HALLOWEEN *

Yep, it's October 31st but 40 years later and Michael Meyers has escaped, (again).  Jamie Lee Curtis is now the grandmother and naturally she's mad, bad and dangerous to know, spouting cliches by the dozen, but this "Halloween" is more of a remake that a sequel to Carpenter's masterpiece so it's basically business as usual. For a film like this to work we don't really need surprises but we do need shocks and unfortunately David Gordon Greeen doesn't seem to be the man to deliver them.

Carpenter had the knack of scaring the living daylights out of us, mainly by a judicious use of the widescreen; Green just pours on the bloodletting. That said, this is still one of the better films in the franchise; a little bit of what we already know certainly comes in handy. Unfortunately, apart from Curtis no-one else makes much of an impact and it's sad to see Will Patton wasted as an over-the-hill policeman. What's even sadder is there's two more movies in the pipeline.