“When a ghost shows up in a story, it is often a way to talk about what cannot be said, what cannot be acknowledged — whether that is a repressed desire, a family secret, an unpunished crime or a genocide that some do not want to reckon with.”
– Kaitlyn Greenidge writing in the NEW YORK TIMES, “I BELIEVE IN GHOSTS”
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City officials have banned clown costumes because they are too scary..
According to the city’s event page, a free Halloween party bash will feature fun activities and snacks like cider and donuts
BUT NO CLOWNS…
Recreation Director Laurie Stasiak revealed that the reason they’ve banned clowns costumes is that they’re just too frightening for some children.
why? …they say they are just too scary.
Laurie Stasiak said in an email to the newspaper. “In the past few years many clown costumes have been given a very scary and evil look. Many scary and horror movies are centered around these types of characters. About 3 years [ago] there were national incidents in the news were people were dressing up as clowns and scaring people and in some cases assaulting them. Many people have phobias and anxiety about clowns. It’s because of this that we asked people not to dress up as clowns for this community event
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A couple says they were mock raped at the ‘Akron Fright Fest’ haunted house, didn’t sign waiver
Dateline Ohio:
“There was a man in a mask standing over my boyfriend, my boyfriend was on the edge and he was being pushed down,” said Sarah Lelonek.
“She comes over and yells, stop, what are you doing? That’s my boyfriend,” said Lelonek’s boyfriend Ryan Carr. “Not anymore, he’s mine now I’m going to rape him and then he started thrusting against me.”
The couple says this all went down at the Akron Fright Fest, which is housed on the Kim Tam Park property. They say this is not the special haunted house where you had to sign a waiver to enter, although they do offer a haunted house like that on the property.
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Halloween fans have been waiting for the moment.. John Carpenter retiring to assist in the re-creation, re-direction, re-imaging of the original 1978 classic 40 years later. Finally, it is being released in box offices nationwide. A few early releases occurred last night.
In estimates Friday morning, Universal/Miramax/Blumhouse’s Halloween is being projected by our industry sources at around $10M, which arguably is the second-best preview night for a horror pic after New Line’s It banked $13.5M from 3,500 theaters on Sept 7, 2017.
And being that I am not from an elite crowd of reporters or paid reviewers, I had to wait for the early showings Thursday evening.
….without further ado, spoilers included, my thoughts on HALLOWEEN 40.
Quite frankly.. they should have left it just be.
First the two main positive takeaways from the film: The soundtrack was amazing. John Carpenter’s modernized versions of the sounds of Halloween’s score was dynamic and at times an homage to the past coupled with breathtaking synthesized sounds of the modern era. It is not to be dismissed.. On a scale of ten, the soundtrack is a ten–the movie not so much.
The other part of the film that I absolutely positive adored and loved was the opening credit roll .. (NOT THE OPENING SCENE, we will get there in one minute) ..The opening credits featured the piano version of the Halloween theme blasting in stereo across the theater with a lifeless smashed pumpkin slowly coming back to shape — almost a metaphor that the “Shape” is rising again. Halloween fans will most assuredly love that they began the film the same way the original began, with the pumpkin and music. It created an immediate eerie feel in the theater.. people’s tension, watching the credits roll with that classic song in forcing itself into their heads like a freight train, was palpable.
This movie, it would seem, was going to be something.
And something it sure was.
I gave the soundtrack a ten out of ten earlier.
I will give the movie a 2 out of 10. It would have been a 1 if it wasn’t for Jamie Lee Curtis’ performance.
The movie’s premise opens with this: Podcasters somehow were able to snatch the original Shatner mask away from their “friends at the attorney general’s office” .. The unlikely leak only goes further as the newer doctor who takes over for Loomis allow the podcasters to enter the grounds of Smiths Grove to interview Michael Myers. He allows them to hold up the mask to him..he allows them to rile up the entire set of patients who are chained to the concrete ground. The scene was ridiculous … the plot line of podcasters snatching the mask was actually just stupid for me, for the lack of a better word.
We travel now to the world of Laure Strode. She suffers from the trauma of 1978. She has also built a fortress and collected guns in order to battle Myers when he comes back — she lived her life knowing he would apparently.
Her family is a wreck with mental strife.. the clear indications of PTSD are evident. Her performance in the film was formidable. She was good. She was the only piece of acting that saved the movie from a downright 0 out of 10 for me!
Cutting to the chase, a bus crashed. Myers escaped. The podcasters are killed. He gets his mask back. Myers kills yet another gas station attendant and gets his suit back. He stalks the neighborhood during trick or treating…
Here are where two problems start and never stop.
In the original Halloween, the magic was not seeing Myers’ face. It was knowing that the SHAPE stalked ..that the Shape watched.. that the Shape took measured time to plot out a strategy of fearful killing. In this film? He randomly goes house to house racking up a largely ridiculous high amount of bodies in his path. Murders for no reason.. murders just or the sake of pleasing the audience of blood thirsty gore fans that will likely litter this weekend’s movie theaters.
The other portion that, maybe someone will debate me on, is Myers’ first murder A child. Horror fans and critics have long debated how children and death should be treated in movies. This film utilizes that and immediately showcases Myers as a heartless demon who will even kill a child to get where he needs to go. If the movie was good, I could forgive that. The movie is abominable, so I can only further say that the kid-kill was a misstep in a series of them.
Flash forward to the movie sequence of events, which gets even more ridiculous: A set of comedy lines in the midst of tragedy did not seem to flow. Neither did the oddly choreographed high school dance scene that left viewers wondering why they couldn’t be in a high school that looked like that. A doctor who decides he wants to put on Michael Myers’ mask and kill..and an ending scene that seemed so rushed and so not inclusive of the nostalgia of the original.
And what do you have?
In my humble opinion you have a train wreck of rubbish.
Suffering garbage that stunk the theater to high heaven.
But an amazing soundtrack. A 10 out of 10. The new theme songs for modern Halloween! But sadly not the movie to go with it.
This season, if you want a good scare, check out Netflix’ HAUNTED HILLS HOUSE. I will review that further once my bingeing on it completes.
🙂
John Carpenter’s iconic 1978 film Halloweenreconfigured the horror film genre, inspiring multiple sequels and remakes, including a new installation in the franchise due out this month. In episode three of the eight-part podcast Halloween Unmasked, host Amy Nicholson takes a deeper look at the horror masterpiece and develops a psychological profile of Michael Myers. Here she’s joined by Dr. Anthony Tobia, who teaches college classes that examine the mental illnesses of killers from classic slasher flicks. Taking into account the mental state of the movie’s masked killer, Tobia suggests a diagnosis, and even calls into question the methods of Myers’ movie psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (played by Donald Pleasence). By looking at the origins of the phrase “serial killer”—which wasn’t coined until afterHalloween was released—real-world serial killers, and less grounded explanations of Myers’ murderous impulses from the franchise and its novels,Halloween Unmasked is the perfect podcast to listen to leading up to Halloween, and even better for augmenting your marathon-watch of the original movie series in preparation for the release of the newest Halloween.
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Star of the New ‘Halloween’ Says He Got Murder Tips from an Actual Hitman:
James Jude Courtney told Vanity Fair in a new interview that he met a former contract killer through a mutual friend back in the early 2010s. The man was allegedly freshly out of prison and wanted Courtney to help him write his life story, so they wound up living together for a while. At one point, Courtney took the guy to see the Cuba Gooding, Jr. movie The Hit List, and he was less than impressed.“We walked out of the screening, and he said to me, ‘Jimmy, it’s a really nice movie, but that’s not how you kill people,’” Courtney explained to Vanity Fair.According to Courtney, the guy promised to “show” him how actual hitmen work—but since the guy was seemingly retired and had already done his time, this probably didn’t mean literally bringing him around on hits. It probably (hopefully) just involved some advice and conversation. But in any case, it sounds like it really helped Courtney get into the mind of a murderer
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Nick Castle, the original Michael Myers, puts on his ‘Halloween’ mask once more:
While actor/stuntman James Jude Courtney is the main man in the mask now, handling the role’s physical rigors, Castle cameos as “The Shape” (how Michael was billed in the 1978 film’s credits) in a crucial scene where Laurie finally sees him again in an upstairs window, on the prowl. She shoots the window out, but it turns out she just saw his reflection in a mirror, which shatters.
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JAMIE LEE CURTIS.. the scream queen. Back on the cover of Entertainment WEEKLY thanks to the John Carpenter re-imagining re-make re-creation of the original 1978 classic HALLOWEEN..
The movie has some hoping for a $65 mil opening weekend.. or more?? $80 Mil? One prognosticator who clearly is in camp Carpenter wrote that the movie has the chance on scoring a cool $100 mil..
But one question may be this: How fun will HALLOWEEN be?
The original was cutting edge. It’s tough to be cutting edge with 40 years of horror creations that have attempted to duplicate the efforts of Debra Hill and John Carpenter on a low budget with a piano in the 1970s…
This from the EW story is interesting:
Green insists Halloween lovers need not worry. “We’re really trying to honor Carpenter’s vision,” says the filmmaker. “Danny said a really smart thing: ‘Until there’s killings, there’s no jokes. Let’s not give anybody anything to laugh at until we’ve scared them s—less.’”
Humor free.
no frills.. no fun. just kills and runs..
Time will tell if these efforts to play to the darker side of Halloween lure will be fruitful in the form of dollars and cents. And sense.
