The Friday Night Movie(s): Totally Killer (2023) & The Final Girls (2015)

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I’ve talked many times about growing up in the 1980s and my undying love of slasher movies. Now, we are all reasonable people here so I can admit that slasher movies are also really, really dumb. The plots are derivative, the acting is lousy, the writing is bad, and the direction is usually bland, and uninventive. But there is still a bad-movie charm to most of them, and some of them at least have found ways to inventively kill their awful characters.

Anyone who has watched a few slashers (or has seen a film in the Scream franchise) knows that there are rules. The number one rule in all slashers is that the one person to survive, the hero who will kill the killer will be a good girl. This “final girl” will usually not do drugs or get drunk and she will always be a virgin. To have sex in a slasher movie is to die.

Slashers were made on the cheap and were designed to make a quick buck before disappearing and being forgotten. Like a lot of low-budget genre films, they were filled with gratuitous sex, nudity, and violence. That makes them more than a little problematic for today’s audiences.

For tonight’s Friday Night Horror film, I watched two recent movies that attempt to modernize the slasher while still trying to hold onto its roots. The results are decidedly mixed.

Totally Killer is a recent Amazon Prime release from Blumhouse Studios. Like a lot of Blumhouse pictures, it is well made, and quite a bit of fun, but also soulless and without a true directorial voice.

Kiernan Shipka stars as Jamie a teenager who has lived under the over-protective thumb of her mother (Julie Bowen) who survived the Sweet 16 killer when she was a teen. Three of her friends were not so lucky.

Through a series of events too silly to explain Jamie finds herself time-travelled to 1987 where she then tries to stop the killings from ever happening.

Jamie spends much of her time in the 1980s gasping at the racism, casual homophobia, complete lack of security, and the endless smoking/drunk driving. As someone who grew up in the ’80s I recognize that yeah, all of that totally existed, but maybe wasn’t that grotesque. I mean the homophobia was rampant, and there was a kid in my high school who showed up in full KKK regalia, but the dangers of smoking were known and I remember plenty of lectures about drunk driving (including multiple presentations from M.A.D.D.)

It is a fun film. Shipka is terrific, as is Olivia Holt as her teenaged mom. The gags are good, the kills are entertaining (if a bit bloodless) but it also feels very much like it was made by a committee. Almost all of the Blumhouse films I’ve watched feel this way. It is as if Jason Blum has created a database of every horror film ever made, broken down the details of each film into categories, and then sorted by box office receipts.

Totally Killer is like if you fed the scripts of Back to the Future and Scream into an AI bot and had it write you a movie based upon them. It seems funny to say that a slasher homage has no directorial voice, but I just wish the filmmakers had something more to say, or at least a more creative way to say it.

The Final Girls stars Taissa Farmiga as Max. Her mother Amanda (Malin Akerman) starred in a Friday the 13th-esque slasher called Camp Bloodbath. When a fire is started at a retro screening of that film Max and her friends tear through the movie screen to escape and find themselves stuck inside the movie.

It is much more clever than Totally Killer, finding fun ways to both skewer the tropes of the slasher genre, while still keeping things exciting and well within its confines. It is very meta in that the main characters all know they are in a movie, know its tropes, and try to subvert them.

While watching both films I kept thinking about Stranger Things, the Netflix series. While not perfect, that series understands the 1980s – its horror movies, Stephen King, John Carpenter, etc. – deep down in its bones. It has found a way to create something new and interesting while still being steeped in nostalgia.

Totally Killer and The Finals Girls both feel like they were made by people who have a casual knowledge of slasher films. Like maybe they’ve seen a few of them (and most of the Scream franchise) and have subscribed to a slasher subreddit, but those films aren’t part of their DNA. They are films that have fun (and are fun to watch) with the tropes of the genre but don’t necessarily love them.

If you are a fan of the genre, even casually, I think you could have fun watching these films. But keep your expectations low.

31 Days of Horror: Doctor X (1932)

doctor x poster

So, I watched and reviewed a movie entitled The Return of Doctor X the other day. As far as I can tell it is not in any way a sequel to this film entitled Doctor X. It seems to be one of those things where one movie was popular and so they decided to make a new film and give it a similar title as a type of cash-in. Or at least the hope of a cash-in, whereupon people who enjoyed the first film might see the second film based on the title alone.

No one involved in the first film was involved in the second one. And while the plots are in the same ball field as one another, there isn’t any lap over in terms of characters or anything else other than a bunch of murders being solved, in part, by a news reporter.

A series of brutal murders have been committed in New York City over the last several months. They always occur during the full moon, and the bodies have been cannibalized.

Ace reporter Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy) is on the case. The police have learned that each victim has been killed by a highly specialized scalpel. One that only exists in one place in the city – Doctor Xavier’s (Lionel Atwill) institution. They figure one of Xavier’s scientists must be responsible.

The scientists are all mad and perfectly suited for these murders – one of them is fascinated by cannibalism, another by how the moon affects our psyches, another fetishized voyeurism, and the other is a grouchy paralytic (and thus could not have possibly committed the crimes…or could he?)

The good Doctor X is worried that if the police rush in and start questioning everybody it will ruin the institute’s reputation. He asks to be able to run his own investigation and surprisingly they agree. He does an early version of a lie detector test, hooking everybody up to some gadgets that monitor their heart rate and then he stages the murder scene. The first test finds no answers but does cause a blackout inside of which someone else is murdered.

Doctor X has a daughter, Joanne (Fay Wray) who mainly exists to give exposition and to be the love interest for Lee Taylor. He mainly exists for comic relief. He mostly plays it too big and too broad to be funny, but there are a couple of good bits including one in which he’s locked inside a closet with a skeleton.

The whole film is goofy, and a lot of fun. The sets are amazing, especially the testing arena. Michael Curtiz directed and he keeps things moving at a clip and makes it all visually interesting. It was shot in a two-tone color format which gives the whole thing an other-wordly feel. Made in 1932 it is a Pre-Code film and while not particularly scandalous when viewed with today’s eyes at the time a film dealing with murder and cannibalism (it also includes a brothel and talk of rape) was quite a thing.

The comedy often takes you out of the horror/mystery elements and none of it gels very well, but mostly it is a fairly forgettable, but rather enjoyable little film.

31 Days of Horror: The Secret of the Blue Room (1933)

blue room

The Criterion Channel is hosting several horror films made before the Production Code was rigidly enforced starting in 1934 – calling it Pre-Code Horror.

Pre-Code films are fascinating in part because it sounds so tantalizing. Films made before the Code got away with a lot and they can be shocking to someone who watches a lot of films made under the scrutiny of the Code. But it isn’t like these films were employing hard-core nudity and extreme violence. They were still under the preview of the cultural morals of the time.

The Secret of the Blue Room is not particularly scandalous at all. The most worrisome moment in the entire film is when a young lady kisses her father and three suitors full on the mouth, but that seems more like an old-fashioned cultural moment than anything actually scandalous.

The woman, Irene von Helldorf (Gloria Stuart) is celebrating her twenty-first birthday with her father, Robert (Lionel Atwill), her suitor Thomas (William Janney), and two other dudes who’d like to get with her, Walter (Paul Lucas) and Frank (Onslow Stevens). For some reason, they celebrate the birthday at the stroke of midnight and then tell the story of the blue room.

It is a locked-up room inside the Helldorf’s mansion. Years ago three people on separate occasions died inside the room at exactly 1 in the AM. Men being men they all decide that they will each successively sleep in the room to prove their manliness to Irine and probably win her heart.

The first one disappears without a trace, the second is shot dead and Irene is attacked in the room one morning by a mysterious man. Somehow, through all of this, none of them think to do something logical like call the police. Or search the house for the strange man. Or systematically go through the room looking for secret entrances, or try to understand the mystery.

Eventually, they do report things to the police and an investigation of sorts does occur. None of it is particularly interesting, but it isn’t grown-worthy either. I find a lot of really old films have this effect on me. It is like watching a television series from my youth. I recognize that it’s not really all that good, but it is a pleasant enough way to spend an hour of your time (The Secret of the Blue Room clocks in at 66 minutes.)

It is a remake of a German film from 1932 and it was remade two additional times, once in 1938 and again in 1944. Which just goes to show that Hollywood was cannibalizing itself long before its current trend of only making films with existing IP.

31 Days of Horror: The Return of Dr. X (1939)

the return of dr x

One of the things I enjoy about watching old movies is being able to chart the rise (and sometimes fall) of some of my favorite stars. You can, of course, do that with modern stars, but you never know where they will wind up. With classic movie stars, you get the entire picture.

Humphrey Bogart is my all-time favorite actor. He stars in my all-time favorite movie, Casablanca, and a slew of other great films including The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Key Largo, The African Queen, and many more. For much of his career, he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

But of course, he wasn’t always a star. While he became famous for playing roles in which he was something of a reluctant hero, in his early films he often played the heavy – gangsters and bad men. He was good at it too. I sometimes wonder where his career would have taken him if he’d never become the big star.

The Return of Doctor X was made towards the end of his gangster period and just two years before becoming a huge star with The Maltese Falcon in 1941.

Reportedly Bogart hated the film and refused to talk about it in interviews. I can kind of see why. It isn’t a good film. It is the only horror movie he ever made and it is decidedly different from anything else in his filmography.

But, it isn’t that bad. It is kind of fun, actually. And Bogart is terrific.

It is supposedly a sequel to Doctor X, a film we’ll talk about in a few days, but really it has nothing to do with that earlier movie.

Several people have recently been murdered and completely drained of their Type One blood. Ace reporter Walter Garrett (Wayne Morris) is on the case. His investigation leads him to Dr. Flegg (John Litel) who, as it turns out, has created a synthetic blood that he has used to bring life back to the dead.

For his first patient, he grabs a recently executed man, Dr. Maurice Xavier (Bogart, naturally), fake buries him, and brings him back to life. Then forces him to act as his assistant. Trouble is the synthetic blood doesn’t replicate itself and so Xavier must murder (and presumably drink, or inject) the victim’s blood in order to stay alive.

Bogart, sporting slicked-back black hair with a shock of white in it, is utterly creepy as Dr. X. His skin is made to look pale and his eyes are sunk in as to make him the living dead and he plays it like a man half-dead.

The story is very silly, and it plays up the comedy angle, with the reporter being a bit of a ham. It isn’t at all scary, nor actually very good, but there is a goofiness to it that I found enjoyable and Bogart really is quite good. So, not the film I’d point anyone toward to discover why Bogart is my favorite actor, but certainly one worth watching if you are a fan.

31 Days of Horror: Urban Legend (1998)

urban legend movie

By the early 1990s, the slasher was dead. Or at least bankrupt. There were no new ideas and fans had stopped watching them. Then came Scream. Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson turned the slasher upside down and made it self-aware. I loved it. Lots of people loved it. It was a huge hit. Like a lot of huge hits, imitators followed.

Unfortunately, most of these films missed out on what made Scream so good. Mainly a self-aware, clever script, and genuine thrills. The imitators copied the up-and-coming cast from hip TV shows, a hip soundtrack featuring up-and-coming alternative rock bands, and lots of (not too gory) violence.

Urban Legend poses the idea of what would happen if a serial killer used actual urban legends as his/her inspiration? Which is both an utterly stupid and kind of amazing idea for a horror film.

I’m not by any means an expert on urban legends so take this thought with a grain of salt, but it does feel like the late 1990s were a real hotspot for urban legends. The Internet had just taken off in a very big way which allowed urban legends to flourish like never before, but we weren’t so internet savvy (or cynical) as to easily debunk them. So, the idea of using urban legends for your slasher movie makes sense.

The movie is bad though.

It is set at a fictional New England university that is populated by beautiful, hip, kids who get picked off one by one in not all that interesting ways.

Our hero is Natalie Simon (Alicia Witt) a sweet, sincere, student who is very upset over the news that a student was recently decapitated in her car (that’s the legend where a creepy dude (the always great Brad Dourif) freaks a girl out while trying to warn her that there is a killer in the backseat).

Jerod Leto is the school newspaper reporter who knows all about urban legends and is obsessed with scoops. Rebecca Gayheart is the best friend, Tara Reid is the party girl who hosts a sexy call-in radio show, and Loretta Devine in the sassy security guard.

Oh, and Robert Englund is the professor who specializes in urban legends because that’s a thing.

Some of the urban legends discussed and used to kill people include the don’t flash your lights at another car who doesn’t have their headlights on legend, the aren’t you glad you didn’t turn on the lights last night because I was secretly killing your roommate in the dark legend, and the don’t drink soda with a mouthful of Poprocks legend (one of these didn’t actually kill anybody).

The kills are all fairly tame. The reveal of the killer is downright awful. Everything in between isn’t all that bad, but neither is it particularly interesting.

31 Days of Horror: Messiah of Evil (1974)

messiah of evil poster

The 1970s were a fascinating time for horror movies. The studio system was dead, and independent cinema was on the rise. The production code was out and the ratings system was in. Sex, nudity, pervasive language, and violence were suddenly not only permissible but encouraged. The real-life horrors of the Vietnam War were all around. Also, Watergate, Nixon, and racial tension pervaded the minds of America. If horror is a reflection of what a culture is going through at any given time, in the 1970s we were going through a lot.

There were tons of great horror movies released in the 1970s – The Exorcist, Halloween, Suspiria, Dawn of the Dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc., etc., etc. It was a great decade for horror.

Something I’ve noticed about a lot of horror films from the era is that they often have this gritty, impending sense of dread. Horror movies can be entertaining. Some of them are even fun. But horror in the 1970s was often dreary, filled with a sense of hopelessness and doom. I suppose that is a sign of the times, of all those things I just mentioned – war, politics, struggling for basic rights.

That can make for a great horror film. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is incredibly bleak, but it is also one of the greatest horror films ever made. But when not done well, that sense of dread can be a real bummer.

Messiah of Evil isn’t a bummer, but it isn’t a lot of fun either. The basic plot – a woman travels to a small seaside town looking for her father only to discover it has been overtaken by cultish cannibals – isn’t particularly clever or all that fleshed out, really. There are long sections that I found to be rather dull.

But there are a couple of terrific set pieces. One in which a woman wanders into a grocery store only to find the customers are all munching on raw meat and then eye her for the next course. Another whereby another woman goes into a deserted theater to watch a film only to have it slowly filled with those crazy cannibals in a manner that eerily resembles a similar scene in The Birds.

There is also some wonderful set work. The father’s house is painted with incredibly detailed, and quite uncanny murals.

But so much of the rest of the film seems to just meander about. The woman, Arletty (Marianne Hill) comes to town looking for her father. She asks about and everybody says they’ve never heard of him, but they all seem to be hiding something. Eventually, she finds some people in a hotel who may know something. But first, they interview an old drunk (Eisha Cook, Jr.). He tells some old stories about weird happenings in the town a hundred years ago. The man (Michael Greer) says he’s interested in old stories, folklore, and the like.

But none of this really goes anywhere. We hear some more about the town and those strange events from 100 years ago. They seem to be happening again, but the film doesn’t explain any of it. I’m okay with a film not explaining every detail about what is happening, but this one only muddies the water in unsatisfying ways.

Thom and his two female companions loaf about in Arletty’s father’s house. The girls becomes jealous of her while he tries to seduce her. Etc. and so forth. It all feels like a lot of padding for those two (admittedly incredibly) set pieces.

It is definitely worth watching for those two scenes, but otherwise it is a bit of a drag.

31 Days of Horror

Just over a year ago, Amazon Drive gave me notice that they were discontinuing their service. That forced me to make a decision I had been pondering for quite some time anyway: should I keep The Midnight Cafe going? Or should I shut it down?

Obviously, I decided to keep it going, but I did make some major changes. I quit doing individual posts for individual shows and started doing one post each day with a link to the downloads via Google Drive. I started writing lots of movie reviews, posting YouTube music videos, linking to cool stuff, and generally turning this site into an old-school blog. Like what I used to write when I first started. I also started making public all of my old non-bootleg-related posts from years ago.

I am genuinely curious as to what everybody thinks of the site, one year later.

But also it is time for 31 Days of Horror again. That was the first major non-bootleg series I did on this site since making this change. I remember having a lot of fun with it and I’m very pleased to be doing it again.

I guess this feels like an anniversary of sorts, and that makes it seem like a time to look back. I don’t have any big thoughts on all of this, except to say I really enjoy writing these movie reviews and talking about things that interest me beyond just posting downloads to live music. I hope you do too.

31 Days of Horror: Halloween Ends (2022)

halloween ends

Somewhere around 2007 or 2008, I started keeping track of all the films I was watching. It was a fun way of remembering what movies I had watched and when I watched them. I’ve since moved all my tracking to my Letterboxd account (which you can view here).

That first year I watched right at 100 movies. That seemed like a decent amount of films to watch, so I decided I would try to watch 100 movies every year. I quickly calculated and decided that I should watch 10 movies a month to meet my goal. Now, I’m bad at math, but I’m not that bad at math – I knew that 10 movies a month times 12 months equaled 120 per year but that was easier than doing the real math (it is 8.3333 movies per month if you really want to know) and 10 is a nice round number so I just went with it. Plus watching 120 movies a year is better than watching 100 movies a year and I was happy to increase my goal.

Ten movies a month is 2-3 movies per week and I worked diligently to meet that goal. Those of you who know me, you’ll know I actually stressed myself out more than once when I didn’t meet that goal. I managed to watch 120 movies or more for most of the years I was tracking it. For those of you keeping count, there were a couple of years in which my wife was in charge of a study abroad program and we spent three months a year living in Europe. I did not meet my goals during those years.

As my daughter got older I started watching more movies. She no longer needed my attention every moment of every day and so when she would play with her toys or whatever, I’d throw on a movie. She also started going to bed earlier and when she’d go down I’d put on another movie. My annual views went up.

Then COVID hit and we stopped going anywhere for a couple of years. I watched movies like a fiend. I’d get off work, spend a little time talking to my family then I’d start a movie. I might finish it, or I might not. Then there would be supper and clean up. Maybe a TV show or a game with the family. Then I’d put on another movie, or finish the one I started. But it was the weekends that made me a true movie addict. I’d watch something after work on Friday. Then I’d watch a horror movie that night, maybe two. Then on Saturdays, I’d watch 3 or 4 or 5. I think 6 was my record. I’d watch 2-4 more on Sunday. I was averaging something like 9 movies a week. Suddenly I was watching some 400 movies a year.

Even now when we are venturing out more on the weekends I’m still averaging about 1 movie per day or more.

Still, I watched a lot of movies this month. Fifty to be exact. Forty-four of these were horror movies. That’s a little crazy.

But I like stats so I’m going to break them down even more.

Twelve of the movies I had seen before. Twenty were made before I was born. The most movies I watched in one day were four. I did that twice. I only went to a movie theater once and that was to watch the original Halloween on the big screen. My final movie this month was indeed Halloween Ends. But it was kind of terrible and I don’t want to talk about it.

Truth is there was a bit of sickness in my family this month which kept us home on a couple of weekends. Also, the budget has been tight of late which kept us home even more. I tend to watch movies when I’m home.

I’ve done 31 Days of Horror for a few years now and I’ve never watched this many horror movies. Usually, I watch maybe 12 or 15 horror movies in October. I had no intention of writing about them every day either. But once I wrote my first 31 Days of Horror post I couldn’t stop. When I start something like that I have this weird need to keep it going. So I kept watching horror movies so that I could keep up with my posting. I’d watch multiple horror movies on the weekend so I could ensure that I’d have movies to write about even if I wasn’t able to watch a full movie on any given weekday.

To tell you the truth I’m kind of tired of watching horror movies

Next month is Noirvember. I’ll do a post about it tomorrow. I do not think that I will watch a film noir every day, nor do I plan to write about them every single day of the month. But I’ve said that before. I’m definitely looking forward to watching something that doesn’t have a lot of blood splatter.

31 Days of Horror: Gremlins (1984)

gremlins poster

I was eight years old in 1984 when Gremlins came out. I saw it at least once in the theater, but I suspect I saw it more than that. Certainly, I remember talking to my friends about it at school and on the playground. We all loved it. Famously it was one of the movies that created the PG-13 rating (the other was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). There is quite a bit of violence in the film including scenes in which Gremlins are pureed in a food processor and blown up in a microwave. Some audience members were disturbed by this, having taken their young children to the movie due to its PG rating. Steven Spielberg who produced this movie and directed Temple of Doom used his clout to suggest a rating between PG and R and thus the PG-13 rating was born.

As kids, of course, it was those very scenes that we loved and were talking about on the playground.

If you haven’t seen it, Gremlins is about how a father buys a cute little furry creature from a mystical old Chinese man (we’re gonna overlook the terrible caricature that trope has always been, but do note I am completely aware of it). for his son Billy (Zach Galligan). Well, technically he buys it from the man’s grandson, but that detail isn’t that important. The creature called a Mogwai and named Gizmo by Billy comes with three rules.

He doesn’t like bright lights, and sunlight will kill him.
Never get him wet.
Never, ever, feed him after midnight.

As a side note, I once bought the woman who would become my wife a stuffed Gizmo but made her recite the rules to me before I would give it to her. She still has it, and pulled him out while watching the movie.

Naturally, all three of these rules will be broken in the course of the movie.

When water is accidentally spilled onto Gizmo he spawns a bunch of other Mogwai. Unlike Gizmo these spawns are more mischievous and malevolent. They trick Billy into feeding them after midnight which metamorphosizes them into larger, nastier creatures with evil intent.

Mayhem and quite a bit of pretty bloody violence ensue.

Director Joe Dante directs Gremlins from a script by Chris Columbus with a wonderful mix of humor and gore. As a kid I loved it. As an adult I still do.

It takes place on Christmas Eve so technically you could call it a Christmas movie rather than a Halloween one, but I’m still counting it for my 31 Days of Horror scoreboard.

31 Days of Horror: Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998)

summer of sam poster

I’ve talked quite a bit about how I grew up watching slasher movies like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, etc. I am a child of the ’80s and slashers were all the rage. But while I am a child of the ’80s I really came of age in the ’90s. This is a fallow period for horror movies. Slasher movies were either straight-to-video schlock or the 7th or 8th sequel to a long-since stale franchise.

Then in 1996 Scream was released and things changed. Written by Kevin Williamson, a horror buff, and directed by Wes Craven who directed many a horror film including the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. These were people who knew the genre and loved it. They also knew the tropes, and how tired they had become and made a film that played around with them. The characters in Scream are fans of horror movies and talk about the rules and tropes of the genre whilst simultaneously living through one. It is a self-aware slasher film, but one that is also a really good version of the genre.

I injected it straight into my veins. It was hugely successful and like all cinematic successes, it spawned countless imitators. They all had a cast of attractive up-and-comers (who were usually stars on the small screen but had yet to break onto the big screen) were filled with self-aware characters and the music was very much of the time (mostly 1990s alt-rock). Most of them were also instantly forgettable.

When Halloween H20: 20 Years Later came out I was all on board. I loved the original John Carpenter film (which essentially ignited the slasher craze of the 1980s) and I thought it would be really fun to give that film a boost with this new updated version of the old film. I hated it on that first viewing.

It is here that I admit that at this point I had only seen the original Halloween, but none of the sequels. So I was not well knowledged in the Halloween-verse lore. I was also expecting more Scream-esque shenanigans and got very little of that.

But I’ve seen the film a few times since that initial viewing and I’ve really come around to the film. I’ve also seen all the other Halloween films (excepting the Rob Zombie-directed Halloween II) so I’m better prepared to see how it fits into the canon.

Halloween H20 essentially pretends that every film after Halloween II (the original not the Rob Zombie remake, man this series gets weird with their naming) doesn’t exist. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) survived the attacks from Michael Myers, then faked her death and got on with her life. She’s now the headmistress of a posh, exclusive, and secluded prep school in California. She might be a functioning alcoholic, and she pops a lot of pills, but she’s not living in fear. Well, maybe she lives in a little fear, especially when the calendar gets closer to Halloween. Maybe a lot of fear when it is almost Halloween, and her son, John (Josh Hartnett) is about to turn 17, the same age she was when Michael Myers attacked.

Much like the original, this Halloween movie takes its time getting to the killings. Oh, there is a pretty great opening scene in which Michael Myers kills his former nurse to get some files on where Laurie is currently living, and he kills a couple of people along his route. But mostly the film is about how Laurie has started her new life. She seems to be a good teacher. She has a steady boyfriend (Adam Arkin). She is learning how to deal with her growing son, etc. We spend quite a bit of time with her son and his friends.

I liked these scenes. It is a film about trauma and how the violence of the early films has stayed with Laurie even as she tries to pretend everything is fine. These days it seems like every other film is about trauma (and certainly the new Halloween movies dig deep into that idea), but at the time this was something of a rarity. There are callbacks to earlier films but they don’t hit you on that head with it.

This isn’t a film that is self-aware like the Scream movies are. Nobody reference other horror movies or their tropes. LL Cool J provides some comic relief as a security guard who secretly wants to write romance novels, but that’s as jokey as it gets. The teenagers are young, and attractive, and populated by up-and-coming actors (Michelle Williams and Joseph Gordon-Levitt appear). The soundtrack is filled with cool alt-rock from the period. But it feels less like a 1990s new-slasher film than an update of the original.

When Michael Myers does show up the kills and the final battle are well-staged. There is nothing here that will make a highlight reel of the best kill scenes, but it does the job. And that really sums up the film. It is well made and well acted, it works as a serviceable slasher and a nice updating of the original. But there is nothing here that makes it special. But in a world filled with really terrible horror films, perfectly serviceable is a perfectly reasonable thing to hope for.