I had the opportunity to catch the latest Halloween movie and I have to say it lived up to the hype. The decision to set the film immediately after the first was, in my estimation, a brilliant one.
It’s interesting to think about that decision and what it means for fans of the series. It’s as if Halloween occupies multiple worlds in some multiverse. In one, the series essentially ended with Halloween H20 when Laurie Strode chopped off Michael’s head. (I choose to believe that Halloween: Resurrection exists in no universe). The other drops all the baggage altogether and supposes that Michael was taken into custody at the end of the original movie and has been in an insane asylum ever since. Laurie went on with her life, of course, but was forever scared. And she has been waiting and preparing for the day that Michael comes home.
Halloween (2018), of course, isn’t Halloween. Nothing could be. Halloween broke barriers and broke the mold. I can only imagine what seeing it in theaters must have been like, just as I can only imagine what it must have been like to see Star Wars for the first time. But this is a triumph. Watch it, and watch for all the call backs and hat tips spread throughout. It’s a joy.
***
I finally got around to watching the third episode of The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. It was better, but still below the potential of the show. The show is just so trite, so contrived. For a show where the hero is a member of the devil’s own personal coven, you’d think things would be less black and white. And yet, ever character is a caricature, every plot outside of the main one utterly conventional.
For example, Harvey, Sabrina’s boyfriend, has a father who wants him to follow him into the mines and give up his silly dream of being an artist, and of course he expresses this view in the harshest way possible. He’s presented as a tyrant, true to stereotype. Then there’s the c-plot involving the close-minded, ultra-conservative, anti-woman principal’s decision to ban certain books from the library. Our heroes manage to get the school board to reconsider this decision, but it will take three months. Then we find out one of the characters, the one that most wants to read the books, has ocular degeneration and will be rendered blind…in three months.
Of course.
Episode Three was good enough for me to continue on into the show, but I’m concerned that the fundamental laziness at the heart of the series won’t go away anytime soon. And that’s a shame and an opportunity wasted. It could have been so much better.
Beware The Shadows 