VHS and Betamax You Have Recently Rented

[Devon Malcolm]

36 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

I went into it really wanting to like. I mean, I like Weird Science, alright? But it just did nothing for me and I thought the writing was pretty mad. 

Yeah, Diablo Cody is always like that. An acquired taste as a writer but I've always hated her stuff. I thought Williams knocked a lot of the worst edges off her writing for this, plus Kathryn Newton is always really good.

[ReturnOfTheMack]

Jurassic World Rebirth.

An amazing film there, just its been mashed together with some utter shite. I've never enjoyed a film while being angry at it like I have this one.

[BomberPat]

Halloween 5 

If a dog wrote this, you'd put it down. Absolute shite. Someone on Letterboxd wrote that you can tell why Dr Loomis walks with a cane, after carrying these last two movies on his back. 

I thought 4 was nothing special, but surprisingly good for what it was, and at least trying to follow some logical threads. This one makes some nutty creative choices, some of them I don't necessarily disagree with and some I think were abysmal, but most of all it feels like they're trying to make a Friday The 13th more than a Halloween - there's no atmosphere, and all of the new characters are interchangeable horny idiot teenagers just there to get killed off, which was never Halloween's vibe as much as it was in other slasher flicks. It's telling that this is on the cusp of the '90s, because this feels so much like the kind of lazy slasher that Scream was able to pastiche a few years later.

Plot/spoiler chat for an almost 40 year old film:

Spoiler

They are absolute cowards in just completely abandoning the plotline of Jamie as a murderer, and reframing it with her as the traumatised child victim. Bafflingly, they still include footage from the previous film of her killing her step-mother. Bafflingly, there's a scene in which a nurse says to Jamie, "do you want us to call your mother?" or something to that effect, despite her mother being the dead Laurie Strode, and Jamie having murdered her step-mother in the previous film. Unless that single line is meant to suggest that she didn't kill her step-mum, that she survived, and therefore Jamie isn't as bad as all that. I wouldn't give it so much credit, though, as any meaning or subtext in this movie is surely by accident more than design.

Does Dr Loomis even work at the children's hospital where they're keeping Jamie? You never see him working, he's never in a doctor's coat, and he does nothing but repeatedly traumatise Jamie, but nobody seems to mind that he's there. 

I've lost all sense of the geography of Haddonfield in this movie. In the previous films you had a good sense of it as a small sleepy suburb, where all the central characters lived reasonably near each other. In this one, it recognises that police cars speeding across town makes for a good visual, but does a really bad job of establishing distance or even where they're coming from or to. When I watched Psycho 2 recently, I loved how the physical geography of the film played into the paranoia and questioning of what was going on - you had to question if Norman physically could have murdered someone because of the time it would have taken him to cover the distance between them - whereas there's no sense of that space or time here. Michael is somewhere, then he's somewhere else. The police rush from place to place, but there's no concept of where those places are in relation to each other. Two of the teenagers go off to have sex in a barn, when there was never any sense of Haddonfield as an agricultural area - presumably it's just so Michael can get his hands on a pitchfork and a scythe.

Speaking of the police, there's two bumbling cop characters who must have had their parts cut down in the edit, because they're presented as if they're recurring comic relief, but only get a handful of scenes, and even fewer jokes. Yet when they first appear, despite not really doing anything funny, they're given a proper Bulk & Skull comedy sidekick musical cue.

Michael Myers learned to drive at some point?

There are three consecutive fake-out jump scares in the barn scene where you're supposed to think it's Michael Myers, but it's one of the idiot teenagers dressed up as Michael Myers. They do this after establishing that, yes, he is dressed up as Michael Myers, so it's not a surprise. It also ties into one of the silliest things about the film, which is that Michael at one point disguises himself by putting on a different mask, and yet idiot teenager still thinks he's her boyfriend in a costume, while boyfriend dresses up as Michael Myers and people think it is Michael Myers. In this universe, a mask is enough to also disguise your height, weight, build, voice, and general demeanour, I suppose?

 

Then there's the most glaring stuff about this movie, which is the introduction of supernatural elements. Jamie having a psychic connection to Michael is very silly. It's a really disappointing follow-up to an interesting ending of the previous film - there being something rotten in Michael Myers' bloodline, or history repeating itself, and Jamie becoming the next Michael Myers. When making this film they clearly wanted nothing to do with that, or even exploring a story where Loomis et al are trying to prevent Jamie growing up to be another Michael even after she has already killed. Again, mad decision to show Jamie murdering her step-mum at the start of the film and still do nothing with it.

We haven't got to the proper supernatural stuff - the cult of Thorn doesn't come in until the next film, though we get the first hints of it here. I actually don't mind that so much - at some point, when Michael Myers has survived being shot and stabbed and thrown down mineshafts a dozen times, you kind of do need to start explaining how he keeps surviving. It might be interesting in a better film.

Similarly, there's a moment here where Jamie convinces Michael to remove his mask, you see his face briefly, and he sheds a single tear, before snapping back into a murderous rage. Moments later, Dr Loomis uses Jamie as bait to lure in Michael. In that moment, you see the character arc of Loomis, that he has gone from a doctor concerned for what his patient is capable of, to wanting to warn people and protect people from Michael, to just being driven by revenge and wanting to stop Michael even if it means endangering other people - it's not about protection at all any more - so that in that moment, when he uses a child to lure Michael towards him and then attempts to beat Michael to death, coming so soon after seeing his face, it's this moment where Michael has shown a glimpse of humanity but Dr Loomis has lost his. In a better film, that would be a really powerful moment, and shows that evil isn't defeated just by beating up the right bad guy. It's a testament to Donald Pleasence that he still makes Loomis a really compelling character in what is otherwise a fucking terrible film.

The ending is very stupid, because despite having shown Michael's face earlier, and previously having shown that he was happy to swap his usual mask for another in order to disguise himself, when he's shown in a prison cell chained and handcuffed, he's still wearing the Shatner mask. Very funny choice. Then the mysterious Man In Black shows up, having been teased for the whole film, and I honestly love the creative choice to write in a mysterious figure on the periphery of the story and just leave it up to whoever writes the next movie to figure it out.

 

[DavidB6937]

Regretting You

Look, I'll fully accept that I shouldn't be watching shit like this, but it was the only one that fitted in time wise yesterday. And it has Mckenna Grace in it and I think she's pretty awesome so.. yeah. Leave me alone. It was slushy and unrealistic and just generally daft but sometimes you need that. Mason Thames is pretty cool too, and the girls behind me were whooping when he got his clothes off so he's clearly doing something right. It also has Clancy Brown in, even just for a little bit, so that's my justification and I'm sticking with it.

Back to the Future (4DX)

Little known film starring Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd. They time travel! Who doesn't want shaky chairs while watching incest? Still one of my favourite movies of all time. I think I change my mind every time as to whether I'd rather date Marty's girlfriend or his mum. I hope they never ever ever remake it because it's perfect. Wonderful to see kids going with their parents and getting to experience it for the first time all these years later.  

[SuperBacon]

16 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

I'd rather date Marty's girlfriend or his mum.

Both. 

16 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

hope they never ever ever remake it because it's perfect

They will it's inevitable, but as I've said before, it wouldn't sully the original for me in anyway, which is, and will always be I reckon, my favourite film ever. Its almost gone beyond a film for me, such is my love for it.

Finished off horror film October with Halloween my favourite. Just a perfect film, the music and sound is unreal. I can't be arsed to watch any of the others ever (I've seen H20) and I've never read into this, or forgotten it, but why does he target Laurie? Are they related?

I also watched Us for the first time after rewatching Get Out (which is superb) and it didn't quite work for me.

Obviously Tim Heidecker being in it was my personal highlight but I really wish Lupita Nyongo hadn't made the decision to do that voice as it was absolutely shit and unintentionally funny.

Onto the shit Christmas films I guess...

[Chris B]

25 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Finished off horror film October with Halloween my favourite. Just a perfect film, the music and sound is unreal. I can't be arsed to watch any of the others ever (I've seen H20) and I've never read into this, or forgotten it, but why does he target Laurie? Are they related?

Spoiler

It's been rebooted a bunch of times. So...

In the original, it's random. However, in the TV broadcast version, they hinted that Laurie is his sister, because they were making Halloween II, where they confirmed that - so they filmed extra scenes for TV. In the seventh film, they ignored Halloween 3-6, but kept the sister thing.

The Rob Zombie remakes also kept the sister thing.

In the 2018 version, they ignored all the previous films except the original. Laurie isn't his sister.

So... she was his sister. Now she isn't.

 

[SuperBacon]

7 minutes ago, Chris B said:

  Hide contents

It's been rebooted a bunch of times. So...

In the original, it's random. However, in the TV broadcast version, they hinted that Laurie is his sister, because they were making Halloween II, where they confirmed that - so they filmed extra scenes for TV. In the seventh film, they ignored Halloween 3-6, but kept the sister thing.

The Rob Zombie remakes also kept the sister thing.

In the 2018 version, they ignored all the previous films except the original. Laurie isn't his sister.

So... she was his sister. Now she isn't.

 

Cheers, that all sounds stupid to be honest. Just pick one.

[cobra_gordo]

12 minutes ago, Chris B said:

  Hide contents

It's been rebooted a bunch of times. So...

In the original, it's random. However, in the TV broadcast version, they hinted that Laurie is his sister, because they were making Halloween II, where they confirmed that - so they filmed extra scenes for TV. In the seventh film, they ignored Halloween 3-6, but kept the sister thing.

The Rob Zombie remakes also kept the sister thing.

In the 2018 version, they ignored all the previous films except the original. Laurie isn't his sister.

So... she was his sister. Now she isn't.

 

2018 Halloween spoiler

Spoiler

In the 2018 version somebody mentions the rumour that she's Michael's sister and it gets dismissed as total bollocks that somebody made up. Always thought that was a fun way to retcon a bunch of movies

 

[Chris B]

13 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Cheers, that all sounds stupid to be honest. Just pick one.

It's perfectly simple.

It depends if you want to go on Halloween and the sequel to Halloween, the other Halloween (which is a reboot) which also has a sequel, or the other other Halloween, which is also a reboot while also being the sequel to Halloween (but not the other Halloween), which also has sequels.

[Supremo]

It’s fun to re-watch Halloween 1 - 6 and view the Dr. Loomis character as a man being driven insane not by the antics of Michael Myers, but by the mad choices and wild shifts in direction they keep making between films. In Halloween 5, he seems to be the only one who remembers what happened at the end of Halloween 4, resulting in those crazy, harsh outbursts whenever he’s alone with Jamie.

A man trapped in a nonsense franchise.

[Bellenda Carlisle]

When I was like 13 I stayed at my friend's house and his dad who was an unemployed saxophone player gave me use of this massive thick leather cushion that folded out flat to sleep on. I told the dad the cushion was really cool and he said "Thanks, I stole it from a party at Doneld Pleasence's house."

[Devon Malcolm]

I think the rebooting of franchises and ignoring of events from almost everything but the original is also born out of playing to what an audience definitely knows. I thought Halloween H2O was quite good, but when they did the recent reboot trilogy it would have been madness to have included plotlines from it. All anybody cared about was the first one, just stick to that.

Of course, it didn't take long for the whole reboot / retcon train to become overplayed but I'm sure it won't stop them from going after A Nightmare on Elm Street and / or Friday the 13th next.

Edited November 3, 2025 by Devon Malcolm

[DavidB6937]

3 minutes ago, Devon Malcolm said:

Of course, it didn't take long for the whole reboot / retcon train to become overplayed but I'm sure it won't stop them from going after A Nightmare on Elm Street and / or Friday the 13th next.

I genuinely don't remember anything about the ANOES reboot. Absolutely nothing. Probably a good thing to be fair. I know there were talks for years after about rebooting or a series. Think the rights went back to Wes's estate or something. Honestly, there's no reason why they can't have Englund do something. It's his role.

I know F13th has been a bigger mess rights wise. I actually completely forgot they even did a reboot. But I think they've got a film, TV series AND a video game coming? Some weird Jason Universe thing was launched which seemed set up to milk everything for all it's worth. It's one of those franchises that has been spoken about for so long that I'm refusing to believe anything until it's on the damn screen in front of me.

[cobra_gordo]

I remembered really liking the Elm Street reboot at the time. Obviously you're never bettering Robert Englund as Freddy but I gave it a shot and thought it was decent. Re-watched it recently and yeah, you can remember things wrong. It's utter bobbins.

[FLips]

Ghost in The Shell (The live action one)

It was absolutely fine. Blade Runner did the neo-cyberpunk thing so well that everything else that does the same thing feels like a parody. Boring story but the action is decent and it isn’t offensively bad or anything.