Aaron and Dana, microphones in hand, visit Myers at a sanitarium but fail to provoke an obvious response from him. Their mention of Laurie does spark some kind of awakening, though, because soon enough Myers has escaped and is on the warpath, out for revenge. His main target? Laurie, who has moved to a fortified home out in the woods, and is played with edgy brilliance by Curtis, sporting a wild mane of gray hair. Having never quite gotten over 1978, Laurie has become somewhat of a crazed hermit, waiting with shotgun in hand for the day her old nemesis comes home. 
 
 That reversal should be the key to Green’s pitch. The old dynamic of Carpenter’s film is being flipped, in a way: Now Myers is the prey, and Laurie the hunter. But that’s not really how the story progresses—instead, as Myers rampages toward town, the action shifts to Laurie’s estranged daughter, Karen (Judy Greer), who has rejected her mother’s apocalyptic outlook, and Laurie’s granddaughter, Allyson (Andi Matichak), who very much resembles 1978 Laurie. Allyson is out on the town with her friends, one of whom has a babysitting gig; to her, Laurie is just a kooky grandma, and Michael Myers no more than a creepy bedtime story. 
 
 As Myers reaches Haddonfield, Allyson and her pals are placed squarely in his sights, and Halloween becomes just another slasher film, though Green assembles some expertly tense sequences. This is a project that’s been attempted before: In 1998, there was Steve Miner’s Halloween H20, also starring Curtis, set 20 years after the original and similarly focused on an ultimate showdown between Myers and Laurie. That was even more horror-by-numbers; Green’s film has a little more artistry to it. But still, all his best tricks are borrowed from Carpenter, right down to the chilling, minimalistic score (composed by Carpenter himself, along with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies). 
 
 The reason the first Halloween felt so bold was its simplicity—imagine making a horror movie about a stranger murdering a bunch of other strangers and just titling it after the scariest holiday! Green’s Halloween, like many other imitators, can wring plenty of stress from a scene of a babysitter checking behind the closet door for a boogeyman. In its portrayal of Laurie, the film has the potential to dig beyond homage, but she’s largely sidelined from the action until the denouement. Other new twists on the old tale, like a loopy psychiatrist played by Haluk Bilginer to replace the departed Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) of the original, are gratingly self-referential. 
 
 In its last 30 minutes, Halloween finally stops playing the hits and tries something really different. I won’t spoil beyond that, but it works. Curtis’s performance is genuinely poignant and restrained, mostly avoiding the twitchy clichés that Laurie’s post-traumatic stress might encourage. Dumping the hacky sequel concept that Laurie’s related to Myers makes her motivation simpler and crueler; this is a revenge tale for each character, and once Green starts telling it from both sides, the film sings with purpose. Halloween takes its time warming up, but when Curtis grabs the reins, it does more than enough to justify its curious existence. 
 
 We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com. ||||| Horror movie fans are a special audience sub-genre. They’ll travel to drive-ins in the middle of the Mojave for a good thrill. They are especially loyal to the Halloween franchise that has been creating goosebumps, heart palpitations and heebie-jeebies for 40 years. They don’t care if the latest hike around the jack-o’-lantern is not as good as the original John Carpenter screamfest or even any kind of acceptable re-boot of that 1978 classic at all. Nor do they care if, after all these years, Jamie Lee Curtis is too long in the tooth to keep screaming her head off every time Michael Myers shows up with a brand new hatchet. He’s been burned, stabbed, shot, drowned and beheaded before, and nothing has kept him down yet. 
 
 No, Halloween addicts just want more—and so do I. Unfortunately, this one doesn’t deliver the goods with any new ideas or fresh suspense. It just lays there, like leftover pumpkin. 
 
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 Endangered turkeys, rabbits and Santa Claus have never done for Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas what Jamie Lee Curtis has done for Halloween! Now, 40 years to the Halloween night the first movie took place, she returns to the blood-stained lawns of Haddonfield, Illinois where, as Laurie Strode, she was the only babysitter in town who escaped a massacre by the insane serial killer in a fright mask that started it all. 
 
 HALLOWEEN ★★ (2/4 stars) 
 
 Directed by: David Gordon Green 
 
 Written by: David Gordon Green 
 
 Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak 
 
 Running time: 109 mins. 
 
 Four decades have left her almost as demented as her tormenter, and she has spent the years cautiously—becoming a crazy town eccentric estranged from her mother Karen (Judy Greer) and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). Never mind. She’s been out of her mind with terror, permanently unhinged by paranoia and dread while preparing her house for the inevitable return of Michael Myers. 
 
 A master of self-defense, she has a hiding place under her floor like a bomb shelter and an arsenal of automatic weapons that outnumber the Republicans in the U.S. Congress. Smart girl, because, predictably, he escapes again from a fool-proof insane asylum and heads for Haddonfield faster than you can say “Bates Motel.” 
 
 David Gordon Green, who made such past horrors as Pineapple Express and Our Brand Is Crisis, is not an imaginative director, so the result is a disappointing collection of the usual familiar cliches, including kids too stoned or drunk to use common sense when the floor creaks in an empty house, victims who lose their cell phones before danger strikes, and an assortment of dumb cops and naive psychiatrists who say things about the monster like “Remember, he’s the property of the state—he mustn’t be harmed!” 
 
 Michael no longer creeps around in the bushes waiting to pounce. On the safest night of the year, when everyone thinks he’s only another Trick-or-Treater wearing a Michael Myers costume, he just walks right into people’s houses, slashes their throats, and stomps their heads in without interference. There are a few gory scares here and there, but the thrills are uneven and the setups all have a tired feeling of déjà vu. 
 
 Sadly, Michael Simmonds’ camerawork for Halloween circa 2018 also lacks the clarity and beauty of the original cinematography that made the 1978 Halloween one of the best-photographed horror flicks of all time. That the contrived script leads up to a final showdown between the indefatigable girl and the indestructible ghoul comes as no surprise. But in 40 years, what once seemed creepy now just seems campy. I’m sorry to report that in the 2018 Halloween, the howls sound more like giggles than screams. ||||| 'Halloween': This Time, Laurie Strode Is Locked And Loaded 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption Ryan Green/Universal Pictures Ryan Green/Universal Pictures 
 
 Trauma is not neat and pretty to deal with; it is not easily diagnosed, it does not vanish on its own, and its lingering effects can touch those around us. In the latest sequel to the long and winding Halloween series, trauma plays an important role in the narrative arc of famed final girl Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). You might remember her from the original 1978 John Carpenter film, which saw her screaming, running, discovering her friends brutally murdered, then fending off a serial killer to protect the kids she was babysitting. 
 
 The 2018 sequel picks up several decades later, and while it largely conforms to the retro thrills of the "serial killer on the loose" subgenre, it makes something interesting out of Laurie's earlier experience. In this film, trauma and survivor's guilt are not swept under the rug, as often happens in sequels. Instead, Laurie's experience shapes her behavior and her relationship with both her loved ones and the wider world. 
 
 Horror movies have lightly toyed with a character's trauma for dramatic effect before. In Neil Marshall's The Descent, Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) tries to cope with the loss of her family in an accident by reuniting with friends and taking a girl's trip. Things go terribly wrong on the group's cave-diving adventure, and the memory of her daughter as well as her survivor's guilt haunt her as she fights off cannibalistic monsters. Wes Craven's Scream features Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) struggling to cope with her mother's murder. When a similar killer starts attacking her classmates, it brings her worst fears back to her doorstep. 
 
 But in this present-day Halloween, directed by David Gordon Green, trauma is no mere plot device; it's the film's explicit subject. Laurie has become a virtual hermit, closing herself off from a world that saw her more like a freak show than a survivor. She's quick to shut out journalists looking to make a sensational story out of her experience. In this timeline, which skips all of the other sequels, Laurie arms herself in case serial killer Michael Myers returns. She teaches her daughter how to survive, how to shoot, and when to seek shelter in the family panic room. She's trying to inoculate her daughter from fully inheriting her trauma, as when young women are taught to walk to their cars with their keys between their fingers. This Halloween sets out to explore the emotional cost of seeing a monster in every shadow. 
 
 Laurie's insistence that her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) learn to protect herself and check around every corner causes a rift in their relationship: Karen resents her mother for the survivalist training and for exposing her to secondhand paranoia. She settles for a passive husband and refuses to train her own daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) the way her mother raised her. She naively considers her mother's trauma to be hers alone and actively tries to separate Laurie from spending time with her granddaughter. In the movie, trying to break the cycle of fear leaves them vulnerable to the man who caused the fear in the first place. 
 
 We see why Karen has so forcefully pushed Laurie out in one especially tense dinner scene: A visibly shaken Laurie shows up late to meet the family at a restaurant, upsetting the shallow pleasantries. Granddaughter Allyson tries to calm her, while daughter Karen becomes confrontational, angry that her mother has shown up at all. Curtis' performance here is moving — she's clearly uncomfortable within seconds of sitting down at the table. She keeps looking past the others nervously, while Karen's body language telegraphs her frustration at the challenges of caring for someone struggling with mental health issues. 
 
 Trauma manifests in ways we can't control, often at times when it isn't appropriate to cry or scream. Laurie's instability in these moments is palpable, and helps explain why she took such drastic measures against a (likely supernaturally driven) killer. 
 
 Laurie's story could have gone any number of ways. She could have buried her trauma, reliving it only in nightmares. She could have moved to another part of the world. If it's disappointing to see Laurie Strode turned, here, into a gun-toting survivalist in a standard revenge plot, the actress' own words may shed some light on that decision. 
 
 At Austin's Fantastic Fest screening last month, Curtis told the crowd, "Laurie Strode went back to school on November 1st with a bandage on her arm. She left school on the 31st, this dreaming, intellectual, going-off-to-college girl. And she came back on the first of November a freak, where everybody talked about her. Nobody helped her. And that's what I think was the reasoning behind going back to the original trauma. And I'm really glad they did." 
 
 It would have been nice if more women could have had some say in the narrative trajectory Laurie has taken, instead of film's all-male screenwriting trio of Green, Danny McBride and John Fradley. However, this Halloween highlights a question that horror films so often ignore: How does a genre that unleashes so much violence on its characters grapple with post-traumatic stress disorder, trauma and grief? Horror filmmakers will always terrorize their characters in the moment, of course — but here's hoping we'll start to see more films willing to explore the lingering costs of living with fear every day. 
 
 While this latest Halloween may not accomplish everything it sets out to do, it amply demonstrates how difficult it can be to move on from the ghosts of traumas past. ||||| New ‘Halloween’ stays true to splatter movie traditions 
 
 Even before Michael Myers starts with the stabbing and the bashing and the strangling and the hammering and the stomping, “Halloween” is one ruthlessly efficient killer of a movie — and I’m grateful for that. 
 
 Director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s bloody good splatter film is a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic, picking up the story some 40 years after the events of that film. 
 
 That means they’ve killed off “Halloween II” and “Halloween III: Season of the Witch” and “Halloween H20” et al., pretty much wiping the slate clean, so here’s all you really need to know: 
 
 Four decades after the masked boogeyman Michael Myers killed three people in the town of Haddonfield, Illinois, on the night of Oct. 31, survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, yes!) is now a tightly wound, wild-eyed grandma, obsessed with the imprisoned Myers and convinced he will one day escape and track her down and try to finish the job. 
 
 Come on, Laurie, give it up. You’re talking crazy. It’s not like the sixtysomething Michael Myers is really going to break out and somehow track her down in the dead of night — or is he? 
 
 Laurie lives in a remote house deep in the woods — a house equipped with multiple security cameras, floodlights, a panic room hidden beneath the kitchen and a number of booby traps. She also has enough firepower to arm a small militia. If and when Michael comes for her, she’ll be ready! 
 
 Her fixation on Myers led to the breakup of two marriages, and also caused Laurie to lose custody of her daughter Karen (played by Judy Greer as a grown-up) when Karen was just 12. These days, Karen spends very little time with her increasingly paranoid and delusional mother, but Laurie remains close with Karen’s teenage daughter, the plucky Allyson (Andi Matichak). 
 
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 In a particularly ill-conceived — some might even say idiotic — plan, authorities decide it’s a good idea to take Michael out of the facility that has kept him in check for 40 years and put him on a bus with a bunch of other mentally ill prisoners on Halloween night. 
 
 And just like that, Michael Myers is once again on the loose in Haddonfield, methodically killing random strangers in a number of creatively gory ways. (First, of course, he has to retrieve his mask, which just happens to be — well, I won’t give it away other than to tip my cap to the screenwriters for the clever set-up.) 
 
 Haluk Bilginer is the creepy Dr. Sartain, who is in charge of Michael’s care and is fascinated by (and maybe even overly fond of) his subject. (When Laurie meets Dr. Sartain, she says, “So you’re the new Loomis,” referencing the late great Donald Pleasance’s character from the original.) 
 
 Like most of the cops and many of the civilians — from a couple of earnest podcasters to, yes, a babysitter, to a number of Haddonfield locals — Dr. Sartain makes some really bad and dumb choices, but that’s what we expect of supporting players in a slasher movie, right? We’re supposed to be calling them out for opening a closet door or leaning too close to a seemingly dead adversary or calling out “Who’s there?” while walking toward the danger instead of running away like a cartoon character. 
 
 The ubiquitous Judy Greer is strong as Laurie’s daughter. Veteran character actor Will Patton is a welcome presence as the only Haddonfield cop who remembers the Babysitter Murders. 
 
 Nick Castle (the original Michael Myers) delivers chills as the masked killing machine, even though we never see his face. 
 
 And Jamie Lee Curtis is badass terrific as Laurie, who lived through those horrific events all those years ago but was robbed of having a real life. 
 
 We also get some choice callbacks to the original film, including one sequence so obvious (and yet so fantastically satisfying) we’d be surprised if they hadn’t figured out a way to make it happen. 
 
 Director Green isn’t trying to reinvent the squeal. “Halloween,” the 2018 version, is the B-movie sequel “Halloween,” the 1978 version, has always deserved. 
 
 ‘Halloween’ 
 
 ★★★ 
 
 Universal Pictures presents a film directed by David Gordon Green and written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green. Rated R (for horror violence and bloody images, language, brief drug use and nudity). Running time: 106 minutes. Opens Friday at local theaters.
– Four decades after she first encountered Michael Myers, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) meets the killer for what is said to be the final time in David Gordon Green's Halloween, a follow-up to John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic that overrides all the other sequels that have come before. According to critics, it's worth the fright. "Halloween, the 2018 version, is the B-movie sequel Halloween, the 1978 version, has always deserved," writes Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times. "It's one ruthlessly efficient killer of a movie." Actors Nick Castle, Judy Greer, and Will Patton earn his praise, while Curtis is "badass terrific," to boot, he writes. Though the film "may not accomplish everything it sets out to do," Monica Castillo appreciated that it embraced trauma and survivor's guilt as an "explicit subject" as opposed to ignoring such real-life struggles. Aiding this story line, Curtis delivers a "moving" performance, her character's instability "palpable," Castillo writes at NPR. Rex Reed was not impressed. Green "is not an imaginative director, so the result is a disappointing collection of the usual familiar cliches," he writes at the Observer. "There are a few gory scares" but the film is missing "any new ideas or fresh suspense," he adds. "It just lays there, like leftover pumpkin." Green's "best tricks are borrowed from Carpenter," but the director jets out on his own for an "excellent final act," in David Sims' view at the Atlantic. "This is a revenge tale for each character, and once Green starts telling it from both sides, the film sings with purpose," he writes, also applauding "fantastic work" from Curtis. Prefer movies that are scary bad? Browse this list.