Halloween 2021: October 20th

Halloween Kills (2021)

When Blumhouse and David Gordon Green released their "Halloween" movie in 2018, they obviously had eyes towards doing a sequel. Once their effort was declared a commercial and critical success, everyone's focus turned towards advancing this Carparter-approved continuity in two new sequels. After some COVID-related delays, "Halloween Kills" is finally in theaters. (And on Peacock, for the six people who use that service.) The reaction has been mixed so far, especially from longtime fans. Speaking as someone who liked, didn't love, that last movie, I sat down in my theater seat last now with uncertain expectations towards Michael Myers' latest night of murder and mayhem.

After a flashback to 1978, "Halloween Kills" gives us More of the Night He Came Home Again. Laurie Strode is rushed to the hospital by Karen and Alyson, to mend the knife wound in her belly. Laurie survives... And so does Michael Myers, who busts out of the burning wreckage of Strode's home and resumes his killing spree across Haddonfield. Meanwhile, the survivors of Myers' original rampage —  Tommy Doyle, Lindsey Wallace, Marian Crane, and Lonnie Elam — are doing their yearly October 31st gathering to commiserate. Upon hearing that the Shape is back, Tommy riles up a vigilante mob to track Myers down and kill him once and for all. It's not long before this gets back to the Strode family, wrapped up once again in Michael Myers' murderous passion. 

Green's "Halloween" took a back-to-basics approach, designed to remind people why they liked these movies in the first place. The best parts focused on Laurie Strode confronting the lingering trauma from that night, forty years ago, and how it has affected her entire family. It was a movie about the Strode women and I really liked that. “Halloween Kills,” disappointingly, steps back from this. Laurie spends most of the movie in a hospital bed. Karen doesn’t have much to do until the end. Alyson is more involved but even she disappears for long stretches of the story. Jamie Lee Curtis is still gravely intense. (Though she’s given some of the sequel’s worst dialogue.) Judy Greer is still incredibly likable and Andi Matichak still shows a lot of promise. I simply don't know why the movie doesn't utilize them more.

In fact, “Halloween Kills’” focus often wanders off on a number of digressive episodes. The fans that hated the side characters in the last movie, like the sarcastic kid being babysat or the cops talking about their sandwiches, are probably the ones least pleased with this installment. Among the characters that wander in and out of the plot here are a married couple playing with a drone, a trio of obnoxious kids stealing Halloween candy, a pair on a Halloween date that meet Tommy in a bar, and the loving gay couple who currently live in the Myers' house. While these characters take up precious screen time, I can appreciate “Halloween Kills” adding some quirks and personality to these roles. Even if they ultimately just exists to up the body count. Many lesser slasher films just introduce warm bodies immediately before offing them. At least we get to know some of these characters a little bit before they die. Big John and Little John, in particular, are one of the more memorable elements of the sequel. 

Green's sequel delights in bringing back bit players from the original film and filling in missing gaps. “Halloween Kills” begins by depicting what happened after Myers disappeared off the Strode lawn. Bringing Tommy, Lonnie, Lindsey, and Marion Crane back are all interesting ideas... Yet Tommy Doyle's subplot is another element that disappointed me. Anthony Michael Hall gives a committed, fiery performance but he's central to a subplot that feels disconnected from much of the movie. Doyle riles up the population of Haddonfield into a violent mob. A lengthy section has Doyle's gang pursuing a completely innocent man throughout the hospital. This is clearly an attempt at social commentary. Doyle's campaign of violence depends on misinformation, mob mentality, and parroting a meaningless catchphrase. It's a clumsy attempt to reflect the American condition over the last several years. I'm sure we'll never be free of the spectre of Trumpism, especially in pop culture, but it feels like an extraneous addition to this story. In fact, it adds almost nothing to the film. 

No matter its flaws, “Halloween Kills” is an effective film in some ways. As a filmmaker, David Gordon Green's sometimes veer towards blurry shaky-cam but he generally has a strong visual eyes. Such as in moments where Tommy's face is bathed in red due to a blinking siren. As a slasher movie, “Halloween Kills” is certainly fantastically engineered. The murder scenes are intense and impressively bloody. Myers slashes through a crowd of firefighters, the camera sometimes assuming their perspective. An eye injury is pretty disturbing. A widely disliked character is disposed of in such a brutal fashion, that you find yourself questioning your own opinions as a viewer. Blades fly and blood spurts. The movie knows when to keep (its extremely graphic) gore largely off-screen.

Another thing is for certain: David Gordon Green and his co-conspirators understand the Shape better than any filmmaker since John Carpenter. Michael Myers is a completely unknowable force in “Halloween Kills.” He kills for no identifiable reason. His only objective is to return home. We get hints and peeks at his inner life. He remains obsessed with his mask, to the point where he will stop everything if it's removed or disturbed. His tendency to showcase his victims' bodies – such a cliché of the slasher genre that I've never really thought much about it – is another obsessive quirk of his. In one of the film's most clever touches, we even briefly glimpse Michael assembling a dead body into an “art piece.” While the film seems to be increasingly hinting at a supernatural explanation for why Myers is so immune to injury, nothing is outright stated. As in the best previous films, he is a symbol of death itself, that can never be totally understood or reckoned with.

And, of course, John Carpenter's music is fantastic. He even incorporates some new melodies into the traditional themes. A driving, synth score that kicks in after Alyson decides to go after Myers could've come right out of “Escape from New York.” Ultimately, “Halloween Kills” suffers badly from being the middle chapter of a trilogy. As is too often the case with stories planned out this way, it feels a bit like the filmmakers really only had enough story for one sequel but were determined to make two instead. Maybe Green and the gang will bring it all together with “Halloween Ends.” As it is now, “Kills” feels like it takes forever to build momentum and then ends abruptly after it finally starts to get moving. [6/10]

The McPherson Tape (1989)

Many years ago, I reviewed “Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County.” That was a television movie made for the UPN Network, that aired during the peak of nineties UFO fever, a found footage movie that came out right before "Blair Witch" popularized the concept. Surprisingly, “Incident in Lake County” was a remake of an even earlier movie from the same director. Made in the late eighties by filmmaker Dan Aliotto for all of 6500 dollars, it may very well be the first ever found footage horror movie. Originally entitled “UFO Abduction,” the warehouse containing the tapes caught on fire, meaning the movie was never truly released when new... But a few bootlegs did sneak out and circulated among UFO believers and conspiracy theorists, who mistook it for a genuine recording of extraterrestrial life. This is how “UFO Abduction” acquired the nickname “The McPherson Tape.” Obscure and hard-to-find for years, Aliotto's film was released on Blu-Ray not that long ago by the good people at AGFA.

The film follows the Van Heese family — not the McPhersons, despite the alternate title — who have gathered for the fifth birthday party of Michele, the daughter of Eric and Jamie. The party is documented by younger brother Michael, mostly so he can play with his new camcorder. Things progress normally up until the house looses power. The brothers go and investigate, soon seeing a strange light in the sky. Shortly after that, they spot short, grey, alien life forms standing outside a spacecraft. It's not long before the greys follow them back to the house, the family responding violently and the aliens tormenting them in turn. 

I can see why UFOlogists, when presented with a version of the film that clipped off the titles and end credits, could believe this was real. "The McPherson Tape" feels entirely genuine. The camera work is as rough and shaky as you'd expect from a teenager handling a home VHS recorder. While his family sits around the table, eating and talking, he fools around with the settings, randomly zooming into faces or plates. Aliottto had clearly read up on UFO lore when writing the film. The story was likely inspired by the Hopkinsville Goblins incident and several supposed aftereffects of alien encounters — such as an unexplained sick feeling or disorientation — are depicted. The acting is completely naturalistic. The sometimes stiff dialogue just comes off as the goofy way normal people act when you point a camera at them. 

In fact, Aliotto's film may be too realistic. The director replicated the experience of popping a random home movie into your VCR. Which means the movie, which is only a little over an hour, has multiple dull sequences. The brothers walk around in the dark, looking for a fuse box. They discuss their mother's alcoholism. There's far too many times when you can't see much on-screen and all you hear is Michael grunting. Even after the aliens make themselves known, "UFO Abduction" has its tedious stretches. Characters sit down to open birthday presents or play card games, in their dark and alien-besieged home. Most of these boring sections can be dismissed for accuracy's sake, though whether that particular excuse works for you is a matter of personal taste.

Despite its flaws and clearly amateurish production values, there is something deeply creepy about "The McPherson Tape." The aliens were played by children in black body suits and Halloween masks. Yet the crude camera work and picture quality often makes their limbs look disproportionately long. The aliens are only glimpsed fleetingly, causing the audience to scan the background for their presence. There's a lot of bickering and shouting in the second half. Yet it all reads as realistic. My family would certainly panic if we found aliens outside our house. Even the insistence on continuing the birthday rituals comes off as deeply scared people trying to restore a sense of normalcy. The abrupt, quiet ending leaves you with a slightly unsettled feeling. 

It's also interesting to note that "The McPherson Tape" maintains a lot of the common tropes of the found footage genre, even though there was no precedence for them. (It's hard to say if Aliotto was aware of "Cannibal Holocaust" or "Guinea Pig" in 1989 and neither of those are "pure" found footage movies anyway.) Michael's family ask him to put the camera down but he insists these events need to be documented, twenty years before "Cloverfield" featured almost the exact same exchange. "The McPherson Tape" is certainly raw. "Incident in Lake County" replicates most of what worked about this one while being considerably more polished. Still, this lo-fi effort has a creepy vibe that I can't quite shake. I sort of wish the definitive truth that the film was fictional was never clarified. The sense of not knowing if it was a "hoax" or not would make it even creepier. [7/10]

Creeped Out: The Many Place

We are now thoroughly in the modern era of horror anthology shows. "Creeped Out" is a British series geared towards younger viewers, which got a little international attention when it cropped up on Netflix. Each episode is narrated by the Curious, a masked collector of stories. "The Many Place" concerns a family who vacations in Queensland, Australia, not knowing it's the rainy season. Stuck in their hotel room, the three kids – teenager Nita, goofy middle son Jett, and youngest daughter Max – go exploring to fight off boredom. While inside an old elevator, Max presses all the buttons at once. This drops them off in a labyrinthine version of the hotel, where an eye-eating monster lurks. After Nita and Jett are separated from Max, they learn this floor is also a doorway to alternate universes. 

Horror shows for kids have come a long way since the days of "Goosebumps." "The Many Place" is actually effectively creepy at times. As someone who can get lost in hotels pretty easily, I found the sequence of the kids running through the endless, mirrored hallways of rooms fairly spooky. (The labyrinth nature of the story is cutely foreshadowed by photos of Celtic knots on the wall.) Much like the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, a creature called the Quinkan roams the endless halls of the hotel. The creature is mostly kept off-screen, his presence hinted more often than not, which is a nice touch. The episode even includes a couple of shout-out to grown-up horror movies. An elevator appears about to burst with a mysterious liquid, a likely nod to "The Shining." Funny enough, considering I just watched it the other night, “Picnic at Hanging Rock” is shouted-out. The titular rock formation is mentioned by name and the score is quoted several times.

In fact, “The Many Place” is good enough that I hardly recognized it as something made specifically for children. There's a moral. Nita is eager to grow-up, hitting on a boy at the hotel and being increasingly distant with her siblings and parents. The stress of being tossed around multiple universe causes her to break down, causing her brother to ask if Nita is really ready to act her age or not. However, this moral is organically cooked into the story and isn't too distracting. There is a creepy groundskeeper at the hotel, who explains the mechanics of the Many Places. Which probably could have, and in an adult series most likely would have, gone unexplained. Yet “The Many Place” is surprisingly potent, with an unnerving premise that is played entirely straight and wraps up with a nicely unsettling ending. Good stuff! I'm going to watch more of this someday. [7/10]

The Contraption (1977)

Here’s a creepy little short best known for playing as filler in-between late night movies on the USA Network. Starring "Rocky Horror's" Richard O'Brien, "The Contraption" concerns a man building something in a darkened room. He saws wooden boards, drills holes, sands corners. He hammers nails and hooks, blowtorches metal pipes together. It's only within the final minutes of this seven minute long film that we realize exactly what he's building and to what purpose. The short's single line of dialogue provides more context.

"The Contraption" is a brilliant work of sound design and imagery. In extreme close-up, we see the device being assembled. Every sound is thunderous and huge, the sawing of the boards and the whirling of the tools filling your ear. Yet it's incredibly precise too, playing out almost like a strange symphony. Even when he pauses to take a drink of some booze, the gulp-gulp sounds are audible. We also hear the solitary drip of a leaky faucet in the background, with the only music being warbling theremin sounds. All of this establishes a keen atmosphere of isolation. Whatever this man is building, he's toiling at it in darkness, all alone. Just that says a lot about his obsessive, depressive state of mind.

Director James Dearden, who also made the equally effective "Panic," provide visuals that give us just enough information. The close-ups on boards, saw blades, metal pins and nails are expressive but mysterious. A shot from inside a metal coil is especially evocative. It all leads up to a grim reveal, a bit like a dark punchline. Yet the cumulative effect is as much spooky chill as dark humor. And there's Richard O'Brien, looking more avuncular and nerdy than ever, right in the center of it. Cult movie poetry. Somebody really needs to clean up Dearden's shorts and give them a proper digital release, as I'm tried of watching blurry, VHS rips of such quality films. [8/10]