Strong Direction
Blumhouse hiring David Gordon Green to direct their Halloween reboot was a surprising choice, as the Pineapple Express helmer has had no previous experience with the horror genre, serving up indie dramas and comedy movies with the likes of Seth Rogen and James Franco instead. As such, people were primed for something that felt visually very different from past entries in the franchise.
And honestly, that’s not totally what we got, as Green mostly handed in his more arthouse sensibilities at the door. That was definitely a good thing, though, as the filmmaker perhaps comes the closest to aping Carpenter’s original direction of any of the sequel’s helmers. There are a couple of times where things are a little too workmanlike, but mostly he has a great eye for when to maximize suspense and how to handle jump scares.
The directorial highlight of the movie is easily the long cut that accompanies Michael Myers’ return to Haddonfield as in just two extended cuts we follow the killer as he blends into the crowds of trick’r’treaters and begins to murder his way through the town’s residents. It puts us in the mind of the murderer and recalls the lingering, sweeping shots from the 1978 version. It’s simply one of the best sequences in the whole franchise.
