People on the internet who get angry enough at an old film in 2020 to bombard it with negative reviews filled with ad hominem attacks on strawmen whom they've invented who have apparently conspired together to pretend to like something that is "objectively" bad are usually a good sign that whatever it is they're attacking has a great deal of merit. This film tries something different and it pays off for those of us who like horror films and not just popular images repeated ad nauseum. Who cares if this isn't about Myers? Didn't the latter films prove that we never needed any more than the first film and maaaaybe the second to close the entire arc of the franchise neatly? Add to that the somewhat clever premise that none too subtly casts the Myers archetype as a business exec, mirroring Carpenter and Co's frustration with having to continue to pump out these films in a silly and fun way and I think Halloween III is an incredibly impressive third outing for a series that had no right to be this good for this long. Is it a ten? No. But neither is it "inarguably" a zero, so I say two can play at that game.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Dark Star
(1974)
Starts out slow... the ending saves it.
29 July 2020
Full disclosure... I watched this and Strangelove for the first time that very same night, and that certainly helped me appreciate what this film was trying to do. Admittedly, the first half of the film is slow and mostly dry. Clearly the filmmakers were big Douglas Adams fans with all the talking bombs and hilariously out-of-touch AI's running about the titular Dark Star. Perhaps the most interesting aspect for film buffs is the clear precursor to Ridley Scott's Alien in the form of a alien beach-ball monster. This section of the film is almost entirely without laughs, but it manages to create an impressive amount of suspense with an absurd premise and the nucleus of brilliant filmmaking, and Dan o'Bannon's brilliant turn after this film towards his and Ridley Scott's masterpiece was nothing short of brilliant. It's a sort of FNAF-style success story for all you children out there, and a lesson to creatives everywhere about how to best handle criticism. Otherwise, the film won't impress anyone who isn't patient and a big fan of cerebral comedy and scenarios pulled straight out of The Hitchhiker's Guide... on a tiny scale. The film's ending packs in a lot of sharp dialog and intriguing situations in a small space and nearly saves it, but it will be too little, too late for any average filmgoer. Nerds only, in every sense.
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