Halloween is a ten-part series of wildly varying quality. There's the lone masterpiece (Halloween), the tired cash-grab (Halloween II), the failed experiment (Halloween III: Season of the Witch), the successful attempt to bring Michael back (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers), a lame late slasher that came close to interring him for good (Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers), an ugly, tired mess (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers), the film that rounded off the franchise (Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later), and last and definitely least Resurrection, the franchise killer.
Then there's the Rob Zombie reboot of the series. Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009) were not successful films by any standard, but they were absolutely not the timid commercial fare we've come to expect of remakes: they were bold, crass and very, very bloody. It's for this reason that I'm an unashamed Zombie apologist. After the feeble, increasingly creatively bankrupt slasher fare Dimension Films had served up for years, Zombie's films were the work of an auteur, a wake-up call to a horror industry mired in repetition and slick, vapid gore. ( I've compiled my reviews of all ten individual Halloween films here.)
What makes the Halloween series different? It's not marked by high body counts and creatively nasty tool murders like Friday the 13th, nor by the dreamscapes of A Nightmare on Elm Street. A good Halloween film relies on mood and the strength of its characters. Most Halloween films are not, in fact, good: with hindsight I consider only the original, 4, and the Zombie films worth anyone's time. (We're grading on a curve here.) But cash-grabs and mercenary sequels have always fascinated me, too. There's something mesmerising about pathetic excuses for films, and it makes us appreciate the good bits all the more.
Despite mercenary sequels, Halloween is worth sticking with
Halloween is a ten-part series of wildly varying quality. There's the lone masterpiece (Halloween), the tired cash-grab (Halloween II), the failed experiment (Halloween III: Season of the Witch), the successful attempt to bring Michael back (Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers), a lame late slasher that came close to interring him for good (Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers), an ugly, tired mess (Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers), the film that rounded off the franchise (Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later), and last and definitely least Resurrection, the franchise killer.
Then there's the Rob Zombie reboot of the series. Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009) were not successful films by any standard, but they were absolutely not the timid commercial fare we've come to expect of remakes: they were bold, crass and very, very bloody. It's for this reason that I'm an unashamed Zombie apologist. After the feeble, increasingly creatively bankrupt slasher fare Dimension Films had served up for years, Zombie's films were the work of an auteur, a wake-up call to a horror industry mired in repetition and slick, vapid gore. ( I've compiled my reviews of all ten individual Halloween films here
.)
What makes the Halloween series different? It's not marked by high body counts and creatively nasty tool murders like Friday the 13th, nor by the dreamscapes of A Nightmare on Elm Street. A good Halloween film relies on mood and the strength of its characters. Most Halloween films are not, in fact, good: with hindsight I consider only the original, 4, and the Zombie films worth anyone's time. (We're grading on a curve here.) But cash-grabs and mercenary sequels have always fascinated me, too. There's something mesmerising about pathetic excuses for films, and it makes us appreciate the good bits all the more.