Yes, I’m in the camp of people that loathe horror movie sequels. Generally a sequel is never as well written as the original but the increased body count goes some way to pleasing hardcore horror fanatics like myself. So what’s my biggest problem with movie sequels? It’s in the title; literally. Horror movies are the WORST when it comes to naming sequels, especially when you start going down the road of adding subtitles to them, like resurrection or reborn. Ugh.
Okay, so horror titles are bad, get over it, right? WRONG. I want to point out why it’s bullshit and why this sort of crap should NEVER happen again. Let’s take a classic horror franchise since it’s Halloween, and examine the issue under a microscope. Nope, that’s too close, well – let’s just address the issue. The Halloween Movies, a brilliant movie set around the sleepy neighborhood with a masked killer on the loose on Halloween. Michael Myers is the star of the show, with his dead-eyed look and just won’t stay dead with Donald Pleasence running around trying to stop his former patient, and Jamie Lee Curtis just running around. The first movie was the first of a two-parter movie. The second movie takes place as a direct sequel, straight from the first movie and is aptly named Halloween II. This is where the franchise peaks, as Michael Myers is killed by Donald Pleasence’s character at the end.
Then, as you’d expect; there was another sequel, but it had NOTHING to do with the Michael Myers story, since he was dead, and there was nothing really to come back to. Unfortunately, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, was poorly received and it had that annoying little subtitle. Why not just call it something else, like the Attack of the Mask, or Killer Masks, or Halloween Masks. It was a good idea to try something different, but with reviews being so harsh and the disappointment from fans caused the following events to occur…Halloween 4: The return of Michael Myers. You know it’s bad when it has returned in the title. In fact, John Carpenter had nothing to do with anything after the 3rd movie, so this was the direction of a greedy company trying to milk the franchise for all its worth. So, they basically ignore the WHOLE of Halloween II, assuming that the audience has never seen or heard of Halloween II, and just picks up saying Michael Myers is alive again, but luckily so is Donald Pleasence’s character, so it’s not all bad. Then it’s Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers as if they just went into a class full of kids and said “What should we call the next movie?”.
Then, as if the subtitles weren’t annoying enough, someone said, “Hey, you know those numbers that we put at the end of the movie that tell people what part of the story it is? Just get rid of them”. Yes, the 6th part isn’t numbered. What a load a donkey turds. You have a long-running series of movies and can’t even be arsed to number them anymore, how great is that? So Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is the beginning of the no longer numbered movies, to which we have another sequel, Halloween: H20, where we cut back to the original character Laurie Strode in her effort to escape Michael Myers. In all fairness, that one isn’t the worst movie, and it’s nice to see Jamie Lee Curtis in the leading role again. But then, the most unholy of them all is Halloween: Resurrection. Just that title alone was enough to tell people that this movie was BAD. Nothing good ever came from a resurrection. And yes, this is the one where Michael Myers is attacked by Busta Rhymes, the rap artist. I mean, come on…
So, that’s The Halloween Movies taken care of. But wait! There’s the Rob Zombie remakes; to which I reply “Those movies are no more remakes than I am a serial killer.” The Rob Zombie “remakes” are worth watching, but they are completely different to any of the other movies since the story revolves around Michael Myers and not his victims. The thing that annoyed me most about these movies is that they have the exact same name as the first original movies. Halloween & Halloween II. So like when I decided to sit and watch these movies with my partner who hadn’t watched any of the originals previously, she was amazed that there were so many others she hadn’t seen, and how could they make them so quickly? Well, it sucks. I have to include the years or refer to them as the old ones in order to achieve clarity. Thanks a lot.
Now, this is a topic that annoys me to no end with The Halloween Movies, and it won’t be the last time I bring it up. Like with all good horror villains, I will return.
