The tyranist's thoughts
I'm a great fan of Halloween and even like some of the other films in the series so I always run out to see the new one as soon as I can. Sometimes I'm disappointed, sometimes I think things are alright, sometimes I'm really excited. This one hit me somewhere in the middle as I found it to be well-conceived and thought out, but a little poor on the final execution.
So some idiot decides to film a little Halloween night exploration of the Myers' house over the internet. Students from the local college are recruited and the fun begins. Or at least the death. Maybe they should have watched the rest of the movies first.
I thought the story was pretty well told and on the whole enjoyed the movie. Michael Myers will scare the piss out of me until the day I die--hopefully not at his hands. But they mess with him a little here and it didn't help. First, the mask was wrong. Come on people, we know what it looks like, we've seen six movies prior to this one that featured the mask. This thing looked like it had a nice tightly coiffed afro and was way too slick. The mask is supposed to be bad. Second, Michael Myers kills people with a knife. He always has. Sure he tries something a little different periodically, but he never goes out of his way to find things to kill with. Specifically, he doesn't drop a perfectly good knife so that he can crush someone's skull. That takes a hell of a lot longer and let's face it, Michael's patient, but once the business starts he's all about killing.
Other than that, I really enjoyed it. The cast was nice with a good mix of annoying and interesting. The OTS was perhaps one of the best I've seen in a long time and almost felt non-obligatory. The effects were decent and the house was as creepy as ever. Busta Rhymes didn't even ruin the movie like I thought he might.
If you're even kind of a fan of the series, I say check it out. On the other hand if you've felt pissy since they put out Halloween III and it didn't feature Monsieur Myers, perhaps you should check out one of the other horror movies in the theatre this summer. Oh, and you should probably check this out on the big screen since it will be all but impossible to watch on TV with all the intentionally crappy camera work.

Rish's Reviews
Halloween is probably my favourite continuing Horror series. Not that there are a lot of continuing Horror serieses. But it's certainly long-running, and for my money, has a better track record than most. Except for the sixth one, they all have good qualities, and I felt I owed it to the series enough to go out and see Part 8 opening night. In fact, this was one of three movies tyranist and I have done our traditional Skulls for over the phone, since we both went the same night.
Unfortunately, I didn't like it as much as he did, something I realized would happen even as the film was going on.
It actually had a pretty good premise, with a group of young people involved in a Halloween webcast within the creepy Myers house. The first ten minutes were GREAT, even better than the great teaser H:20 had. But that felt like a different movie completely, from its pace to its look to its narrative to its use of voiceover. In those ten minutes, Jamie Lee Curtis brings more depth and real human emotion to the screen than all the other characters in the rest of the movie combined.
The film wasn't terrible, I just didn't find the film to be scary. I liked the sequence with the two Michael Myers, and a couple of the scares did work alright (come on, who didn't jump at the partially-consumed rat that was somehow still alive?), but they kept hitting us over the head with the situation and postmodern dialogue and supposedly new twists like website witnesses and Palm Pilot communication. But they didn't need all that happy crappy. There was ample room for scares just being in a house with something that wants to get you.
The director of the second film returned, but I guess the world we now live in is different than the one back in 1980. And it's true, kids aren't scared by stuff much today, and they aren't much interested in much, either. So the filmmakers felt they had to work harder, I suppose, be more unique, be more creative, be more original. And it's too bad, because in many ways, I think that's what ruined Halloween 8, the fact that they tried too hard.
And had this just been a regular horror movie, it would've been alright, your average direct-to-video Slasher. But this was a HALLOWEEN sequel, and I hold those to higher standards.
And whose idea was it to put a rapper in every one of these modern horror films? I feel condescended to, undervalued, and insulted.