyn and her family; she has a difficult relationship with her daughter, Joy (Hsu); and Waymond is trying to serve her with divorce papers.  To make matters worse, they are being audited by the IRS and have an appointment with severe auditor Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Curtis).  The last thing Evelyn needs is to learn that she has to connect with multiple alternate versions of herself from parallel universes in order to defeat a powerful force which threatens to destroy all of the infinite realities.

This film is a wild, unpredictable mix of genres and styles, taking in family drama, science-fiction, martial arts action and surreal comedy.  The result is one of the most imaginative, vibrant, and funniest films to come along in a very long time.  The basic concept is that for every decision that is made, the alternative outcome is played out in a parallel universe.  Through a technique called "verse jumping" which involves a special portable headset and performing a completely improbable action an individual can connect to their counterpart in a particular parallel universe that has the skills or abilities that they want to access.  In this way Evelyn is treated to glimpses of her life if she had made different choices, such as ending up as a skilled martial artist, a famous film star, a chef and more bizarre realities including one where humans have hot dogs instead of fingers, and one where she ends up as a rock.  Michelle Yeoh is great in the lead role and convincingly depict Evelyn's change from stressed and unhappy wife, mother and business owner, to action hero; Ke Huy Quan, who is possibly best known as a child actor in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and The Goonies (1985), is affecting as Evelyn's gentle and goofy husband; Stephanie Hsu is good as Evelyn and Waymond's troubled daughter and Jamie Lee Curtis gives a great comic performance as the tough IRS investigator.  In all the film's wildness and goofiness it doesn't lose sight of the more serious issues such as Evelyn's inability to accept the fact that her daughter is gay and has a girlfriend, and the importance of accepting people as they are and not how we may want them to be. Evelyn is someone who has had endless dreams and hopes but has abandoned them thanks to cruel reality, and now seems to see life itself as something of a miserable chore, but when she opens herself to the limitless possibilities, the experience is both frightening but ultimately liberating for her. The film also examines themes of Chinese-American cultural identity and existential despair.  The film is surprisingly emotional, and by the end is genuinely moving.  While at times it can be overwhelming, even with the generous run time of two hours and twenty minutes it seems to shoot past at breakneck speed with little pause for breath, this is one of the best films that I have seen in a very long time.

Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once

 

Halloween Kills

 Year of Release:  2021

Director:  David Gordon Green

Screenplay:  Scott Teems, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Anthony Michael Hall, Kyle Richards

Running Time:  105 minutes

Genre:  Horror

Immediately following the events of Halloween (2018), Laurie Strode (Curtis), her daughter Karen (Greer), and Karen's daughter Allyson (Matichak) are taken to hospital to recuperate.  However, murderous Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) emerges from the inferno of the Strode compound and proceeds to cut a bloody swathe through the good people of Haddonfield, Illinois.  The townspeople desire to band together to stop Myers once and for all.

The original Halloween (1978) worked because it emphasised suspense and tension over blood and guts, the 2018 Halloween which is a sequel to the 1978 film but ignores all of the previous umpteen sequels, remakes and reboots, wasn't great but it was an enjoyable enough rejuvenation of the hoary old franchise.  Halloween Kills, however, is pretty much a bloodbath.  The film tries to make a comment about mob mentality and vigilante justice, but it feels pretty half hearted, swallowing the greens of social commentary to linger over the pudding of gruesome murders.  The violence is surprisingly brutal, even by the standards of the Halloween franchise.  Jamie Lee Curtis is underused as Laurie Strode, who is in hospital throughout most of the film.  Judy Greer is the highlight of the film, providing some much needed heart as Karen, and Andi Matichak as Allyson does as well as anyone could do with a pretty underwritten part.  Some of the kills are imaginative, and a hospital riot is a highlight.  The thing is that the film is so over the top in terms of gore and violence it just becomes funny.  People were laughing at the screening I attended, and you could have some fun with it if you were watching it at the right time with the right audience.  It needs to be watched late at night, after a few beers, with some likeminded friends, for some silly, campy fun.  It's not scary and really not much of a movie.  There isn't really any conclusion,  it forms the centrepiece of a trilogy, with Halloween Ends due out in 2022, and so instead of a satisfying ending, it's like the film just stops.  

   Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney / Nick Castle) in Halloween Kills

A Fish Called Wanda

Year of Release:  1988

Director:  Charles Crichton

Screenplay:  John Cleese, from a story by John Cleese and Charles Crichton

Starring:  John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin, Tom Georgeson, Maria Aitken

Running Time:  108 minutes

Genre:  Comedy

In London, a gang of thieves led by George (Georgeson), with his American lover Wanda (Curtis), her mercurial "brother" Otto (Kline) and stuttering animal lover Ken (Palin), successfully steal a fortune in diamonds.  However Wanda and Otto, who are actually lovers, betray George to the police, in order to take the diamonds for themselves.  However George has played his own trick and the diamonds have been hidden.  With the loyal Ken intent on assassinating the only witness who can identify George: a dotty old lady (Patricia Hayes) with three little dogs, Wanda and Otto set their sights on George's barrister: the straight laced Archie Leach (Cleese), who Wanda plans to seduce and persuade to reveal the location of the diamonds.  What follows is a hilarious string of doubles-crosses, slapstick and seduction.

Directed by Ealing Comedy veteran Charles Crichton, this is a delightful crime comedy in which the laughs come thick and fast throughout.  The script, by John Cleese from a story by him and Crichton allows Cleese plenty of scope for his manic comic energy, and he is always best at those roles in which he has to go from uptight authority figure to raving maniac.  Kevin Kline is very funny as the brutal thug who is both pretentious and pretty thick.  Cleese's fellow Monty Python alumni Michael Palin as the eccentric animal lover Ken (who owns the fish of the title) has the most Pythonesque story line as his repeated attempts to assassinate this one old woman go constantly awry (fair warning for dog lovers, her three prize pooches do come to pretty bad ends).  Jamie Lee Curtis anchors the film as the seductive femme fatale who sets the happily married Cleese's stiff upper lip quivering.  This is one of those constantly entertaining films, the convoluted plot really being an excuse to string a succession of gags and slapstick set pieces together, and for the most part it works really well.  Fans of British comedy will recognise a few familiar faces in small roles, such as Geoffrey Palmer as a judge, and Stephen Fry as an unlucky man in an airport.  The main cast reunited for a follow up film, Fierce Creatures, which was released in 1997.

Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline and Tom Georgeson in A Fish Called Wanda

Halloween

Year of Release:  2018
Director:  David Gordon Green
Screenplay:  Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Virginia Gardner, James Jude Gardner,
Running Time:  105 minutes
Genre:  Horror

On October 31 1978, serial killer Michael Myers (Gardner) went on a murderous rampage in the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois.  Forty years later, Myers is incarcerated in an institution and Laurie Strode (Curtis) who survived Myers' attack is a hardened survivalist, obsessed with Myers and the idea that he will return one day.  Her obsession has alienated her from her daughter (Greer), and granddaughter (Matichak).  Until Myers escapes while being transferred and returns to Haddonfield to finish what he started all those years ago.

This is technically the eleventh film in the Halloween franchise, including the 2007 remake by Rob Zombie, and it's 2009 sequel.  However, this hits the reset button being a direct sequel to Halloween (1978) and rewriting the entire chronology.  The idea that Laurie Strode is Michael Myers' sister which was introduced in Halloween II (1981) and has been canon ever since, is specifically stated here not to be the case.  Also, here, Michael Myers has been locked up for 40 years.  This is very much a traditional slasher film although it does have a 2018 makeover, Myers doesn't exclusively kill horny teenagers, here he kills pretty much anyone who he happens across.  He also expands his repertoire from exclusively slashing and stabbing to include hammers and banging people's heads against anything solid.  The film returns Myers to the enigmatic killer of the first film, and makes him less of a supernatural being, although he does have seemingly supernatural powers of strength and resilience.  Curtis is great as the traumatised Laurie as are Judy Greer and Andi Marichak as her estranged daughter and granddaughter.  The film benefits from a strong supporting cast, who make the characters more than just the typical faceless victims.  The film takes it's time to get going and does at times get bogged down in subplots that don't go anywhere.  However, while it is never exactly scary, it is tense and exciting and gory enough to appeal to fans without being violent enough to alienate more mainstream audiences.  It also has humour and some fun nods to previous films in the series (including a cameo from Nick Castle who played Michael Myers in the first film, and supplies some of Myers' sound effects here), and is certainly one of the best in the franchise.

Trick or Treat:  Michael Myers (James Jude Gardner) in Halloween

Horror Movie Marathon

Last night I was at an All-Night Horror Movie Marathon in a local movie theatre. With these events the experience itself is nearly as important as the movies themselves and so I decided to do a post encompassing all four of the films on offer. It kicked off at about 11:30PM with


BLUE SUNSHINE



Year: 1978

Director: Jeff Lieberman

Screenplay: Jeff Lieberman

Starring: Zalman King, Deborah Winters


This movie blends horror and action thriller elements. "Blue Sunshine" is a lethal strain of homemade LSD which was popular among Stranford college students in the late 1960s. However, it has an unexpected side-effect in that ten years later, users lose all their hair and go on a murderous rampage killing anyone in sight.

The film is pretty badly made and loaded with unintentional humour (for example one bald maniac is subdued by 1970s disco music which does briefly cause him to try to bust a move Travolta-style and a key clue is provided by a pet parrot). Zalman King (who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Sean Penn) gives an earnest performance in the lead role. There is an interesting subtext here about respectable yuppies finding their youthful indiscretions catching up with them, but it's not really developed. The production values are fairly strong and some of the action scenes are well-handled.



At 1:30AM it was time for:



HALLOWEEN



Year: 1978

Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: John Carpenter and Debra Hill

Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, P.J. Soles, Nancy Loomis



This film is one of the most influential horror movies ever made as well as being one of the most profitable independent films of all time. In 1963, in the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, six year old Michael Myers (Will Sandin) brutally stabs his teenage sister to death on Halloween night. Fifteen years later, Myers (now played by Nick Castle), escapes from the asylum and returns home to Haddonfield for some more Halloween fun. Myers' doctor, Loomis (Pleasance), who has come to believe that Myers is pure evil incarnate follows him to Haddonfield determined to stop him by any means necessary. Meanwhile Myers takes to stalking a group of teenage babysitters, including Laurie Strode (Curtis).

Even if you would sooner have your eyes gouged out (by a maniac in a mask, natch) than sit down and watch a "stalk and slash" movie, Halloween is still worth checking out. Here, gore and violence are kept to the bare minimum while suspense is tuned up to the max. Billed as "The Shape" in the credits, Michael Myers with his blank white mask (in reality a painted Star Trek Captain Kirk mask) became a horror icon. Pleasance adds class and dignity to proceedings as the terrified but determined doctor, and Curtis makes a strong and affecting heroine. Interestingly, the film works much better at the cinema than it does on TV, due to Carpenter electing to shoot in widescreen, creating plenty of empty spaces around his characters for evil to lurk. In the early part of the film, before things really kick off, Myers appears as a half glimpsed figure standing watching in the distance or driving cars and trucks, making it feel like he could literally be anywhere.

Another important element to the film's success is it's creepy, memorable score which was composed by Carpenter.



At 3:30AM everything went to



PIECES



Year: 1981

Director: Juan Piquer Simon

Screenplay: Joe D'Amato and Dick Randall

Starring: Christopher George, Edmund Purdom, Lynda Day George, Frank Brana, Paul L. Smith

In Boston, 1942, a young boy messily dismembers his domineering mother when she tries to throw out his pornographic jigsaw puzzle. Forty years later, a Boston college campus is plagued by a spate of gruesome murders in which female students are found cut to pieces with portions of the body missing. The police officer in charge of the investigation, Lieutenant Bracken (George), decides to send in a female police officer, Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George), undercover in the college to catch the killer.
This film, which has become something of a cult classic now, is basically "Z" Grade trash which if it was better made, would be shockingly offensive on just about every level in the end it is impossible to take seriously. The movie is extremely gruesome with limbs being lopped off left, right and centre and it is loaded with unintentional laughs. Watched on it's own, and judged soberly on it's own merits this is pretty much unwatchable, but seen in the early hours of morning in a cinema packed with braying horror fans it becomes unmissable.

To be honest I probably laughed more at Pieces than I have at any other movie I have seen in theatres this year, with the possible exception of The Inbetweeners Movie.



Finally, at 5:30AM we came to



THE EVIL DEAD



Year: 1983

Director: Sam Raimi

Screenplay: Sam Raimi

Starring: Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Betsy Baker, Hal Delrich, Sarah York

This is one of the all-time classic cult movies. When Ash (Campbell) and his four friends decide to take a vacation in an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods, they discover a copy of the legendary Sumerian Book of the Dead along with tapes of various incantations from the book. When the kids play the tapes they inadvertently summon demonic forces lurking in the woods, which proceed to violently attack and possess the visitors, changing them into giggling, gruesome, murderous ghouls.

On it’s original release, the film was heavily criticised for it’s violence and gore. In Britain it fell afoul of the “Video Nasties” witch-hunt of the early 1980s. Seen today, the violence and gore are still extreme but also played for laughs. This has it’s severed tongue lodged firmly in it’s rotting cheek, although the film’s two sequels played the material more directly for laughs. Here, the square-jawed Bruce Campbell plays the role that would make him a cult movie icon and director Raimi works wonders with a low-budget. The film is loaded with energy and Raimi displays the talent that would go into his more mainstream work such as Spider-Man (2002) and it’s sequels.

It is a must-see for all horror fans.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later

Year: 1998
Director: Steve Miner
Screenplay: Robert Zappia and Matt Greenberg, from a story by Robert Zappia and Kevin Williamson (uncredited), based on characters created by John carpenter and Debra Hill
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Josh Hartnett, Adam Arkin, Michelle Williams, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lyn O'Keefe, LL Cool J, Janet Leigh
Running Time: 86 minutes
Genre: Horror, slasher

Summary: In 1978 seventeen year old Laurie Strode (Curtis) narrowly escaped the murderous rampage of her psychopathic brother Michael Myers (Chris Durand).
In 1998, Laurie is now living under the name "Keri Tate" with her seventeen year old son John (Hartnett), and is working as Headmistress of the prestigious Hillcrest Academy High School private boarding school, which her son attends. She is also dating the school's guidance counsellor Will (Arkin). However Laurie is a recovering alcoholic, still haunted by the memory of her experience and suffers from horrible nightmares, especially when Halloween rolls around. Despite most people believeing that Michael Myers is dead, Laurie is convinced that he is still out there somehwere. Angry at his mother's overprotectiveness, John and his girlfriend Molly (Williams) decide to team up with their friends Charlie (Hann-Byrd) and Sarah (O'Keefe) and take advantage of the rest of the school taking a camping trip to Yosemite National Park over the Halloween holiday in order to have the school to themselves. However, it turns out that Laurie's fears are correct. Michael Myers has tracked her down and, on Halloween night, he arrives at Hillcrest Academy to finish what he started.

Opinions: This film is the sixth sequel to the classic horror film Halloween (1978). The film only really ties in to the original Halloween and Halloween II (1981), completely ignoring the other films as if they never happened, which is probably for the best. The film is also very heavily influenced by the hugely successful Scream (1996) and it's first sequel (themselves very heavily influenced by Halloween). Kevin Williamson, who wrote the first two Scream movies, did uncredited rewrites on the script to Halloween H20, and has an executive producer credit, it was also made by the same studio that made Scream, features some of the same music, and even features a brief clip from Scream 2 (1997). They also feature a very similar style as Halloween H20 also mixes scares, jokes and pop culture references, it also includes Michelle Williams who starred in the hugely successful television series Dawson's Creek (1998-2003) which was created by Kevin Williamson. Which all means that the film belongs squarely in the typical style of late 1990s teen horror films.
The film concentrates more on the "stalk" and less on the "slash" than many of the previous installments, which hearkens back to the first film. It means that the viewer spends time with the characters and gets to like them before they get turned into sushi. Directed by Steve Miner, who also directed Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and Friday the 13 Part III (1982), there is extensive use of a mobile floating camera which constantly gives the impression of the characters being stalked or tracked by the camera itself. The film also recognises that Michael Myers, who is a kind of limited villain, being more like a supernatural version of the Terminator, works much better when he is kept largely off-screen, frequently glimpsed briefly in the background or through open doors. In fact when Laurie Strode first encounters Myers in the film, she has to pause for a few seconds to convince herself that it is not one of her nightmare or hallucinations.
The scares are mostly effective and there are several good shock moments, even if the gore is probably too limited to appeal to the gorehounds.
The acting in the film is good, and the cast are engaging. Janet Leigh (in real life the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis), and who has also had previous experience of knife-weilding maniacs in the film Psycho (1960), appears briefly as a schoolteacher. It also has an appearance from Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a hockey mask wearing teen.
Aside from the original film, this is definitely the best in the series, and is a good slice of entertaining horror, featuring good performances, some decent shocks and plenty of humour.



Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) faces up to Michael Myers (Chris Durand) in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later