For the final night of out 31 nights of horror, on Halloween I watched Halloween! Not not that Halloween, I already saw that one. No, not that one either, this is the new, new Halloween, which is a sqeuel to Halloween and should really be called Halloween 2… are you confused yet?

There are, as of this date, eleven films in the Halloween franchise, with two more scheduled to be released in 2020 and 2021/ This movie, which only has John Carpenter involved as composer, executive producer and creative consultant, is a direct sequel to his first movie from 1978 which started it all. Well, I say direct, but it is 40 years between movies and 40 years has passed in the story as well. Essentially the storytellers wanted to ignore all the previous sequels to the first film, removing the subplot introduced in Halloween II of Laurie being Micheals long lost sister, and setting it up that Micheal was apprehended off camera shortly after the first movie ended.

I loved this movie. It has interesting ups and downs, twists and turns. When you think it’s just a formulaic slasher film, repeating stuff we’ve all seen before- ZIG! It goes somewhere you were not expecting.

Jamie Lee Curtis is fantastic as an older Laurie Strode. She has gone full Sarah Connors, prepping a doomsday bunker and training her daughter to fight the monster, because she is certain that if Micheal ever gets free, none of them are safe.

I’ve seen most of the Halloween movies, many are forgettable (in fact I really have forgotten the plots to most of them, even if I’m certain I’ve watched them) and I will state hands down this is the best sequel. They made the right decision going back to the original and throwing away everything else.