As I’m sure any horror hound with their ear to the street or finger even remotely near the pulse of the community has seen or heard by now, John Carpenter is returning to the beast that birthed his career – Halloween. We’ve suffered countless sequels, well-meaning but not always so well conceived remakes and now, seemingly like that light at the end of the tunnel – a remake with John Carpenter at the helm…sorta. Ahem, sorry, NOT a remake – a new entry in the original Halloween series. But not related to the Zombie-helmed ventures. This is already getting confusing.

Before you pick up your pitch forks, tar, feathers and what-have-you just let me have my say. I love the original Halloween as much as the next weirdo. It’s a lean, well-thought out slasher that’s the prototype for a myriad of sequel, ripoffs and wanna-be’s. Halloween holds its power decades later and it deserves the crown we’ve laid upon its head; I would never claim otherwise. What I am saying is that this remake foolishness doesn’t deserve the obsessive fanboy circle-jerk that it’s getting. But, people will be people and what do people love? The familiar.

Halloween (1978)

If you’ve been reading our site (or my writing) for any period of time, firstly thank you and I’m sorry but second,  you know that I look for innovation above anything else. It’s the reason I keep listening to metal and watching horror movies – that moment you see someone pull off something you haven’t seen before. The unknown. It’s one of the only reasons to keep watching these movies (some horrendous) for as long as I have. So please tell me where the innovation is in having a director revisit their work and give us another instalment in a series already drowning in sequels and reboots? Where is the room to breathe for whoever ends up captaining this ship?

I think fanboy expectations pigeonhole movies like this and they just ends up being  paint by numbers affairs because you can’t piss off the fan base by doing anything too drastic or new with the characters.  That’s no fun for anyone. Just look at when Rob Zombie tried to change it up. Granted, I need to go with Mr Carpenter on this one in saying that “Michael is not just a human being; he’s a force of nature, like the wind” because white trash Micheal was really not the best way to enact change on the franchise or character. Plus, you know it was the ninth and tenth time we re-visited the world and characters, so it was a little little played out by then. Just like an eleventh instalment likely will be, despite who’s in the control room. A new Halloween might be what everyone thinks they want but I personally don’t think it is. Not from an objective viewpoint at least. Constantly rehashing and revisiting the same stories and characters is only detrimental to the world of up and coming talent creating new content in this genre.

In conclusion, having JC come back to the franchise and “produce” it is little more than fanboy pandering. And apparently, because it’s all going according to the plan I imagine is in place, fan boys are blindly gobbling it all up. My theory is that this was just a way for Blumhouse to avoid comparisons to Zombies remakes and get a little free press from well, us. “Us” being all us jokers including because I’m typing this and you’re reading it. The plan worked.

-Scotty