The first weekend of October has arrived, and I’m betting a bunch of you are ready to settle in and scare yourselves half to death watching horror movies. What better way to start than with the 2018 reboot of Halloween, which is now streaming on Netflix?
The Halloween series is among the most profitable and enduring horror movie franchises of all time. The original film premiered in 1978, with John Carpenter directing Jamie Lee Curtis in her feature film debut. Curtis would return as Laurie Strode in several sequels over the years, most recently as an executive producer as well in David Gordon Green’s reboot trilogy.
The franchise has been retooled and rebooted multiple times over the years, including the 2007 remake of the original directed by Rob Zombie. The remake and its sequel in 2009 were critically panned, and thus Michael Myers and crew went dormant for nearly a decade. That’s when David Gordon Green, Jeff Fradley, and Danny McBride got a crack at their own Halloween, which they wrote as a direct sequel to the original, ignoring every other entry.
The reviews were generally positive, as critics praised the reboot’s decision to wipe the slate clean. In fact, it was such a success, critically and financially, that Green was able to return and direct two more sequels: Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends.
“Sharing writing credits with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Green delivers a slickly packaged modern slasher that balances wry humour and knowing genre call-backs with moments of 18-rated gore and some efficiently executed showdowns,” wrote The Guardian’s Mark Kermode.
Those sequels didn’t quite live up to the 2018 slasher, but neither of them are on Netflix anyway, so you won’t be tempted to stream them when you’re done.
Also, if Halloween isn’t your jam, plenty more horror flicks just joined the Netflix library, including Psycho, You’re Next, It Chapter Two, and The Sentinel.
