This Halloween movie entry was an attempt to reboot the series, after the last couple of disappointing sequels. The previous Halloween movies were all somewhat classic in its execution as slashers. This movie is however being more like the modern type of horror movies that we now, which all sort of started off 2 years prior to this movie with the movie "Scream", which was basically a reboot of the slasher genre as a whole. This is obviously a "Scream" inspired movie with its approach, which not in the least should also probably be due to Kevin Williamson's involvement, the man who wrote the Scream movies and helped to produce this movie.
As a reboot, all I can say is that this movie is not being any better or worse than most other genre attempts. It serves its purpose well enough but it does so with featuring very little groundbreaking stuff. It's a formulaic movie.
The movie is mostly being different, when compared to its predecessors, in its approach of the Michael Myers character. He's featured more prominently from early on already and simply starts going on killing-spree once more, 20 years later after the first, John Carpenter directed, Halloween movie. In this movie he's more being simply the killer instead of the supernatural and psychotic character, like how he got portrayed in the previous movies.
For this special 20 years later reboot, Jamie Lee Curtis reprises her role again as Laurie Strode, the character which she played in the first two Halloween movie entries. She is a welcomed addition to the series again, especially after the passing of Donald Pleasence in 1995, who had played in every previous Halloween movie thus far. it however makes it all the more weird that Jamie Lee Curtis doesn't ever really become the main and central character of the movie. The movie prefers to put its emphasis on the young teenage characters of the movie, such as Laurie's 17-year old son, played by Josh Hartnett in his movie debut.
None of the characters really work out in the movie though, which is most likely due to the fact that the movie doesn't really have one strong lead in it. It also doesn't help the development of the characters that the movie is only 86 minutes short. Once things really start to hit off, it's over already.
Director Steve Miner already gained some experience within the genre and directing sequels to genre classics, by directing 2 Friday the 13th sequels in the early '80's. He's mostly a director of some very mediocre movies though and he's a director that mostly works for TV anyway. In that regard this movie is really still among his better ones.
A reboot that brought Halloween to the modern age of horror film-making but without making the movie really anything renewing or spectacular to watch.
6/10
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