franklineley

Halloween (2018) disregards all the films in the franchise but the first and fashions itself as the first official sequel, desperate to recapture the magic and the terror of that classic film. It's ironic that it falls into many of the same traps as the sequels they're ignoring. Laurie Strode is now a twice divorced, deadbeat mother whose obsession with Michael Myers has destroyed every relationship in her life. Oddly enough, the filmmakers do very little with this very dramatic and conflict-friendly material and focus instead on throwing in one too many homages and references to the films that have come before it in between scenes of Michael Myers killing a bunch of personality-free residents of Haddonfield.

John Carpenter and Debra Hill understand that simplicity and mystery are the fastest ways to get an audience to bite their nails in terror and they exploit this beautifully in Halloween. It's a simple story of a young boy who murders his sister on Halloween night and returns to the small town to stalk babysitters after breaking out of the asylum where he'd been for the past 15 years. Gorgeous and atmospheric camerawork, solid performances, and well-timed shocks that build in intensity throughout the film are some of the many reasons Halloween still impresses and terrifies to this day.

One of the goriest and most spirited slashers of that early 80's lot with extra attention to atmosphere and characterization than most. A miner thought to have gone insane after surviving a mine explosion goes on a murderous rampage before disappearing into the night and returning years later when the town decides to celebrate Valentine's Day for the first time since the massacre. The effects are memorably gruesome and the miner is a terrifying and menacing antagonist.