PUBLISHER: Titan Books, 10/2018PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: D
FILM GRADE: F
FROM PUBLISHER: In 1978, Laurie Strode survived an encounter with Michael Myers, a masked figure who killed her friends and terrorized the town of Haddonfield, Illinois on Halloween night. Myers was later gunned down, apprehended and committed to Smith's Grove State Hospital.
For forty years, memories of that nightmarish ordeal have haunted Laurie and now Myers is back once again on Halloween, having escaped a routine transfer, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. This time, Laurie is prepared with years of survival training to protect herself, her daughter Karen and her granddaughter Allyson, a teenager separated from her family and enjoying Halloween festivities.
MY THOUGHTS/SPOILERS: Graded D for disastrous. The novel and film are the sequel to the 1978 Halloween. Laurie is no longer Michael's sister, as was introduced in Halloween II (1981). I have no idea why he's still after her, and her relatives, forty years later. It's a crying shame what they've turned the character Laurie into. I don't like it at all. I guess my review is more for the film and not the novel since the author was just going off the screenplay.
I don't like how they've incorporated things from the first three (and probably the others but I didn't notice) Halloween films into this one.
Examples: Teenager Vicky babysat on Halloween night, like Annie did in the original. Vicky's boyfriend came over in this one but in the original, Annie's friend Lynda and her boyfriend came over, so in this one they've incorporated both of those into the character of Vicky.
She also made popcorn for the nine-year-old she's babysitting, just like Annie did in the original, for the nine-year-old she was watching, Lindsey.
While babysitting, Vicky looked out the window at night at two white sheets blowing on the clothesline, just like Laurie did in the original, but she did it during the day, right after school on Halloween day.
Michael pins Vicky's boyfriend, Dave, to the wall with a knife, just like he did to Lynda's boyfriend in the original.
On Halloween night, a character named Andrea was at home on the phone with a friend named Sally when she got killed. In Halloween II, the same thing happened to Sally while on the phone with a friend. They weren't even creative enough to change the character's name in this book from Sally to something else.
Now get this scene from the 2018 version, as it combines Halloween and Halloween III- On Halloween night, Laurie's lurking around outside and yells out to three children to go home, since Michael's on the loose. That scene copies the original Halloween when Dr. Loomis yells out to Lonnie to get his "ass" home. One child is wearing a witches mask, one's wearing a pumpkin mask, and the other one's wearing a skeleton mask, homage to the Silver Shamrock masks in Halloween III.
The scene where Laurie goes over the balcony and is lying on the ground, then isn't there when Michael goes outside to her is exactly what happened in the original film except it was Michael who went over the balcony and disappeared.
I suppose some would find all of the similarities clever or funny, but not me. Try being original instead of ripping scenes out of other films and rearranging them to fit your narrative. I'm speaking of the film writers.
I don't understand why they needed a Dr. Loomis clone, complete with British accent, which they have in Dr. Sartain, but I like the madness in him. That was unexpected.
Wikipedia says that Michael's doctor, Sartain, admits to arranging Michael's escape on the bus, "Hawkins and Sartain arrive just in time to save Allyson. Hawkins tries to kill Michael, but Sartain – obsessed with Michael's enigmatic motivations – kills Hawkins, and reveals he seeks to understand how Michael feels when he kills, and reveals that he arranged for Michael's escape to reinforce his perceived role as an "apex predator" who needs to finish what he started and kill Laurie to reassert himself" but I can't find that being said during that scene in the film or novel and I've watched and reread that part multiple times.
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