HALLOWEEN III: THE SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982): is often unfairly maligned as the "bad" Halloween movie just because it has nothing to do with the Michael Myers character of every entry in the series. The fact is, John Carpenter's original idea with the HALLOWEEN series is to produce a new low-budget horror film every year, to be released around Halloween. And this is really the only time they fulfilled that vision. To all the haters, can you really say this film is worse than an endless string of re-hashed Michael Myers stories (including the remakes)? I think it's a great story on it's own, a cult classic about a madman who plans to wipe out all the children on Halloween using magically booby-trapped masks. Very sick, and a great ending (which I won't spoil even though it's over three decades old.)I know it has become the hip thing to now like HALLOWEEN III decades after it flopped initially. And I don't want to be the hipster who claims he loved it before everyone else caught on. I always found it interesting, just from the standpoint of how the whole HALLOWEEN series could've been different if it was a different, unrelated, quick-and-cheap horror film released on Halloween every year. But over the past couple of years, it has started becoming my favorite Halloween movie (as in, not just my favorite in the series, but my favorite movie to watch on Halloween.) Especially the cynicism about mass commercialism.
And then we saw Adam Wingard's THE GUEST. Ummm...I'm really sorry I've been so behind on my blog. Because apparently it's not in theaters anywhere in the bay area anymore, and that's a shame because it's kind of brilliant. A family is mourning their son killed in action overseas. A wandering soldier knocks on their door, and introduces himself as David, a friend of their son. He promised him that he'd look after his family, and so they invite him in and at first everything is awesome. He's the cool big brother who helps the young son deal with bullies. He's the sexual fantasy for the older daughter. And he's a great help around the house. And, yeah, he goes out and kills people occasionally, but they're bad guys. He's a good guy, right? Well, I won't get too spoiler-y, but imagine if Jason Bourne was a complete psycho, killing the good and the bad alike, and all he's really interested in is staying alive. Yup, that's it, and it turns dark really, really quickly. And it's awesome.
So...again, I'm sorry I didn't get this written up until it was already out of theaters, but it's a great movie so find it on VOD or DVD or whatever (or, if you happen to be reading this from Philadelphia, it's playing in a couple of theaters there right now!)
Total Running Time: 197 minutes
My Total Minutes: 370,903
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