Halloween Watch-A-Thon

So true. It may even be the best werewolf film there is. Liked it when it was new, rewatched it a while back and liked it even more. I really should rewatch the sequels too as I remember them being fine as well.

I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.

An eccentric doctor sets up a carnival sideshow starring a somnambulist around the same time that a series of horrific murders start taking place.

I thought I had watched this many years ago but it soon became clear that, beyond what must have been a mere couple of scenes' worth of the film, enough of it seemed so unfamiliar that it seems much more likely (if not certain) that this would be a fresh watch. Even though it's well-known enough within cinema-lover circles that I was at least a little familiar with how the story would ultimately conclude, it doesn't matter when the film is handled this well. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari may be the quintessential German Expressionism film as reflected in its jagged title cards and surreal production design (to say nothing of its Gothic-looking characters), but those do function as captivating visual realisations of a plot that definitely holds up a century later. Broken up into six clearly-delineated acts, Caligari centres on young Francis as he tells a bystander the tale of the eponymous Dr. Caligari, who shows up in town one day and applies to be part of the local carnival. The sideshow he presents is one involving a "somnambulist" named Cesare who only wakes up from his allegedly lifelong trance during Caligari's performances. Where the plot really kicks in is when a bunch of strange murders start happening around town and it appears that Caligari and Cesare may well be connected to them.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari runs a mere 70 minutes or so but it packs a lot into that as it tells a story that may understandably feel familiar due to how thoroughly influential it's been but still feels like it's got some surprises in store. Though I find the changes in the print's coloured tinting to be a little distracting at times, they are ultimately good at communicating moods of a given scene as they frequently alternate between chilling blues and jaundiced yellows (sickly greens, on the other hand, don't always get put to good use). The nightmarishly unconventional appearances of characters and locations alike occasionally make themselves especially pronounced through the disjointed use of forced perspective (such as the establisher of the carnival set) or staging that draws attention to slanted windows or buildings snaking their way into the sky. All of this does a tremendous job of accentuating the story, which moves at a clip and actually does make the apparent limitations of silent cinema into much-appreciated features - a simple murder mystery where you suspect Caligari and Cesare from the jump doesn't become less engrossing as a result, especially when both potential and actual victims start piling up and stalwart hero Francis comes ever close to finding out the truth and putting an end to the madness once and for all. It all comes together to fuel an intense level of postwar distrust that becomes more and more palpable as the film draws to its conclusion, resulting in a thoroughly unsettling experience that may well be the best new watch I've seen all month.

During Christmas, the inhabitants of a sorority house are targeted by a deranged murderer.

Looking at Black Christmas in 2018, it's easy to see why this is often cited as the prototypical slasher movie as it features many of the tropes and developments that would ultimately be codified by the commonly-cited "original" slasher that is 1978's Halloween. If one were to be particularly uncharitable, one could consider the latter film a flagrant rip-off with its use of first-person shots, drawn-out pacing, and centring of the film's conflict around women being subject to the violent whims of a male antagonist (then again, you could say both films owe more than a little something to the likes of Psycho and Peeping Tom - copies upon copies all the way down). Of course, what I wanted to do is see how Black Christmas actually does hold up, especially before I did my own run-through of the entire Halloween series it allegedly inspired. Certainly, there's a lot of be said for its compact and seasonal narrative that takes place in and around a college campus as the students prepare to leave for Christmas break. The film gets complicated immediately when an unseen, hard-breathing killer manages to break into a local sorority house and murder one of the sisters before she has a chance to go home - and it definitely won't be the last time he strikes.

There is quite a bit to be said for how Black Christmas is at once a sufficiently familiar rendition of the slasher formula and yet still distinct enough in its rawness that it stands out as its own thing. Much like inspiration and imitator alike, it is a patient film that begins with one shocking death and then takes it time getting to the next one, making sure to establish a vast collection of characters and the conflicts between them (with a prominent one involving the film's protagonist looking to abort an unwanted pregnancy despite the objections of her boyfriend). It still manages to maintain a perpetual sense of unease through such simple but effective sub-plots involving the sorority house receiving a series of increasingly disturbing phone calls or the disappearance of a little girl, never mind how the film does occasionally cut back to the killer's point-of-view to remind audiences that, yes, he's still out there somewhere and there's no telling when or where he'll show up next. These elements combine into something that never exactly manages to burst out into anything particularly intense but still maintains a simmering sense of dread, which may well be better than simply resorting to jump scares or even especially graphic displays of violence. As a result, I'm not overly wowed by Black Christmas but I can't deny that it's effective enough to deserve consideration as a minor classic in the genre. It may rely on a less-is-more approach to a fault, but at least it works out more often than not.

Fifteen years after being institutionalised for inexplicably murdering his older sister, a mental patient escapes custody to return to his hometown and kill again.

I decided to run the entire Halloween series in the lead-up to watching David Gordon Green's new sequel, so of course that means starting off with the much-venerated original, though it's a film of such immense stature that the prospect of actually writing anything about it is more than a little daunting (especially after my recent review of Black Christmas acknowledged that taking inspiration may have given way to outright plagiarism). That's one of multiple factors that make me question whether or not I can actually review Halloween honestly. I think a lot of that does come down to the involvement of John Carpenter, who I've long considered one of my favourite filmmakers - and yet I've always sort of held his break-out film at something of a remove when it comes to assessing his filmography, wedging it in alongside solid but not quite as beloved films like The Fog and Assault on Precinct 13 in the process. I think its status as a seasonal watch is something of a double-edged sword - being guaranteed an annual watch due to its centring around the eponymous holiday is always liable to dilute its power and bring the act of watching it dangerously close to feeling like a chore (it's for this reason that I've broken with one such film-watching tradition by not watching Die Hard over the past couple of Christmases). I suspect that I'll still at least make the effort to watch Halloween whenever October rolls around, but the question I find myself asking each year is "Should I?"

Fortunately, Halloween answers that question by proving thoroughly watchable long after the initial shocks have died down. I would argue that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is more successful in creating a slasher with unrelenting atmosphere. However, when I think of it in comparison to Halloween I consider them to be fire and ice in their approaches to atmospheric terror - and slashers don't get much more icy than Halloween. The coldness is most definitely a by-product of Carpenter's self-composed soundtrack that tinkles around with foreboding piano melodies when it's not striking heavily-synthesised scare chords to accentuate Michael Myers's readily-apparent lack of humanity. As he moves around his home town of Haddonfield in ways that don't initially (and admittedly never totally do) make sense, this latest viewing made me realise something - that Michael, for all that his doomsaying psychiatrist Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) says to convince others that his recently-escaped charge is a dead-eyed manifestation of pure evil, is honestly something of a prankster. The ways that he opts to pursue and attack his prey takes the "trick" part of trick-or-treat to a dangerous extreme - committing his first ever murder in full clown costume, wearing a classic bedsheet-ghost costume to get the drop on a victim, stealing a headstone in a way that is even immediately assumed to be an ordinary Halloween prank by onlookers, etc. Such actions prove unsettling in a way that the likes of other slasher villains don't quite match - he's got a bit more personality than fellow mute Jason Voorhees but doesn't go overboard like Freddy Krueger does.

Drawing comparisons to the most noteworthy peers of both Michael and Halloween does seem like it's doing a disservice to the film as its own entity, but it almost seems necessary just to distinguish what makes the film work so well. The autumnal setting isn't just the only way in which Halloween manages to make things seem more than a little chilly as Michael's ever-looming presence makes it hard to truly settle even after multiple viewings and plenty of chances to acclimatise to its jump scares. It also gives you what may be the genre's best (if not definitive) final girl in Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), Much of what makes Michael's threatening nature so truly felt is how Laurie reacts to it across the course of the film, whether by noticing his inexplicable appearances (and disappearances) throughout the daytime or having to contend with his gradual and brutal intrusion right through her friends' bodies and into her rather ordinary Halloween night. Pleasence gets top billing as Loomis, who functions as another foil to Michael in his relentlessly single-minded pursuit of his prey (though he is understandably afforded much more in the way of humanising features), but it's Curtis who charms us as the extremely responsible Laurie to the point where seeing not just her survival of Michael's attacks but also her progression from chipper teenager to a traumatised woman asking if she had really seen the "boogeyman" she'd spent the entire film denying is the true beating heart of a film ostensibly centred around a man with the devil's eyes. The characters may seem slight, but they are a solid bedrock upon which Halloween truly builds its reputation as a horror classic. Last year, I thought I wouldn't bother watching it again the following Halloween - after this viewing, I'm not about to make that assumption again.

Forty years after surviving an encounter with a serial killer, a woman who has spent decades preparing for another encounter must face said killer when he breaks free again.

The concept of a soft reboot is a double-edged one - while it's obviously intended as a means of reinvigorating a series that may have grown stale and/or been derailed by inane developments, it can also be used as an excuse for filmmakers to get complacent and coast on the appearance of trying something different while also making the same mistakes (if not new ones). Even David Gordon Green's Halloween, which does come across as an earnest attempt to do right by a property that has really been put through the wringer by other follow-ups, can't help but fall prey to this despite the decision to disregard every single sequel in the franchise. This much is borne out by the film's early scenes focusing on a pair of true-crime podcasters who plan on covering Michael Myers' 1978 killing spree, first by attempting to interview an institutionalised Michael and then by visiting spree survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). The podcasters are fascinated to learn just what makes Michael himself tick and hope to gain some insight from the woman who famously survived his onslaught only for her to sharply tell them that there's nothing to learn about Michael beyond the fact that he's evil. It's a bold stance that seems actively contemptuous not just of the franchise's attempts at building a mythology around Michael but also of those who would try to make sense of a killer who has admittedly never made a whole lot of sense. Applying this to characters inside the film makes them come across as hubristic fools who think that they can reduce Michael's sense of pure evil to a readily-comprehensible state such as a podcast episode, but what does it say about us viewers looking in at the horrors on display and judging them? This is especially true when it comes to a film that disregards the bulk of the franchise to the point that it arguably presents itself as the definitive sequel, which means it creates some serious expectations to live up to amidst this self-aware approach.

Trauma is a recurring theme throughout the Halloween franchise as characters try to keep living their lives in the wake of a small-town atrocity that changes things forever, succeeding or failing as the installment demands. Of course, it's Laurie who undergoes the most dramatic change in more ways than one - where H20 and Rob Zombie's Halloween II just added a whole lot of nightmares and maybe a handgun to provide a semblance to protection, here she completely reinvents herself as a hardened survivalist who lives on a firearm-filled ranch custom-built to defend against what she believes to be an inevitable return by Michael. Unfortunately, this has long since caused a rift between her and her daughter (Judy Greer), who looks upon her doomsday-prepper upbringing as a trauma unto itself that she must work around in order to make a normal life with her own husband (Toby Huss) and daughter (Andi Matichak). This being a Halloween movie, it's only a matter of time before Laurie is proven right and the cycle can begin anew - but how anew can it truly begin? While this is poised to become the film's distinguishing variation on the basic Halloween narrative, it still doesn't seem to matter all that much in the grand scheme of things as the film must first run through the standard escape-and-rampage proceedings. It does cohere to a certain extent with the film's other through-line involving various characters wishing to satisfy their curiosity about Michael's inner truth, mirroring Laurie's own obsession with Michael in all the wrong ways. This concept of Michael as object of perverse fascination has already been used in lesser installments like Curse or Resurrection and is arguably put to better use here, but even it has its limits when it comes to standing on its own or accentuating the greater story about Laurie and her family ultimately being made to confront the past.

In disregarding previous installments while drawing upon similar thematic concerns, Halloween works to establish itself as a definitive sequel that pays due reverence to the original in ways that other sequels haven't exactly managed to accomplish while also expanding upon it in ways that keep it fresh. The most tangible example of this would be the return of John Carpenter himself to score the film with the assistance of his son Cody and godson Daniel Davies, once again finding new ways to sonically convey the terror that accompanies the pale-faced boogeyman wherever he goes. This is done most notably through a sting that howls so synthetically and inhumanly that it really does feel like the essence of the character refined into a single discordant note. It also comes at a particularly pertinent turning point in the film's narrative that raises the stakes and genuinely creates a sense of danger, but it's at the price of making me realise that so many other attempts at creating something new don't work nearly as well. A long take that tracks Michael's movements at one point is somewhat impressive on a technical level, but it's strangely ineffectual due to its lack of bearing on the rest of the film. The checkered floor tiles at the mental hospital suggest a metaphorical chess game that will ultimately unfold between Michael and Laurie, but that is also undermined by how Laurie spends so much of the second act on the sidelines. A versatile director like Green has enough of a grasp on visual storytelling to come up with some distinct images, but that only makes their lack of greater resonance all the more disappointing.

Even when considering the lack of competition it has in this regard, it'd be easy to call Halloween the best (Michael) sequel to, well, Halloween, if only because it plays as a greatest-hits package that gets to pick what elements to include and (where possible) attempt to improve. In doing so, it does make it a little hard to truly get lost in the proceedings as one can pick up the similarities here and there and end up comparing them unfavourably (such as the general "H20 but bigger" gist of the film). The elephant in the room is whether or not the movie succeeds at allowing Michael Myers to regain the same fearsome reputation that has been tarnished by at least half the movies he's appeared in, and my conclusion is...maybe? I think it's a bitter pill to swallow to realise that there's only so much that can be done with Michael, especially after forty years and eight other follow-ups of varied (but not particularly high) quality. To this end, it makes sense to ground the film in following Laurie but even that has its limitations due to the fact that it also runs over similar ground without much variation - even her development into a gun-toting paranoiac doesn't really go anywhere on either a narrative or thematic level (and is liable to be even less effective should a sequel eventuate). Maybe there are bits and pieces about this film that help to elevate it - the score's certainly a highlight, for one - but my main takeaway tends to be that they don't combine into a worthy film. I realise now that, much like Laurie spends decades on edge fearing the highly unlikely but always plausible return of Michael, so too does the prospect of a new Halloween movie now seem like something that should inspire worry more than anything else. Even having creators like Green and Danny McBride approaching the material with the best intentions does little to assuage that concern - the film itself features multiple characters whose benign first impressions are swiftly shown to be false fronts for unpleasant (and even destructive) forces that don't necessarily rival Michael himself but don't make for dependable cases either, and I think that much is true of a film that claims it wants to be the best and only sequel to a film that never truly needed one.

So yeah, here is my final total. 45 films watched (technically 44 because I foolishly watched Halloween Resurrection twice),