This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the film. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the uncut version would be more negative

Halloween has returned and you can bet that it is just as gruesome as ever. It suffers from all of the usual issues such as a weak cast, over the top violence and characters making the worst decisions possible. I wouldn’t say that it is the worst film in the series as it still ends up beating two of the prior ones but it’s all relative in the race to the bottom. The movie’s quite short at least so it’s over in a flash.

The movie kicks off with explaining how the ending of the film didn’t have us watch Laurie destroy Michael and instead he tricked her by swapping masks. This may sound a little crazy because it is but I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes. A few years pass by and Myers attacks Laurie again but she handles herself well and defeats him. Unfortunately she decides to go in close to try and remove his mask as if this was Scooby Doo and so this allows him to turn the tables and destroy her. He’s now ready to go back home but it turns out that a group of teenagers are filming a spooky reality show in his house. Myers figures that it’s time to take them all down.

Right off the bat it is annoying that Laurie would make the mistake of underestimating Myers by getting too close like this. The film tries to blame it on her feeling guilt so she had to make sure that she got the right person but it didn’t matter in this instance. Whoever was behind the mask was clearly trying to murder her so take him out and then worry about whoever is behind the mask. That would have been the best way to handle this and then she would still be around. Definitely a shame.

The security here also seemed pretty bad. This is evidently a bit of an insane asylum with the patients behind bars so how is it so easy for the guy in the clown mask to keep escaping? It’s treated as if this was a normal thing and you’d think that they would be a lot more serious about it. The guy may seem harmless but is he really? He’s a little too interested in the murders so I have my doubts on that one.

Once we get to the main cast we’re reminded why nobody tends to like the horror casts all that much. While there are a few exceptions, the characters always seem to be super annoying and as a result as unprepared for the dangers ahead. They throw in so many fake jump scares and cry wolf to the point where nobody believes them when the danger is actually real. That’s on them when everyone is slow to react when things really happen. I’d also say that going to the Myers house is in really bad taste. I’d say the same is true of picking someone older, but someone who (seemingly) just died 3 years ago and the victims are still fresh in everyone’s memories? Yeah this is definitely going to be an exploitative scary show.

The guys here are only interested in booking up with the girls while the main girl’s friend just wants to be famous. The main heroine Sara is really here out of peer pressure which is a common factor as her pen pal Deckard goes to a party for the same reason. They need to learn to just say no to going places where they don’t want to be and it will absolutely help them out later in life. You can’t let peer pressure just toss you around like that. It’s not a good idea in the slightest!

As mentioned the film is fairly short at around an hour and a half and it feels short so I guess that’s good on the pacing. On the other hand, while usually you could at least expect to be engaged in the human scenes when Myers isn’t going around murdering everyone, that isn’t the case here since the characters are so bad. That puts you in a rather tough position because there is nobody to really root for here. I guess I would go with the head of the show Freddie.

The guy may be the head of this operation and so he’s really the one getting everyone into trouble but he can fight and gets some good lines against Myers. In fact I would go as far as to say he gets all of the best scenes. I liked seeing him glad Myers on and actually land some really good hits. Wishing him a Happy Halloween was really intense too. You just know that he better get as far out of the country as possible because if Myers gets back then he will absolutely be holding a grudge here. He’s not really the forgive and forget kind of guy.

If the film did something right here it’s that the characters actually fought back against Myers more. Laurie took him out early on, Freddie got multiple victories against him and that’s good because he is just a guy with super strength. You should be trying to push him around because of you can take him out at least for a little bit then you’re all set. It may backfire but it’s better to go down with a fight than not at all.

The death scenes aren’t quite as brutal as in a few other films as they don’t tend to be as prolonged but make no mistake, the film is still intensely violent and one of the reasons the movie won’t make it to the big time. There is still quite a body count here before the film is over as nobody is safe from his rampage. At least we still have a solid soundtrack as always. The Myers theme is iconic at this point and for good reason. It’s very distinctive and has that spooky kind of feel to it as well so it just works really well.

There’s just not much more to say about the film though because the writing is just that bad. Just think about it for a minute, it’s actually hard to make all of the characters this bad. Freddy is the only silver lining here as everyone else is absolutely out of their league and not doing much to make themselves likable characters. If they would quit it with the jump scares and all then maybe they would finally be better than average but that’s too much for the Halloween series.

Overall, At least the movie is short but this is one that you will want to skip. It really doesn’t do anything to add to the Halloween mythos and is instead a film that you will forget right away. It’s easy to see why people didn’t like this one although I can’t talk as much there since I haven’t liked any of them. At least we always have the iconic Halloween theme which is still a classic. That theme holds up well to this day which is quite impressive. You can’t say that about every theme.

Overall 1/10