Halloween 2 (2009): Ending on a low note.

It’s been long noted in the 5 years or so that we’ve been doing this that I’ll watch anything, and can usually find some enjoyment regardless of how wretched the subject matter. I’ve taken on series such as Children of the Corn that would have had the brain of a lesser man melting through boredom, and I’ve reviewed 165 schlocky low budget b-movie efforts. Therefore, when I say that I’ve struggled with this series, and damned nearly abandoned it, you get an idea about how awful this film is. I started this fucking series A YEAR AGO, and came within a gnat’s pubic hair of binning it as a rancid idea. But now I can say with some confidence that I’ve done it- I’ve now finished the Halloween films.

And it’s been a real struggle.

Contains mystifying sub-Lynchian dream sequences and spoilers below.

Here we go again- Halloween (2007)

You want to know what this film is? No? Well, I don’t care, I’m telling you anyway. It’s cinematic necrophilia.

Resurrection had killed the series, again, but much like it’s protagonist it simply couldn’t stay dead. The concept still made money, so there was a desire to continue it in some way. Thankfully, Busta Rhymes v Myers was so piss poor that it killed the idea of a sequel in that continuity stone dead, but there’s one thing Halloween has always done: latch on to current trends. Sadly, the trend in the second half of the last decade was driven by Platinum Dunes and involved heinously awful plastic remakes of classics (or otherwise) of the genre. We’ve had Nightmare on Elm St, The Fog, Dawn of the Dead (obligatory fuck you Snyder), Day of the Dead, Prom Night, The Hitcher, Hills Have Eyes, The Crazies (arguably the best of the trend), The Omen, Black Christmas, My Bloody Valentine, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and so on and so forth. What this dismal list has in common (aside from that a significant number of them were date based slashers spawned by the original Halloween), is that only The Crazies is a decent film, and most of them not only miss the point of the originals, but manage to be shiny, polished but ultimately entirely boring entries into the genre.