Halloween Ends (2022)

I liked this one more than most people, mostly because it's driving a stake through the franchise. It says Halloween Ends and, by god, they actually do it.

Unfortunately, it was already announced that a new Halloween series is in the works, so I guess I should go fuck myself.

Happy Halloween!

2½ sewers out of 5

Halloween Kills (2021)

A very stupid sequel that dumbs down all the characters. The only redeeming quality are some decent brutal kills. Unfortunately, the ending really fucks up any goodwill leftover from the previous film. The biggest thing this movie had going against it was announcing that it was a trilogy ahead of time, so there were no stakes here. This one is only biding its time until the inevitable conclusion.

1½ mental patients out of 5

Borderlands (2024)

Soulless cash grab. The cast is stacked, but you can just see how empty everyone looks behind the eyes. They took a beloved video game franchise and watered it down for the kiddies. Almost like Guardians of the Galaxy, if you stripped all the memorable charm, humor and wit out of it. This is an example of how pandering to the general crowd pleases nobody and fails to engage its core audience. Compare that with the audacity of Deadpool & Wolverine, which embraced its vulgar comic book origins with irreverent glee, despite the potential of limiting its bottom line. You can see how well that turned out for both.

I struggle to find anything redeeming to say about it, other than when it finally ended. 

1 complete waste of everyone's time out of 5

Halloween (2018)

Set forty years after the first Halloween (1978), it ignores the many sequels (other than to ridicule them), presenting itself as a direct continuation.
Myers is incarcerated and Strode is in self-made isolation, having spent the last four decades preparing herself, aware that she can only truly be free of the horror of that night if she's able to witness the man in the mask die.
Its reverence for Carpenter's film borders on slavish, at times feeling more like a remake than a continuation, but by the same token it doesn't hurry itself and its modern qualities are mostly reserved for the teens' idiotic activities.
It proposes a psychological connection between killer and target, but doesn't go into any depth, either unable or unwilling to do so. What kept me watching was seeing Jamie Lee Curtis onscreen and hearing Carpenter on score duties.

2½ headlights out of 5

STILL SCREAMING: THE ULTIMATE SCARY MOVIE RETROSPECTIVE [2011]

Celebrated horror journalist Ryan Turek's documentary, Still Screaming, pays tribute to the first three films in Wes Craven's popular Scream franchise.
It opens with a pointless and sloppily "first kill" scene that makes Scream 3's opening kill look inventive and then, gets into the juicy stuff that's filled with trivia and behind-the-scenes looks with interviews from cast & crew members and other popular folks in the genre.  As a dedicated fan to the series there was plenty I was already aware of but it gave just enough new tasty tidbits to keep me interested till the end.  Unlike most film documentaries of this type, it wisely doesn't just praise it's subjects but also is quite honest about a lot of the franchise's mistakes it made.  It's not going to win over any fans with this execution but will certainly make the nostalgic fan eager for a revisit to Woodsboro.

3 Scary Movies out of 5

Halloween: Resurrection (2002)

The familiar tune fills me with hope. The glimmer of hope ends when Jamie Lee’s cameo ends. Why was she even on the cover?
Yes, Michael’s back. He still lives. He still lurks. He still has the ability to make any knife he holds swish with a magic metallic sound in empty air.
Someone sets up a live internet stream from the Myer’s house in 240p. Are you kidding me? This is the plot? This is the best they could come up with?
MM should get a medal for helping keep the slut population down.
Resurrection almost (but not quite) makes me glad that Zombie’s remake happened because it stopped any more sequels after this.

0½ for Laurie out of 5

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

As expected, Jamie Lee is the best thing in the seventh film. It likes to think of itself as the real sequel to the first film, although it incorporates elements of the second and even has remnants of an explanation for Laurie’s absence in the fourth, fifth and sixth from a previous script, which it pretends didn't happen. It’s clear that Dir. Steve Miner hadn't a damn clue what film he wanted to make. There’s no explanation for MM’s return. There’s no proof it’s even him. It’s just a guy in a mask with a knife who likes to stick it in people.
There’s some decent camerawork early on and the editing was functional, but by halfway through the running time I was feeling the pangs of regret.
H20 isn't even the last one. They made another one afterwards! Finality and credibility go out the window when there’s money to be made.

2 new eyes out of 5

Halloween II (1981)

You can’t keep a knife-wielding maniac in a painted Shat mask down for long. There are bitches to be killed, so MM rises to the occasion.
It begins the very same instant that Carpenter’s original ended. The POV shots and the heavy breathing return, and the frame often gives us two things to focus on at one time. In fact, in most respects it mimics the things that the first one did well, so why is it so very dull?
There’s no suspenseful build-up. The plot is so riddled with holes it belongs in Church. The starkness of the iconic music score is lost. The environment is empty. Loomis runs around blindly. Laurie is hardly in it, and when she is there she hardly speaks. I can’t delve into the ending in this review, but be warned, it makes little to no sense.

2 mispronunciations of Samhain out of 5

A FISH CALLED WANDA [1988]

When people talk about great comedies of the '80's they always seem to forget director Charles Crichton's final film, the British crime caper A Fish Called Wanda.
Co-written by Monty Python's John Cleese, the film starts out pretty slow but once the ball starts rolling it snowballs into a classic situation comedy of lies & deceit with the perfect mixture of British and American humor.  It tosses morals out the window and attempts to do nothing but aim for the funny bone and succeeds with it's four main stars all playing their roles with comedic perfection.

4 doomed dogs out of 5 

HALLOWEEN [1978]

One of the most significant films of it's kind, John Carpenter's Halloween is hailed as a slasher flick masterpiece.
Independently produced on a very low budget, John Carpenter showed audiences everywhere that you can make a film without extreme violence and gore and still make it scary as hell. Using a simple story line, simple haunting music with deafening stings and interesting camera techniques, Carpenter turned a suburban neighborhood into a living nightmare.
Aside from some really shoddy acting from some of the teenage co-stars, Halloween holds up to this very day as a classic slasher flick and without a doubt on nearly every top 10 list out there.

4½ Shapes out of 5

Prom Night (1980)

Scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis follows up her successful Halloween and The Fog run with... this piece of shit. I'm sure it was pitched by the studio execs as Halloween meets Carrie, although it fails miserably on both counts. A group of kids accidentally (?) murder one of their own and years later, a mysterious killer comes back to off the remaining kids. Featuring Leslie Nielsen during his serious years, this is easily one of the worst horror movies ever made (how this warranted an even worse remake is beyond me). So why did I watch it, you ask? Well...

1 corny corsage out of 5

The Fog (1980)

The fictional Antonio Bay is the setting for a traditional ghost story with a John Carpenter twist. The Bay's residents are proud of their community, unaware that it has a shady past. But when their 100 years celebration comes around, the sins of the past demand a recompense from the present.
There's not much more to the plot other than scary fog and green lights, but it’s the atmosphere, the tension and the overall Carpenter vibe that raise The Fog above its B-Movie origins. Fans of the director will know what I mean.

3½ gold doubloons out of 5