Michael Myers in the trailer. Despite rolling back to the look and feel of the original, the boogie man vibe is lost if you see too much of him. It's like Jaws, the less you see the shark, the more anxiety you feel about his whereabouts. And so much of the camera following him from behind makes it even less scary.
shareWell said, and totally agree.
Part of the magic and mystique of the original was how much of a mystery MM was. He was the boogeyman, lurking in the shadows. No sequel since....(and certainly not the remakes) have understood the brilliance of Carpenter's minimalist approach. Very little blood or gore....and don't show the boogeyman until you absolutely have to. (We sure as f--k don't need to see his childhood and backstory). Jaws, BTW....is a great analogy.
Exactly. Less is more. It all works better when he's a ghost. And I don't want to walk in safety two steps behind him as we track the details of his every move. I guess that's this director's way of making it his own, with long, following one-shots like in the trailer -- but that takes the eerie tension away.
shareWell I'm not going to be watching the movie as a horror/slasher movie anyway. I've watched all the others so many times and I enjoy watching them so much that I don't find Michael Myers scary anymore. I'll be watching the new movie like it's a superhero movie AND of one of my favorite superheroes (Batman, for example). I'll actually be cheering for both Laurie and Michael. I want Laurie to win, but I also don't want Michael to die. Oh and then throw in all the Michael and Dr. Loomis parody videos that Mike and Jay from We Watched A Movie (YouTube channel) do. They've made Michael Myers hilarious. So while watching the new movie, I'll just be hearing Jay's Dr. Loomis yelling "Michael!!!" whenever Michael does something. And I'll probably be inappropriately laughing and getting odd looks. So to me, the new Halloween movie is just going to be an action movie that is "attempting" to include horror. I'll probably get annoyed with all the jumpscares though, but I won't be having nightmares and stuff after watching it.
shareTo be fair, even if the trailer didn't include a single shot of Michael in his mask, almost everyone watching this movie for the first time would know exactly what to expect going into the movie.
Michael Myers is just too big a cultural icon to ever evoke the same feelings in a modern generation that he did back when the original was released.
We've all grown up seeing dozens of people walking around in the white mask and blue jumpsuit every single year on Halloween. All the sequels have been played on basic cable for decades. The character has been the center of a cottage industry of merchandise for longer than many of us have been alive.
He's arguably the single most iconic horror character in movie history. Characters like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster are technically literary characters and were famous long before they were portrayed in film.
I don't think anyone would argue that all movies that depict the same character are equally entertaining. We all have an idea of what to expect from every genre film -- but some execute and deliver better than others. I can watch the original Halloween again and again. I couldn't get through the first Rob Zombie offering. So there's an artful way to do this and then there's the rest. Even before we saw the original, we knew about a scary guy in a mask who's killing people -- but the deft execution on that premise makes all the difference. IMO, seeing too much of him is a poor choice in the trailer as well as the film itself. And I feel the same about the all the shots trailing him from behind. It's an odd pov if scares are the goal.
dmac--Right again.
While it is indeed a shame that MM has been played out (thanks to Moustafa Akkad milking the concept, sequel after cookie-cutter sequel).....there still can be an artful way of executing a film like this. Carpenter's original was a masterpiece, and lightning in a bottle. A perfect blend of era (just like with Jaws, the 70's was the perfect era for a film like this), look & feel, actors (Donald Pleasance in particular--was amazing), sound, and artful direction. Granted, it also had the advantage of being the first....the advantage of us never knowing a "Michael Meyers" in our lexicon. But still, Carpenter just...gets it. I don't even consider the original a "horror film"....so much as I consider it a scary movie, and a classic one at that. Very little blood or gore....or even jump scares. He just plays on the inherent fears the little kid in all of us has always had of....The Boogeyman. The sequels never came close to recapturing that magic. Once MM became a serial killer...(always wearing the same mask and jumpsuit)....it became as silly as the Friday the 13th films.
However, with Carpenter loosely involved with this one.....with JLC back....and, with the fact that they very wisely throw out all those awful sequels in this storyline....I have hope it may be pretty decent. But I agree, the trailers should have only been around 30 seconds each. Just show us a hint of JLC.....show us Carpenter is involved....give us a hint of that mask in the shadows....and play that iconic piano sound. And maybe for the second trailer, have that amazing Loomis monologue as a voiceover: "I spent 8 years trying to reach him....." That would have been enough to get everyone excited. MM walking around amongst a crowded neighborhood of trick or treaters did nothing for me. Oh well, we'll see soon enough. It can't be worse than what Rob Zombie did. He just never understood the spirit of Carpenter's classic.
Yeah, Zombie didn't get it. It's about paranoia and anxiety rather than gratuitous violence. Hearing MM breathing at the very end of the original, with all the shots around the neighborhood, suggesting he could be anywhere or everywhere, is far scarier than any bloody gore scene from the other films. I actually like the first trailer but then they tried to appeal to the ADD folks by showing too much and adding a silly line like "Happy Halloween, Michael". When I first heard about the project with Carpenter being involved, I thought they'd try to do something more interesting and creative but with the same vibe as the original. If that means tiptoeing behind MM as we follow his path of what I suspect will be too many deaths, I'll be disappointed
shareThe films trailer for me has worked against it. I think Sarah Connor version of Laurie is a bit silly, as is the attempt to make it seem like he was human when if you actually watched the first film its fairly clear he was more than the average human...he should be dead if he were human. At this point I am expecting a film closer to H8 in over all quality than anything near H2,H4 or H20. But who knows it may surprise, I will watch it.
Trailers in general show way to much of films.
Yes, and MM as the Terminator might work at the climax but not from the start. Less is more. You should see the residue of his presence rather than following him around through some overdone slaughter path.
And you're right about trailers. It's a sign of the times to show so much so soon. They fear to lose the attention of people who have such a short span.
I like the Sarah Connor analogy. I think Laurie definitely plays better being vulnerable and an unwilling participant. When they try to make her a toughened-up, laser-focused vigilante....it just doesn't work for me. And I agree about the trailer...it tips the cards way too much. All Pavlov's dogs needed was the sound of a bell. All we needed was that iconic piano score.....plus show John Carpenter's name on screen....and end it with MM breathing in that mask. The one thing I DID think worked well, and had an erie factor to it...was the scene at the outdoor area of the asylum.
It's funny....even the younger generation, used to sensory overload (and overkill) in movies (for example, ANY Fast & Furious movie).....even they appreciate how great the original was, with all its minimalism. I wish producers, writers and directors would give them more credit, and not feel so much like they need to up the ante....in order to keep attention spans who are used to super hero movies.
Trailers in general show way to much of films.
Oh man, this^^^!
I only watched one, and frankly , it looked trite. I try to avoid trailers, generally, as they give away too much information and spoil it for me.
This is what Carpenter talked about many times, that creating so much backstories has become trendy only in the last few decades, you can notice that before 90's there were hardly any big backstories. No Carpenter film from 70's and 80's had any either. When you see a film like Bye Bye Man (2017), there are those who wish to have some backstory about this villain, yet missing the point why exposition ruins the scariness of not knowing.
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