What a disappointing end to the Halloween reboot trilogy. Halloween Kills was so unbelievably good that I was excited to see what's next, it turns out that this film is vastly different. I'm aware that the filmmakers wanted to try different approach with this final entry but I wasn't expecting this messy. It's more of a drama, villain origin story, dark romance with some slashing. Definitely not an easy task to pull this off, but you can clearly see the struggle. The focus shifts on this new kid's descent into darkness which largely feels underdeveloped and hollow, with some super corny romance thrown in, cornier than people chanting 'evil dies tonight'. I find it super weird and get so frustrated because of how the kid got the main focus when this film is supposed to finish Laurie and Michael story which started a long time ago. Also, the romance part feels forced, downright cringy and unnecessary. Like seriously, who thought that it was a good idea?! The slashing is brutal and fun, at least, although you won't see the incredibly menacing Michael Myers like in the previous film. It honestly makes me appreciate Halloween Kills more since that one is the most 'slasher' out of 3.
A prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 classic with the same name, this copycat turned out to be better than I thought it would be. It offered nothing too original except a smart Ripley-type character who was decent and likeable. The filmmakers managed to tie the ending of this story into the opening of Carpenter's original, which was an appropriate thing to do since they had branded it as a prequel as part of its marketing strategy. I really don't think I would want to see this movie be a part of some "The Thing" box set, though. It's totally unnecessary and is really nothing but a cash grab based on an earlier masterpiece. Yes, that's right. I called Carpenter's original a "masterpiece".
What surprises about this prequel is that it isn't a bad movie at all, that is until the final act. There's some decent suspense and some real tension generated. The classic blood test scene of the original was almost to the point of being copied, but they pulled back and developed a different way to tell alien from human. It's not as effective, but it does manage to turn up the suspense. And about that last act, it's awful. The characters get involved in a "hiding from the alien" scene that makes absolutely no sense given what we find out about them later. Even the alien behaves like an absolute idiot. I don't know why I'm trying not to spoil this, but perhaps it's because I wouldn't want a forehead slapping moment ruined for me, either.
No comments about a movie containing aliens would be complete without a word or two about the special effects, and in this movie, they weren't very good. Everything is CGI and it totally eliminated any potential scares. They weren't SyFy Channel cheap but were at times very nearly cartoonish. The alien was not scary and even the gore, which there was less of than I anticipated, was not convincing in the least. Seriously, what is it about special effects that allows me to accept how bad they are in '50s science fiction or horror but reject them when current films botch them. This version of "The Thing" didn't impress in that department.
