A Nightmare from Friday to Halloween - Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995)

The three most prominent American horror franchises (Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street) have influenced American cinema even beyond the horror genre. As of 2021, there are exactly 31 movies across all three franchises, and I am going to attempt to watch all of them, for this Halloween, one per day.

I guess I have to appreciate an attempt to make an already tired series a bit deeper. Frankly though, Michael Myers never struck me as a nerd who got way too into the occult, which is kind of what he becomes with the addition of the Thorn mythology. Also, this new backstory is clumsily threaded in and doesn’t really gel with Michael’s whole deal of an irrational hatred for his family members. I can also start to the see the influence of the 1990s creeping into this movie, with its emphasis on cheap jump scares and pretty people. I appreciate that screenwriter Daniel Farrands tried to weave in allusions to previous Halloween films and preserve what lore there is, but sometimes the fan shouldn’t really be making the product that they admire. I’m not looking forward to the rest of the series because it seems like this series has constantly been behind the forefront of horror rather than leading it, whereas something like Nightmare on Elm Street, which could be silly was still molding the way that horror movies were being made.