I like Laurie being Michael’s sister. It feels right to me. Its excision is also the biggest element of what makes Halloween ’18 so stupid (I like it, but it is stupid), because everything about that screenplay revolves around a special relationship with Laurie that Michael simply wouldn’t have. Then again, it also revolves around our awareness that Michael is a killing machine, not just a septagenarian who knifed several people half a century ago. If you think Halloween ’78 is an inviolable masterpiece, that’s fine (I don’t get it, but that’s fine), but the entire franchise otherwise revolves around Laurie being a Myers even when it pretends otherwise. (This is true in the Zombie films, too, right? It’s been a long, long time.)

And anyway Halloween II has some thunderingly great cinematography, maybe Cundey’s best.

I don’t think it’s inherently a contradiction to call Halloween II “piffle” and also one of the more enjoyable slashers. For the record, I think the Laurie is a Myers gimmick is very dumb, but I’m also not quite sure how you take something so elegant as Halloween and make it something that could stretch out to a 13-part franchise without a lot of dumb twists. (I think 5 and 6 are the worst in the series, and have 2 in the upper third of the franchise because it’s so well-produced by Carpenter and his team.)

Also Halloween Resurrection gets a bad rap, and it’s a pretty median entry in the franchise, with some clever meta-commentary. (But you’re probably right to expect a dud. I might be the only person on the planet with this opinion.)

Hunter Allen, I’ve not seen those other films and am therefore happy to defer to your experience of the genre, but I have seen HALLOWEEN II and consider it piffle.

Reasonably well put-together in terms of production, but in terms of writing painfully redundant and responsible for the instantly-cliche “Miss Strode is a Myers!” twist that remains one of my least favourite ideas in the whole series.

I can’t call it the worst film in the series (HALLOWEEN V exists, after all*) but it’s definitely one of my least favourite.

*I’ve heard nothing good about HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION and the sequels to HALLOWEEN 2018, but have yet to see the former or either of the latter.

*The only ones I can think of off the top of my head that I’m sure beat it are Slumber Party Massacre II and Halloween II. II’s rule. (Okay, fine, probably also My Bloody Valentine, and I am likely the biggest fan of Death Spa on Earth, but I’ve had arguments with Brennan about whether a movie that is part Poltergeist, part Carrie, part Wait Until Dark, and part freaking 2001: A Space Odyssey should even count as a slasher.)

Godspeed, Dan, I’ve never had the stones!