Winter Chills

This winter saw a fair number of horror films surface on screens both big and small. Let’s take a look at how some of them stacked up!

Sick

Premiering on Peacock this past January, Sick is a slick thriller from Scream scribe Kevin Williamson that’s set during the height of the COVID pandemic. And while it definitely shares some DNA with Williamson’s breakout hit (both feature masked killers, clad in all black, with penchants for toying with their potential victims via cell phone shenanigans), Sick has something going for it that was sorely missing from Ghostface’s most recent outing: an all-out, balls-to-the-wall, chase scene. In fact, you could argue that the whole third act is just one extended chase scene, and you wouldn’t be wrong. And I am here for it.

Set largely at a secluded lakefront cabin where some college friends are “quarantining”, Sick’s languid pace kicks into high gear once the gang find themselves the target of one very uninvited guest. Despite a near-derailment near the end when the significance of the COVID of it all is revealed, the film manages to be a tense and tight delight. Especially for those who appreciate horror movies that try to keep viewers on the edges of their seats as well as jumping out of them.

M3GAN

M3GAN, the titular robotic little girl/meme generator with killer moves and killer tendencies, has become the surprise hit of the season. While not so much a horror film as it is a satirical look at technology and consumerism that just happens to have a body count, M3GAN delivers when it comes to creepiness, as only an evil AI doll with a soulless stare and an iron vise-like grip can.

Some people have just dismissed M3GAN as a female version of fellow diminutive psycho, Chucky from the Child’s Play franchise. But that’s not really a fair comparison, because in those films, good ol’ Chuck is actually a serial killer whose soul has been transferred into a child’s toy, while our gal M3G is 100% wires, bolts and motherboards.

But what IS interesting is that M3GAN does have a lot in common with the other Chucky – the one from Child’s Play (2019). For that remake, they ditched the soul-transfer angle and instead made Chucky an AI-powered doll that a disgruntled worker removes all the safety protocols from after being fired, which results in a doll who bonds with its owner and will stop at nothing – not even murder – to ensure his well-being.

Which, if you swap in “forgetful inventor” for “disgruntled worker”, is pretty much M3GAN’s origin story, note-for-note.

Still, borrowed plot or not, it’s an enjoyable romp that may not offer up much scares, but does provide a few chuckles with its chills.

Skinamarink

And then there’s this. Skinamarink gained some recent buzz due to being a micro-budgeted movie ($15,000!) that managed to get picked up for a limited theatrical release. Ultimately, it pulled in over $1 million at the box office ahead of its arrival on the horror streaming service, Shudder. So, well done, all.

Now, about the film itself. Skinamarink is an experimental film, and I’m pretty sure the goal of that experiment was to answer the question, “How long will people watch a movie that looks like it was pulled entirely from low-res security cameras that had been knocked off their mounts and never re-set?”

The “story” concerns two young siblings who wake up to find their dad missing, along with all the doors and windows in their house. Sounds scary enough, right? Welp, after 40 repetitive minutes consisting of static shots of walls, ceilings, and furniture, dimly-lit rooms, the occasional floor-level close-ups of tiny feet padding down carpeted hallways, free-domain cartoons playing endlessly on a loop, and unintelligible audio cues, the only scary thing that I found about Skinamarink was that there was still 60 more minutes of the movie to go.

Brrr…chilly, indeed!

Halloween Ends: More tricks than treats

So, a lot has already been said about Halloween Ends at this point, but I do feel like I need to weigh in on some of the problems it presents. It’s baffling to see the choices that were made when you consider that this current reboot of the franchise, which began with Halloween (2018) and continued through 2021’s Halloween Kills, was envisioned from the get-go to be: a) a trilogy, and b) contain the final conclusion to the saga of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode.

Now let me start by saying that I find Halloween Ends to be a fairly good film…if taken on its own. But as film that is supposed to be part of those two points I just mentioned above, it misses the mark completely. Spoilers ahead.

For this film, a closing chapter of a trilogy, we’re introduced to not just a completely new character named Corey Cunningham, but he turns out to be the MAIN character of this movie and ends up becoming the “new” Michael Myers, with most of the film’s kills being done by him, not Myers. So much time is spent on his arc that Laurie Strode ends up being a supporting player in what is supposed to be her “final showdown” with Michael. And as for the Shape himself, he doesn’t even make it onscreen until the 40-minute mark.

A Halloween film that goes 40 minutes without even an appearance by Michael Myers?! That’s second only to Halloween III: Season of the Witch, a completely Myers-less film, save for one brief snippet when an ad for the original Halloween (1978) is shown on a television in a bar. Which brings me to my next point:

David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and the other creators behind this reboot have clearly modelled their trilogy off the first three entries in this franchise, right down to the opening credits, Halloween (2018), Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends borrow their title fonts from Halloween (1978), Halloween II (1981) and Halloween III (1982), respectively.

And like the original three, the first two films of the reboot take place over the course of the same Halloween night, with Laurie Strode surviving multiple attacks by Michael in the first film before being sidelined in a hospital bed which Michael’s carnage escalates in the second. Then the third entry in each set takes a wildly different turn, bringing in characters never seen before and following a completely different tone than the previous movies.

However, this is understandable for OG films when you consider that Halloween III: Season of the Witch was made with the intention of turning the franchise into an anthology series, where the only uniting thread would be that each movie took place on or had to do with Halloween. In other words, Halloween III was never intended to be the third chapter of trilogy set in motion by the previous two films.

And this is what baffles me: why would the creators of the reboot choose to emulate this film (which outraged fans at the time of its release due to the lack of Michael Myers), and think we’d be on board with it? Just because their third Halloween film veers wildly off-course just like Halloween III did? They consciously chose to base the arc of their trilogy on a two-parter and a stand-alone, which pretty much means that they were never going to stick the landing, at all.

But, back to the story. Like I said earlier, this is a fairly good film. But it is more of a psychological character study than a horror film. It’s something that would make more sense being the springboard film to take the franchise in a new direction AFTER the story of Michael and Laurie reached its end. And if that was the intention, I can’t see how they are going to follow through, because Corey is most certainly dead by the end of this film.

Which then begs the question WHY? Why introduce a new character in the closing chapter of a trilogy, invest all that time into his story at the expense of Laurie Strode, and then just kill him off near the end (after which, is when we finally get some Michael-and-Laurie showdown action, but it feels tacked on and out of place rather than a climatic payoff to a years-spanning story).

*SIGH* Well, only time will tell if this truly was the last we’ll see of Michael (even though he, too, was most definitely dead at the end). But just so I don’t end on a bitter note, I will say this about this uneven trilogy as a whole:

It’s still a big misstep that this trilogy chose to disregard all that came after the original Halloween, but still had everyone in Haddonfield regard Michael Myers the way they would if the timeline of the subsequent films still existed (that is, they are still treating him as a psychopath who had returned to his hometown for murderous rampages on multiple occasions, leaving dozens of victims in his wake). Because, I’m sorry, but I refuse to believe that a dude who killed three teens one night and then was immediately caught and thrown behind bars for decades is someone whose very name would keep a town “gripped in fear for 40 years” (and cause the randomly targeted girl who briefly fought off his attacks for 15 minutes before being rescued, to turn into a doomsday prepper/survivalist who firmly believes Michael Myers will come for her if and when he escapes).

However, after the cornucopia of corpses Michael Myers left strewn around town, post-Halloween Kills, the results have now caught up to the reputation. Michael is indeed a monster, so go on and be gripped in fear forever, surviving citizens of Haddonfield.

I Still Have Issues With Halloween Kills

When I saw Halloween Kills in the theatres last year, I had multiple issues with it – the whole “mob mentality” aspect, the plethora of “stupid people doing stupid things” moments, the repetitive story structure, and so on. But it did have some things I liked, including the 1978  flashback sequence, the visuals of Michael Myers emerging from the burning Strode compound, and the fight/chase scene with Lindsay (Kyle Richards). And because of that, and because I’m just an all-around Halloween fan, I picked up a copy of Halloween Kills when it came out on Blu-ray.

And now having re-watched it, the initial issues I had with it are all still valid, but there’s one that trumps them all. It started as this nagging feeling that something just wasn’t “right”…and then I  was listening to a YouTube review that triggered a light bulb moment for me, and it all came clear.

It has to do with the ill-advised retcon the filmmakers made with its predecessor Halloween (2018), where, instead of escaping into the night at the end of Halloween (1978) and continuing to terrorize the town of Haddonfield for years to come, they had Michael get caught and thrown into jail for the next 40 years, effectively erasing everything that happened in every film that followed in the franchise. Now, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen retcons in the Halloween series, but this is by far the most sweeping.

And here’s my problem with that. If you’re going to retcon Michael Myers into a one-and-done spree killer with a victim total you can count on one hand, then you cannot have everyone in Haddonfield still regard him as if he’s this relentless, soulless maniac in a white mask that has terrorized their town repeatedly over the years, racking up kills well into the double-digits.

And yet that’s exactly what Halloween Kills does.

The townspeople of Haddonfield in Halloween Kills consider Michael Myers to be the embodiment of evil, this force that has held the town in the grip of fear for decades. When they learn he has escaped and is back in Haddonfield they whip themselves into a frenzy as they rally to hunt and destroy him. It’s something befitting of an impending confrontation with the boogeyman that has haunted their nightmares all these years.

Except, no.

Because of the retcon, this Michael Myers is, on the surface, just a disturbed man who, one Halloween night, killed three unfortunate teenagers, attacked and injured a fourth, and then was quickly caught and imprisoned. End of story.

And that is not someone whose very existence holds a town in fear for decades. That is not someone who drives the woman who survived his attack to go the full survivalist/weapons expert/fortified compound route because she feels that when (not if) he escapes he will be coming for HER so she has to BE PREPARED because he is nigh UNSTOPPABLE.

He’s not that guy anymore, that  Michael Myers never existed. So, treating him like he is, is just ridiculous.

Although, I guess NOW (post-Halloween Kills) he is that guy…because retconned Michael may have only killed three teens back in ’78,  but he sure made up for lost time by doing in around 30+ in 2018. So, hmm…

STILL, I stand by my rant. Retconning Michael Myers, but not the townspeople’s perception of him is just lazy writing and severely affects the credibility of the story and its characters. There. I’m done.

Well, at least now, in the upcoming Halloween Ends, there will be some justification for treating him as the devil-eyed, evil-on-two-legs, all-father of death.

The Twisted Timelines of the Texas Chainsaw Massacres

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the ninth film in the horror franchise featuring powertool enthusiast Leatherface, recently premiered on Netflix (and while it has received generally mixed reactions from fans and critics, let me just say right of the bat, that it is GOOD. It’s also brutally bonkers, beautifully shot, inventive, tense, and INSANE).

And even though it may seem like it at first glance, this latest entry has not followed in the footsteps of the Halloween and Scream franchises by simply going by the original film’s title. Instead, it drops “The”, which was present in the titles of both the 1974 original and the 2003 remake (furthermore, in the original’s credits, it was “Chain Saw” not “Chainsaw”, so even the remake doesn’t go by the exact same title as the OG TCM).

However, one thing the TCM franchise does share with the Halloween franchise is a penchant for multiple timelines, reboots, and retcons, which can be a convoluted, confusing thing for a viewer to figure out. Especially when films within the same timeline sometimes span a jumble of genres and include a plethora of one-and-done characters to keep track of.

Thankfully, you don’t need to have seen ANY of the previous TCMs to understand and enjoy Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But, for those curious to dive into Leatherface’s lore, here’s a breakdown of which films make up which continuity. Semi-spoilers ahoy!

The original timeline (TCMs 1-4)

• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)    
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2 (1986)       
• Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)    
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation (1995; released 1997)

Really, just the idea of these four films sharing the same continuity seems like a bit of a stretch from the get-go, with their only real through-line, franchise-wise, is that they were all released one after the other.

We’ve got the gritty, relentless, docu-style horror perpetuated by the Sawyer clan of the original, followed by the over-the-top black comedy of TCM2. And while TCM3 tries to find some kind of happy medium between the two, TCM4 takes things in a more satirical but altogether bonkers direction (let’s just say that if you were ever pining for a Prom Night/Texas Chainsaw crossover featuring a completely cross-dressing Leatherface terrorizing a pre-Jerry Maguire Renee Zellweger while Matthew McConaughey howls insanely at them both, then The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is just for you).

Not helping matters is that fact that Leatherface seems to get put in the care of a whole new batch of crazy-ass Sawyers and other bonkers extended-family members in each new film, which almost seems like they’re rebooting the storyline with each new installment. But that actually didn’t happen until…

The remake timeline (TCMs 5, 6)

• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003)     
• The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)

After the dismal box office of The Next Generation, the franchise was shelved until it could be resurrected with the 2003 remake. It brought some original elements to the TCM story, and then built on that even more when it was followed up with a prequel. The remake does a great job creating an atmosphere of desolation, desperation, and dread against the backdrop of the hot Texas sun. It also contains some really great set pieces and surprising emotional bits. But, after the prequel failed to pull in a substantial take at the box office, the franchise went dormant once again.

The first reboot timeline (TCMs 1, 7, 8)

• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
• Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013) 
• Leatherface (2017)   

The franchise came back to life with Texas Chainsaw 3D, which not only ignored the remake timeline, but pulled a Halloween: H20 by presenting itself as a direct sequel to the original and disregarding all that came after it. Four years later, Leatherface came along, with the makers claiming it belonged to this new continuity as well. Although, seeing as how it was a prequel to the original TCM, it didn’t need to adhere to anything that’s come before it – so you could just as easily say it belonged to any other timeline…or none at all. So, there’s that.

The second reboot timeline (TCMs 1,9)

• The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
• Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)

In Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we’re given lots of mentions of the original and not much else. And in one telling scene, we’re shown a photo that indicates that Leatherface has been at his current residence, a dilapidated orphanage, since 1975. Which would’ve been a year after the events of the first film and well before any off the sequels took place.

Producer Fede Alvarez has theorized that Leatherface could’ve have come and gone from the orphanage over the years and therefore, participated in the events depicted in one or more of the original sequels, but I think that’s a bit of a stretch and ultimately, just his theory.

However, in the film, original final girl (and current Texas Ranger) Sally Hardesty states that she hasn’t been able to track Leatherface down for almost 50 years. This does lend itself to the idea of Leatherface being sent off to go into hiding with various family members across the state over the years (as depicted in TCMs 2-4), whenever Hardesty was getting close to sniffing him out (because if he had been holed up in that orphanage this whole time and she still couldn’t find him, then she might need to reassess if this whole “Texas Ranger” path was truly meant for her or not).

But that’s still all just theories and possibilities and I’m sticking with this version of the timeline, based on what we’re shown in the film, until told otherwise (which, seeing as we’re talking about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre here, will probably be in the very next installment, whatever form that may take).

Halloween Treats

Looking to get some last-minute scares on as we head into the Hallo-weekend? Good thing there’s still a plethora of cinematic, streaming, and televised spookiness to be had! Here’s a quick rundown of some of horror’s recent offerings that may be just the right fright fix you’re looking for.

Halloween Kills (Theatres/Peacock)

Of course, I have to lead with the obvious. And it doesn’t get more obvious than a Halloween film released around Halloween. Halloween Kills is a very divisive movie, because what it does well, it does REALLY well (A flashback to what happened after Dr. Loomis shot Michael Myers in the original Halloween, Michael being as frightfully menacing as ever, a great sequence with RHOBH star Kyle Richards reprising her role of Lindsay Wallace).

But when Halloween Kills trips up, it not only stumbles, it falls, twists an ankle, and has difficulty getting back up again (Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode is sidelined for most of the film as a patient at Haddonfield Memorial (AGAIN), Michael’s tendencies go from violent to ultra-uber-violent, the film’s split focus makes it play out like a series of disconnected scenes rather than a cohesive whole).

And that it’s also the middle film of an announced trilogy is very evident. This isn’t another chapter of the Halloween saga (which in this case only includes Halloween (1978) and Halloween (2018) and disregards everything that came in between), it’s necessary filler needed to get us from Halloween (2018) to the upcoming Halloween Ends.

But like I’ve implied, it’s not all that bad. Sure, it`s disappointing to a Halloween fan like myself, but there’s still enjoyment to be had, chills to be felt, and shocks to be shocked…just not on a consistent basis.

(Fun tip: you can also take this as an alternate version of Halloween II (1981) as it answers the question, what would’ve happened if Michael didn’t follow Laurie to Haddonfield Memorial and just continued killing people in town instead?)

And now for some quick takes:

There’s Someone Inside Your House (Netflix)

Borrowing heavily from Scream and other of-the-era slashers (most notably I Know What You Did Last Summer and Cherry Falls), Someone still manages to inject some originality into its tale of a masked killer terrorizing the students of a small-town high school. The twist is his mask is always a 3D-printed mask of the face of his next intended victim, and he tops off their death by revealing a dark, hidden secret of theirs to the public. Some genuine suspenseful moments can be found here along with some great set pieces. (What can I say? I’m a sucker for a corn maze).

Slasher: Flesh and Blood (Shudder/Hollywood Suite)

This Canadian horror anthology series, previously seen on Chiller and Netflix, recently returned for its fourth season as a Shudder series (although not on Shudder Canada, which seems…odd).

This time around we get a dysfunctional family reunion on a secluded coastal island, where a competition to see who will be named the sole heir of their patriarch’s estate proves to have some very deadly (not to mention gruesome) consequences for its contestants, as they’re targeted and taken down one-by-one by a methodical, masked maniac.

I Know What You Did Last Summer (Amazon Prime)

Speaking of I Know What You Did Last Summer…this tv version isn’t so much of remake as it is a retelling. And it brings enough changes from the original flick (which itself was a loose adaptation of the novel of the same name by Lois Duncan) to intrigue fans.

The plot is still the same, a group of teens celebrating their graduation accidentally hit and kill someone with their car and end up hiding the body and not reporting it. One year later they start getting stalked by someone whose calling card is the message “I know what you did last summer”. But this time around we have a new location (Hawaii instead of North Carolina), a new set of teens (five versus four, of which only two are a couple), and in a rather unique twist, the lead character (portrayed by Jennifer Love Hewitt in the ‘97 original and its ’98  follow-up I Still Know What You Did Last Summer) is now “lead characters”. As in she’s now twins. And if you think that’s going to lead to some twists in the story, I’d have to say that I think you’re right.

Chucky (SyFy/USA)

You can’t keep a good doll down, not even if you’ve rebooted him. Chucky, that murderous doll from the Child’s Play franchise has made the leap to television, but even though the franchise was rebooted (and quite well, I might add) with 2019’s Child’s Play. The TV series Chucky  is a follow-up to the last pre-reboot film in the franchise (2017’s Cult of Chucky). Which kinda makes sense. I mean, what franchise wouldn’t want to emulate the success Halloween has had from playing mix-and-match with its installments for decades now? Just so long as we don’t get a “Rob Zombie’s Child’s Play”, I think we’ll be good.

Happy Halloween!

Summer Screams

Given how dismal it has become, I very well couldn’t have expected K-Pop to single-handedly save my summer this time around. Good thing Horror is always there when you need it! So, here’s a look at some of the horror-based content that has been helping K-Pop do the heavy lifting of keeping my mind off of all the “bleh” this summer has been throwing at me.

With Gourley and Rust

In this podcast, Matt Gourley (Drunk History) and Paul Rust (Netflix’s Love) take deep dives into horror franchises. Previous seasons have covered some of the biggies: Friday the 13^th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Aliens. This summer they switched it up a bit with their “Shark Weeks” season, with the first half devoted to the films of the Jaws franchise, and the second half blocked off for stand-alone shark and shark-adjacent films like Deep Blue Sea and Piranha.

The duo are genuine fans of the genre and overall, they succeed at creating an enjoyable horror-themed “cozycast” (their term). And the average episode length of 3 hours is perfect for people who just want kick back and listen to some dudes talking in the background about their fave horror films. Except that’s not quite the case. Due to the duo’s penchant for frequently going off on tangents, recognizing that they’ve done so, but then doing nothing to course-correct it, the average percentage of a film’s episode spent talking about the actual film hovers around 55-60%.

Case in point, it was at the 1 hour 27 minute mark of a recent episode where Gourley announced “Okay, so should we dive on into the movie?”

But now that I’ve adjusted my expectations, I can enjoy the podcast more, and this summer’s Shark Weeks episodes have even managed to do the impossible: Make me seriously reconsider that Jaws: The Revenge isn’t all that bad (not counting the whole “shark follows Ellen Brody from the Northeastern U.S. coast all the way down to the Bahamas”  and how she keeps referring to it as the original shark from Jaws…the one Roy Scheider blew up into a billion chum chunks).

Fear Street Trilogy (Netflix)

Arriving without almost any fanfare, Netflix’s Fear Street Trilogy did something kind of unprecedented for a film trilogy. Each fully-realized entry was released a week after the previous one. And by fully-realized, I mean they were very much separate films, each with their own characters and storylines, but they all wove together to tell the bigger story of Sarah Fier and the death curse she placed upon the town of Shadyside before being hanged as a witch.

Very loosely based on the late 80s/early 90s teen horror novels of the same name, the Fear Street movies take a reverse chronological approach to their storytelling, as evidenced in their titles: Fear Street 1994, Fear Street 1978 and Fear Street 1666.

What’s great about these films is that each one gives us a different, era-specific horror experience. 1994, which also serves as the wrap-around story, is our Scream-esque entry, full of horror-savvy teens stalked by a familiar trope (the masked killer who may or may not be someone they know), 1978 serves up some original Friday the 13^th “summer camp massacre” madness and 1666 takes us to a village in the pre-Salem witch trials era, where superstition and demonic paranoia have already begun take root, and hide an even deeper evil bubbling below the surface (…literally).

I did find each installment to be a tad overlong, some details of the overall story muddled, and was dismayed by the lack of likeable characters (even those you should be rooting for). However, there was still a lot to love, including a fun slasher free-for-all sequence, some inventive and surprising kills, and in the end all three entries provided me with some mindless popcorn-munching fun (Best: 1978).

American Horror Story (season 10)

AHS has always been a bit of a hit-or-miss with me, and seeing as how season 10 just launched, the jury is still out on this one for me. So far, it’s reads  like a collection of familiar tropes:

A husband, wife and their young daughter temporarily move to a serene, but eerie, small town where their futures are dependent on them staying put for an extended period (he’s a screenwriter who needs to get over his slump and deliver a script for a new pilot, she’s launching her own interior design business, and redecorating the house they’re staying in is her first job). Their precocious progeny is a violin-playing perfectionist, and while she looks like a cute tween, her personality is very much “weary 35-year old who missed her last therapy session”.

The town also seems to have a rather large vampire population, noticeable due to their identical bald and be-fanged looks, their shared preference for dramatic overcoats, excessive hissing, and their tendency to stalk, chase, and attack this family with the goal of ripping out their throats.

We’ll have to see how it plays out over the next few episodes, but for now, it’s on my Summer Screams list.

Resident Evil 7

My Xbox backlog is so massive that I’m usually a full game behind when it comes to franchise installments, and Resident Evil is no different. RE 8 has been out for a while now, but I’m currently only a couple of chapters in on RE 7. But this is definitely a case of “better late than never” because RE 7 is all about going back to the basics of the survival horror genre, with you creeping around creepy houses looking for creepy clues while avoiding death at the hands of creepy creatures. Much scarier and more satisfying than the action/shooter-driven campaigns of RE 5 and 6, I’ve been playing this one bit by bit, so I can savour its scares over time.

Hammer Horror Puzzle

And then there were those times when I just wanted to chill out and do a jigsaw puzzle. And even then, Horror was there for me.

Halloween Treats

(…or rather, “Halloween (2018)” Treats)

As Halloween (2018) topped the box office charts for the 2nd week, it was pretty much a given that I would make my annual “Halloween Treats” post about Halloween (2018) treats (aka Easter Eggs, but that starts us on a path of holiday cross-pollination that I don’t want to go down).

Oh, and before we begin, SPOILERS AHOY!

Now, there’s already been many takes on this topic in the interwebs, especially concerning the major Halloween (1978) throwbacks that abound in Halloween (2018).

Seeing as how this is a sequel to the original Halloween and therefore a de facto remake of Halloween II (1981), it’s only natural that these two movies have the most, and most obvious, throwbacks and nods (the opening credits, the classroom scene, Laurie falling off the balcony, then disappearing, Michael stealing Mrs. Elrod’s knife and then killing the girl next door). But what I want to focus on is the smaller nods, references, and similarities in the film – but not just to the original Halloween, but to ALL of ’em. That’s right, I dove in and made it my mission to find links to every film in the franchise (even Halloween III!) and I think I kinda succeeded.

Anyway to make matters less (more?) confusing, from here on in, I’m going to refer to Halloween (2018) as H40 (shorthand for Halloween (40 Years Later), of course).

So, let’s dig in!

First up, we’ll get the big ones out of the way. These are the ones that any Halloween fan would have immediately recognized upon seeing them.

HALLOWEEN (1978) 

In the previously-mentioned classroom scene, the voice of the teacher is PJ Soles – Lynda from the OG Halloween.

Michael hides in the backseat of car and kills a boy as he gets in the driver’s seat, echoing Annie’s death in the original (both scenes are shown through a fogged up windshield).

In Halloween, Michael bursts out of a downstairs closet, impales Bob to a wall, goes upstairs wearing a ghost sheet and kills Lynda. In H40, Michael bursts out of an upstairs closet, kills Lynda and puts her body under a ghost sheet, then goes downstairs and impales her boyfriend to the wall.

The wide-brimmed hat hanging on the wall in Laurie’s house is exactly the same as one hanging on her bedroom wall in the original.

HALLOWEEN II (1981)

In H40, the notion of Laurie Strode being the sister of Michael Myers is debunked as a myth. This was a key plot point of the original franchise and was first revealed in Halloween II.

In Halloween II, Michael watches as a girl leaving a Halloween party complains to her friend how she’s going to be late for her nursing shift as they get into her car. In H40, Michael watches as a girl going to Halloween party dressed up as a nurse complains to her boyfriend how they’re going to be late as they get into his car.

Mrs. Elrod, whose knife Michael stole in Halloween II, gets a literal shout-out as the owner of the yard with motion lights.

In both films, a police office leans over Michael’s supposedly dead body only to get offed by a surprise slice from a doctor’s scalpel.

In both films, Michael gets “killed” when the room he is in is filled with gas and set on fire.

And now, we start to dig a little deeper. The following are quick call-outs, subtle references, and story similarities that some Halloween fans may or may not have picked up on. And some of them may not have even been intentional by the filmmakers of H40, but just naturally happened to line up with previous Halloween movies (at least in my opinion) which honestly, is still pretty cool.

Except where mentioned, the following examples are all things that happen in H40 as well as the indicated film.

HALLOWEEN III: Season of the Witch

Reference: A trio of trick-or-treating kids can be seen wearing the Silver Shamrock “Halloween Three” masks.

HALLOWEEN 4: The Return of Michael Myers 

Michael escapes during a prison transfer.

Michael kills a garage mechanic at a gas station and steals his coveralls.

A mirror showing a reflection of Michael is shattered.

HALLOWEEN 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers

Comic-relief police officers assigned to watch over potential targets of Michael’s are discovered dead in their patrol car.

Fleeing from Michael’s car-side carnage a plucky teen takes off through the woods in a remote area of Haddonfield.

HALLOWEEN: The Curse of Michael Myers

One of Smith’s Grove’s esteemed psychiatrists turns out to be a completely bonkers, murderous, Michael-enabler.

HALLOWEEN H20: Twenty Years Later 

Michael enters a women’s bathroom and terrorizes a woman in one of the stalls.

Laurie on lockdown: In H20, Laurie seals herself and Michael inside Hillcrest by closing the school’s iron gates and busting the control panel. In H40, Laurie seals herself and Michael in her house by lowering iron gates hidden in each room.

HALLOWEEN: Resurrection 

“Investigative reporters” for a new-ish form of media (webcasts/podcasts) try to manipulate others into helping them uncover information about what makes Michael the way he is.

The Myers house in Resurrection and Laurie’s house in H40 both have hidden underground bunkers with barred-off exits.

Reference: The side of a van at the gas station reads “Resurrection Church”

Special Bonus Section: Zombie References 

I’m not really a fan of Rob Zombie’s Halloween films, but even I caught two obvious, brutal references. So in the spirit of the season…

In H40, Michael beats a man to death in a public washroom like in Zombie’s Halloween (2007) and then Michael’s foot stomps a guy’s skull to mush, as similarly seen in Zombie’s Halloween 2 (2009).

Well, that’s it for my list of Halloween (2018) treats, and I’m sure there’s more just waiting to be uncovered, but for now I’ll just leave you with one last shout-out:

“Do as I say!”

-Laurie Strode’s signature call to action in Halloween (1978), Halloween: H20 (1998) and Halloween (2018).

 

Happy Halloween, Everyone!

 

 

Choose Your Own HALLOWEEN Adventure

Earlier this month, the trailer for the latest film in the long-running HALLOWEEN franchise had its unveiling, and along with that came the information that it would be serving as a direct sequel to the original HALLOWEEN (1978).

Now, long-running franchises will often have “non-canon” installments. Sometimes they’re meant as an intentional new direction, sometimes they come as a result being disregarded by a subsequent film (for example, Superman Returns wisely side-stepped the existence of Superman III and Superman IV), but either way, it usually just means that if you were to sit down to watch the whole franchise, you could skip over an installment or two and not have it affect the main storyline.

But the HALLOWEEN franchise takes it one step further. As of right now, it has managed to create multiple divergent storylines within its franchise. Indeed, you can easily say that HALLOWEEN has now become the Choose Your Own Adventure of film franchises.

Partly due to original HALLOWEEN heroine, Jamie Lee Curtis’s unexpected agreement to return on multiple occasions to her most iconic role, selections from the 11 films in the HALLOWEEN franchise can be viewed in such a way that you can have up to 6 possible storylines based purely on what direction you want the story to go…just like the much cherished CYOA books of many of our youths.

How so, you ask?

Well, you give a [SPOILER WARNING] and then you start just like this…

(Tip: follow the orange path you choose by jumping to it’s matching green heading)*

It is a dark and foreboding night. An owl hoots in the distance. The only other sound is from the wind’s occasional rustling of the fall foliage. In other words, it’s a perfect time for a HALLOWEEN marathon! But now you must decide: Do you want your film experience featuring the masked killer Michael Myers to be…

…launched under the ground-breaking, atmospheric and skillful direction of John Carpenter? If so, then start with HALLOWEEN (1978).

…seen through the grubby and gory eyes of director Rob Zombie? If so, then start with HALLOWEEN (2007).

…a one-and-done film free of any appearance, reference or relation to Michael Myers? If so, then skip to HALLOWEEN III: Season of the Witch.

*NOTE—if you were one of those people who just always skipped to the end of Choose Your Own Adventures, then do what you know and skip to the TL;DR section below for a round-up of the films in each storyline.

HALLOWEEN (1978): Michael Myers, imprisoned in a mental institution since he was 6 years old for the brutal murder of his sister, escapes on the eve of the 15^th anniversary of her death – Halloween, 1978. He heads back to his hometown of Haddonfield where he begins stalking a small group of teens and eventually kills three of them. One survivor, babysitter Laurie Strode, fights off his repeated attacks until he is shot six times by his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis, and plummets off a second story balcony.

If you want Michael to escape and continue his night of terror in Haddonfield, move on to HALLOWEEN II (1981)

or

If you want Michael to get caught, skip to HALLOWEEN (2018)

HALLOWEEN II (1981): continuing from HALLOWEEN (1978): Michael Myers, having survived being impaled with a knitting needle, poked in the eye with a hanger, stabbed with a butcher knife, six gunshots to the chest and a two-story fall off a balcony, shakes it off and casually makes his way to Haddonfield Memorial, where his only surviving victim, Laurie Strode has been taken. While Michael slices through the hospital’s graveyard crew, Dr. Loomis learns that Laurie Strode is Michael’s baby sister (who was adopted after Michael’s parents were killed shortly after Michael was incarcerated for killing his sister). Realizing that Michael has returned to Haddonfield specifically to kill Laurie, he races to the hospital, managing to save Laurie once again before it’s too late. This time around, he fills an operating room with flammable gas, flicks a lighter and blows him and Michael right the hell up. Michael, fully on fire, stumbles out of the room and then falls to ground, motionless.

If you want Michael and Dr. Loomis to both survive, then follow their saga through HALLOWEEN 4: The Return of Michael Myers, HALLOWEEN 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and HALLOWEEN: The Curse of Michael Myers

or

If want Dr. Loomis to survive the fire and Michael to be presumed dead, jump to HALLOWEEN H20: Twenty Years Later

HALLOWEEN (2007): Sit in on the story of Michael Myers’ childhood and watch as this cherub faced moppet develops an interest in torture and brutal violence that reaches its apex when he kills a bully, then his sister, her boyfriend and his stepfather all on one Halloween night. Incarcerated in a juvie loony bin, Michael manages to kill a nurse, which finally drives his Mom to suicide. Michael then grows up to be human giant Tyler Mane and makes a bloody breakout on Halloween Eve to return to Haddonfield. Determined to find his baby sister Boo, (who now goes by the name her adoptive parents gave her, Laurie Strode) Michael extracts gory, rage-fueled carnage on anyone who even glances his way. He is ultimately shot by Laurie herself, since his psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis, is not much of a reliable nor noble person.

Still alive, Michael is taken away in an ambulance to HALLOWEEN II (2009), where he escapes when the ambulance hits a cow. We then go to the hospital where Laurie has been taken for what is obviously a dream, because it’s a quite-well executed and suspenseful sequence where Michael stalks Laurie through the hospital corridors, stairwells and outside grounds. But then Laurie wakes up and is now permanently grumpy and whiney. Michael spends a year as a killer hobo before he returns to his quest of reclaiming his sister Laurie-Boo. As Michael is driven on by visions of his dead mother and a white horse to brutally massacre an assortment of redneck stereotypes and other unlikable people, you only have yourself to blame for watching this ugly mess. THE END

HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH: A doctor uncovers a sinister plot by an evil Halloween mask maker that involves a ritual requiring the sacrifice of thousands of children. To execute his plot, his company’s top-selling Halloween masks (“The Halloween Three”) each have a built-in death device to be triggered by a special TV signal on Halloween night. The doctor joins forces with a missing mask retailer’s daughter and they struggle to prevent the Halloween carnage from happening. Do they succeed? Unclear. THE END

HALLOWEEN 4,5,6 (Return, Revenge, Curse) continuing from HALLOWEEN II (1981): It’s 10 years after that fateful Halloween night that ended with a hospital fire that crippled Dr. Loomis and put Michael Myers into a coma. In that time, survivor Laurie Strode got married, had a daughter (Jamie), then died in a car crash with her husband. During a patient transfer, Michael wakes from his coma, makes a bloody escape, and returns to Haddonfield to kill his niece, 9 year-old Jamie.

He is pursued yet again by Dr. Loomis as he slices his way through Haddonfield but is ultimately unsuccessful in killing Jamie, so he returns the following year (HALLOWEEN 5) to do it all over again. He is briefly caught and taken into custody before a mysterious man in black ambushes the police station, releases Michael and kidnaps Jamie.

Seven years later (HALLOWEEN 6) we find out that Jamie was kidnapped by a cult that protects Michael and we also learn that the method to Michael’s madness all has to do with some Celtic ritual that has ties to his bloodline. Dr. Loomis and Tommy Doyle (Laurie’s babysitting charge from 1978) team up, track down the cult and finally, if not ambiguously, put an end to Michael’s reign of terror. THE END

HALLOWEEN H20: Twenty Years Later continuing from HALLOWEEN II (1981): It’s 20 years after that fateful Halloween night that ended with a hospital fire that crippled Dr. Loomis. Michael Myers was presumed dead as his body was never recovered, but that didn’t stop Laurie Strode from going into hiding. In fact, she faked her death, changed her name and moved to California, where she had a son and became headmistress of a secluded private school. But now, Michael—alive and well all these years—finds this information out by breaking into the house of the now-deceased Dr. Loomis, stealing his files and killing his former live-in nurse (the same nurse who was there with him when Michael escaped in 1978!). Michael then makes his way across the country to the private school, kills some students and faculty and attacks Laurie and her son. Laurie, who has had ENOUGH, takes charge of things, goes head-to-head with Michael and eventually beheads him, ending the terror once and for all.

If you want Michael to really be dead so Laurie can finally have closure, then this is THE END

or

If you want Michael to escape death (because of the worst case of mistaken identity ever) and then tie up loose ends before gaining a new motive for murder, go watch HALLOWEEN Resurrection

HALLOWEEN Resurrection continuing from HALLOWEEN H20: Laurie has been hospitalized due the trauma from her realizing the man she beheaded was not her serial killer brother, but an EMT who Michael attacked and then placed, unconscious, in his mask and coveralls. Eventually, Laurie is found once again by Michael. But she’s prepared for him this time and has an elaborate trap waiting for him on the hospital roof. Unfortunately, a moment’s hesitation proves to be fatal for Laurie as Michael stabs her, sending her swan diving off the roof. Michael then returns to live like a squatter in his now-condemned childhood home until a live webcast featuring college students investigating the “mystery of America’s most brutal mass murderer” sets up shop at chez Myers, giving Michael a new reason – and victims – for some bloody Halloween havoc. THE END

HALLOWEEN (2018) continued from HALLOWEEN (1978): Michael Myers has been imprisoned since 1978, having been caught shortly after killing three teens in Haddonfield on Halloween night. 40 years later, he escapes to take up where he left off, by going after “the victim who got away”, Laurie Strode. But Laurie—now a grandmother—has been prepping herself all these years, survivalist-style, for just this moment. How will the confrontation end? Find out this October. THE END…?

 

TL;DR

Choose Your Own HALLOWEEN Adventure! 11 films…

…six possible storylines!

 

 

 

Halloween Treats: FANGORIA Flashback

Recently my LCS (local comicbook store) had something interesting tucked away at the end of its new releases rack. A handful of vintage, shrink-wrapped FANGORIA magazines, from their first few years of publication (a time before I had even heard of the magazine, let alone was old enough to buy them)!

Few people outside of its target audience are familiar with Fangoria magazine. But for horror-movie heads in the 80s and 90s, Fangoria was sacred text. In that pre-internet era, it was the ONLY source of horror movie news, special effects features and behind-the-scenes info and interviews.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t always meant to be that way. Originally conceived of as FANTASTICA, it was intended to be a companion to Sci-Fi mag STARLOG, but focusing more on fantasy, freaks and creatures. A legal wrangle prompted the last-minute name change to FANGORIA and cover star Godzilla helped launch issue #1. One year and six issues later, Fangoria still hadn’t caught on, and was losing money with each publication. A creative shift came next that ramped-up the focus on horror (as those were the features that were proving most popular with readers) and that’s when things started to click. And Fango never looked back.

It surged in popularity through the 80s and 90s, and, quite amazingly for such a niche magazine, it managed to survive and thrive in the post-internet era. The Fango empire grew to include such offshoots as: a multi-city series of horror movie conventions (Weekend of Horrors/Trinity of Terrors), an annual horror awards ceremony (the Chainsaw Awards) and a film production/distribution company, (Fangoria Films). Unfortunately, not all good things can last forever and Fango ceased its regular print production in 2015. But the Fango spirit still lives on (mainly through its still-active website Fangoria.com).

Now, back to my back issue discovery. I picked up a trio of these flashback fright mags, and later noticed  they were issues #2, #12, and #22 – each published about a year and a half apart – and noted that taken together, they provide nice little snapshots of how Fangoria found its footing during its early years on the cusp of the modern horror film boom. So, in honour of all the Halloweens and other times of the year that Fangoria provided heaping helpings of horror, join me as I take a look back at the early years.

Issue #2, October 1979

• Cover – Evidence of Fangoria’s non-horror roots abound, from the tagline “Monsters, Aliens and Bizarre Creatures” to the Doctor Who pull-out poster, to a feature on the fantasy art of Carl Lundgren.
• New releases – Creature feature Prophecy and the sci-fi tinged Phantasm check off the current horror boxes for this ish.
• Nostalgia alert – Fango didn’t just cover contemporary movies. In fact a large portion of its page count in the early years came from nostalgia features, as this issue exemplifies. In addition to the War of the Worlds piece featured on the cover, this issue also featured deep dives into ’30s classics Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein. 
• Shape of things to come – In the Postal Zone letters column an editorial reply to a fan confirmed that “Horror will continue as our main concern”
• Shape of things not to come – Elsewhere in the Postal Zone, Fango confirms that the next JAWS sequel will be titled National Lampoon’s JAWS III, People: 0 and is to be co-produced by the teams behind Animal House and the JAWS films. Obviously that sequel never came to fruition and instead, 4 years later, we got JAWS 3-D.
• Flashback fun –  Upcoming projects mentioned include blurbs about John Landis’ , American Werewolf in London and acclaimed “young director” John Carpenter’s The Fog, the follow-up to his mega-hit Halloween.

Issue #12, April 1981

• Knightriders (George Romero’s knights-on-motorcycles flick), Clash of the Titans and a profile of a Warner Bros. animator prove that there’s still a mixed bag of genres being covered.
• Nostalgia alert – A Roger Corman interview and a look back at the gimmick films of William Castle
• New releases – Friday the 13^th Part II gets the horror spotlight here, with other contemporary fright features spotlighting the Michael Caine thriller The Hand and an interview with director Tobe Hooper, fresh off The Funhouse.
• Flashback fun – Director Steve Miner on his directorial debut, Friday the 13th Part II: “…even if it were a huge bomb, which I know it won’t be…” (an obviously true prediction, but doubtful that even the confident Miner would have predicted that his sequel would be the first of a franchise that would eventually include 9 sequels, a cross-over and a reboot)
• Now filming – Announced as “currently filming” is a little film based on a Phillip Dick novel called Blade Runner.

Issue #22, October 1982

• Cover – Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Friday the 13th Part III, Creepshow – by virtue of the cover alone, you can see that Fango has now pretty much embraced the horror-heavy focus that would remain for the rest of its run.
• Still room for more – The non-horror spotlight shines it diminishing light on  The Beastmaster and Pink Floyd’s The Wall
• The hostess with the mostest! – Elvira, Mistress of the Dark gets an “introduction” article, profiling the television host of the then Southern Cal-broadcast-only Movie Macabre.
• Paging Dr. Loomis – The push behind Halloween III is quite amazing, everyone is all gung-ho on this non-Michael Myers non-sequel as being the start of turning the Halloween movies into an anthology franchise (and we all know how that turned out – HIII flopped, angered fans and caused the series to go dormant for 6 years while Jason and Freddy dominated the slasher scene, until they finally dusted off Michael’s white mask and let him loose in Haddonfield once again)
• Silver Shamrocks – But still, being able to order the masks that are central to the plot of Halloween III, was a pretty sweet marketing tie-in (obviously aimed at collectors, but I wonder if any parents actually shelled out the dough to get some of these for their kids– especially given what happens in the movies to kids who wear the masks….)

And that’s about it for this FANGORIA Flashback! So, I guess all that’s left to say is…“ ‘Fangs’ for the memories!” (ouch. Sorry.)

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Treats: Surprisingly Good Late-Series Horror Sequels

The horror genre is easily the most prolific when it comes to sequels. Unfortunately, quantity rarely means quality, and most horror franchises tend to see diminishing returns with each lackluster entry. So it’s always a treat to stumble across a late-series entry that’s actually better than would ever be expected. So if you’re looking for some such treats this Halloween, here are a few you can check out.

Final Destination 5

The unique thing that sets apart the Final Destination films from other horror fare has also been its downfall. In the first FD, the idea of turning Death itself into a supernatural slasher (determined to right the scales in his favour when a teen’s premonition saves him and his classmates from a plane explosion where they would have surely perished), was original and exciting. But with each sequel simply repeating the same conceit with different characters, it quickly became old hat – not only to audiences, but to people within the movies themselves. The characters in the fourth installment don’t even bat an eye when they find out Death is stalking them, they just dutifully move the action along from one high-concept deathtrap set piece to another.

So it was surprising that when Final Destination 5 came out, there was some obvious effort on the filmmaker’s part to kick the quality back up a few notches. And it worked. Suspense oozes out of every deathtrap sequence and the signature opening catastrophe was stellar – second only to the highway pile-up of FD 2. The collapse of a huge suspension bridge is well staged and choreographed and the special effects are incredible (and personally, a little jarring – since the bridge that was used in the film is Lion’s Gate Bridge in Vancouver, which is just a mere 5 minutes away from where I live, and I always think of it collapsing whenever I drive over it now).

Another plus is that the film tries to mix up the whole “Death is killing the survivors in the order they should’ve died” by adding in a ghoulish twist – that the survivors may be able to avoid death by Death by killing someone else in their place. And to top it all off, the 3D work is handled very well, with set-ups designed specifically for 3D filming – no muddy, post-conversion 3D here.

Saw VI

I liked Saw. I did not care for Saw II. And I have no idea why I saw every subsequent Saw film even though I’m not a fan of torture and the copious flashback reveals made each film just more and more muddled. I guess I just kept hoping that one of the sequels would at least be able to hold up to the first one. Thankfully, it finally paid off with Saw VI.

Sorry, you’ll have to wait – this ride’s all full.

Instead of deadly games master Jigsaw or his minions selecting immoral or damaged souls to “learn the value of life” by placing them in deathtraps (which is about as morally righteous as Jason Voorhees narrowing his victim list to only trespassing campers and annoying teens), this time the action is centered on a person whose day-to-day life involves playing god with people’s lives. A health insurance agent whose personal selection policy favours the healthy over the ill has resulted in the deaths of a number of individuals who were denied coverage and treatment (including Jigsaw himself). After being kidnapped, he awakens to find himself trapped in a deadly funhouse of terror traps along with six of his coworkers and associates, who are strapped to a literal carousel of death. He now has to make his way through the funhouse by juggling the fates of the lives of those six just as he juggled with the lives of every sick person who he denied coverage. And just for an extra kick in the ‘nads, he is being observed by the wife and child of one such man who recently died.

Hmm…a Saw film that is actually comments on a current and controversial topic (health care)? And does so while offering some great suspense-filled set-pieces? Yep, there you have it – Saw VI, the best of all the Saw sequels.

Halloween: H20

Go away – we have no more candy!

I’ve already mentioned the film officially known as Halloween: Twenty Years Later in a few previous posts, so I’ll just sum it up quickly: this seventh installment of the Halloween franchise disregarded sequels 4-6, brought back ultimate final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and had her face off once again with the murderous, masked Michael Myers in a direct follow-up to the first two Halloween films, which is easily the best sequel since Halloween II. With a focus that leans heavily on suspense-over-gore that was the original film’s trademark, the only quibble here is that it’s too short. The set-up seems a tad rushed and an extra 10 minutes before the final act would have been welcome. But no deal breaker is this! I’ll take a brisk Halloween: H20 over the other late sequels or either of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remakes any day.

Honourable (Video Game) Mention

Silent Hill Downpour

The survival horror franchise that is Silent Hill has seen many ups and downs since it’s high-water mark of Silent Hill 2: Shattered Dreams. When subsequent installments like Silent Hill: The Room and Silent Hill Homecoming didn’t do much to thrill fans or critics, not much was expected from eighth entry Silent Hill Downpour.

Gladly that was not the case. In a serious effort to bring back the creepiness and chills that have been missing from the survival horror genre, Silent Hill Downpour wrapped its single-protagonist main story in the pseudo-open world setting of the town of Silent Hill itself – complete with a number of optional side quests and stories to explore. These side quests, which involve solving mysteries connected to the macabre history of the town, is what actually provides most of the chills of the game, and it was just great to see Silent Hill (the town) being treated like an actual character instead of just a backdrop. Sure there were a few shortcomings with the game itself, but again – we’re talking about Silent Hill and about surprisingly good late-series horror entries, and that means that the box next to Silent Hill Downpour is the one to check off.

Happy Halloween Everyone!