bettyconway

The last Halloween from 2018 took everyone by surprise and ended up becoming a big hit by capitalizing on the #MeToo movement and the collective trauma of women fighting back against their aggressors. While their intentions were admirable, that film felt mostly hollow and didn't have anything truly interesting to say about trauma. Now, the filmmakers want to tackle mob violence and, once again, they find themselves unable to say anything new or interesting about the subject.

Halloween Kills picks up right after the events of the last film where Laurie Strode, her daughter, and granddaughter lured Michael Myers into her isolated home and trapped him in the basement, setting the house on fire and taking the wounded Laurie to the nearest hospital. Unfortunately, the firefighters sent over to snuff out the fire don't hear Laurie's agonizing cries to "let it burn" as they pass her on the road and they allow Michael Myers to escape and resume is killing spree.

Halloween Kills brings back even more characters from John Carpenter and Debra Hill's original film including Lindsay Wallace, Tommy Doyle, Sheriff Brackett, and Marion Chambers but gives them very little to do as the film seems more interested in following Michael Myers through one gory set piece to another. The effects are brilliantly done, but since there's no real plot to speak of and no character development for any of the victims, it's hard to care too much, making the film a bit of chore to sit through.

Remakes and reboots are a dime a dozen these days and most of them aren't worth a thing, but every now and then, one comes along and gets it right and remembers what made the original franchise so interesting to begin with.

A bunch of friends head out to a cabin for a weekend getaway, but encounter some car trouble along the way and, as fate would have it, they end up staying the night at a rundown cabin that was the site of a string of brutal murders years prior. As the evening goes on, they're lead to believe that the killer might still be out there.

Slumber Party Massacre has more than a few surprises up its sleeve including a big midpoint reversal that'll have you rethinking everything you saw up to that point, some very gory murders, and a funny take on the typical all-girl gratuitous nudity that's usually featured in movies like this.

So many 80's horror films that were made mostly for the video market have been unfairly thrown aside in the 30+ years since they were released and many of them have a lot of creativity that deserves to be seen by a new audience. The Rejuvenator is one of those lost films that still has the capacity to entertain.

A doctor has been working on an anti-aging serum forever, but he hasn't been working fast enough to please one of his biggest financial benefactors - an aging actress whose career could use a refreshing. Even though he's nervous about it, he agrees to shoot her up with the serum, telling her all the risks and that she'll need multiple doses of the serum or else the entire thing will reverse. The only problem is that he needs human brain tissue to make more serum and he's running out of cadavers.

The special makeup effects are top notch, the performances are spirited with just enough camp appeal given the subject matter, and the script is smarter and better written that other films of this type and budget. This is a film that could benefit from a new Blu-Ray release.