Nearly every review of the new Halloween starts out by stating the problematic nature of the franchise. That's why the possibility of a new Halloween film with a major budget, nine years after the last abortive attempt to make one of these films, raised such hope.

For the last year, we've been inundated with the assurances that these creators are people who get what makes Halloween work. This would finally be the sequel that fans had been craving since, oh, 1981.

There's really no nice way to say this, so let me jump in feet first. Beyond being a movie that fundamentally doesn't comprehend what made the original Halloween such a great film, the 2018 version of Halloween is a movie with no understanding of what makes a great horror movie, either.

That isn't to say there isn't a great set-up. Forty years after the 1978 Haddonfield murders (referred to as "The Babysitter Murders," a nod to the film's original title), a Serial-like podcast team makes its way to the area to investigate the story and try to see both sides. The first mistake the journalists make is to show Michael Myers' mask his iconic mask. This scene is pretty chilling, as the entire yard of Smith's Grove Sanitarium rises up in chaos, dogs barking, insane men screaming, Myers just silent and not turning his back. Let's not let the logic of how two podcasters got such a crucial piece of evidence out of police custody or how any hospital in its right mind would allow this interview to happen this way get in the path of the movie.

The podcasters then make their way to the fortress home of Laurie Strode, who has spent the last forty years preparing for Michael's return. If this seems like 1998's Halloween H20: 20 Years Later twenty more years later, we should be so lucky. After a quick interview in which the British duo shows that they just don't get it, Laurie kicks them out.

Outside of Laurie, there isn't a single character that we get to know or care about. Her daughter is someone who has given up connecting with her. That's her one note. Her granddaughter is in a crappy relationship and wants to get to know her grandmother a little better. And that's it. Every single other person we meet - save for Dr. Sartain - is just fodder. Contrast this with the original, where we get to know Laurie, Lynda (P.J. Soles shows up so quickly here you don't even catch her, by the way) and Annie really intimately before the first hint of bloodshed. I defy you to tell me one character's motivation or reason for being beyond words on a page here. For a movie that aspires to be above and beyond the slashers of the 1980's, even the worst of those had a character you wanted to root for other than the final girl.

Meanwhile, Michael has started to kill people all over again. Allyson's friend Vicky is babysitting instead of attending the school dance and she gets slaughtered. The scene where Myers is hiding in the closest was so much better effect in the trailer. Here, the way its framed, it loses any narrative punch. That's when we get to the next flaw in this film: it has no idea how to be suspenseful. There is no moment where you get that heart pumping feeling where the killer is stalking his prey, where you feel compelled to yell out words of help to the hapless victim onscreen. We saw this movie in a totally sold out environment of people ready to shout, scream and shriek. You could have heard a pin drop during this movie.

Director David Gordon Green said that the first cut of the film was two hours and fifteen minutes long, with the fat of the film and entire scenes cut for pacing and length. That amazes me, as this 1 hour and 46-minute film felt like it lasted for 3 hours. There are whole characters introduced, made to feel like they'll have something to do and then discarded. You could honestly get rid of Laurie's granddaughter, friends, the high school dance, her walk home and still have the same basic story. The only reason she's in there is so that we have young babysitters for Myers' to kill. We learn nothing about her other than she's strong willed, smart and has horrible taste in men. There's no reason to root for her or hope that she survives. And even worse, her mother is presented as such a shrill that you almost want to see her pay for the way she has shut Laurie out of her life.

What makes the first two Halloween films work is the atmosphere - from the first frame, you realize that something inhuman is coming after Laurie Strode. The second film just amps up the pace and makes The Shape into an inhuman force that cannot be stopped. In this film, he's just there. At no point do you feel tension from him or worry for the people he has come to kill. Things just happen. It's sloppy, slap-dash and for all the insults lobbed at the other sequels in this franchise, much closer to parts 5 and 6 than I'm sure the filmmakers would like to admit.

This may be the first Halloween modern filmgoers see. And as such, there is no moment in it that points to what makes Michael Myers special. I can name several from the original, such as the moment where he watches Bob after he kills him or slowly rises up after we're sure Laurie has killed him. And the end, where his body is just suddenly gone, is the stuff of nightmares. Early in the new version, Vicky's boyfriend Dave echoes the voice of millennials, saying that Myers' five murders aren't such a big deal anymore in the grand scheme of things. I feel for anyone whose initial exposure to this franchise is with this film, one where Myers fails to do one remarkable thing or elicit one moment of fright.

I've seen plenty of reviews that state that this is the best sequel in the franchise and a return to greatness. I think that those reviews were written before anyone even saw the film, preordained so that the feel good story of the return of a much-maligned franchise could come true. I tried to remove myself from the hype, to attempt to be surprised and enjoy Halloween 2018 on its own merits, but it really has little to none.

The sound of Michael's breathing over the end credits signifies more than the fact that The Shape has survived. No, it means that in two years, we'll be lining up all over again, hoping that this time perhaps someone can get what seems to be such a simple idea right.

I'll start by noting that the 1978 "Halloween" has long been my favorite horror movie, and beyond that, generally, one of my favorite movies of all time. I've followed the development, production, and marketing of this sequel very closely and have been rapt with anticipation to see it, given that the director, cast, and crew have long cooed about the project's return to the simplistic menace and terror of the original. Well, I'm not sure what happened to that vision, but it wasn't actualized. And I'm really perplexed as to why audiences and critics are universally lauding it as the sequel "Halloween" has deserved for the past 40 years. While I'll openly acknowledge that no sequel could probably do justice to John Carpenter's singular mastery, I dare say that "Halloween II" was more tonally consistent with the original (excepting its considerable flaws, including the addition of the bloodline motive and Michael's portrayal as a glacially paced, unkillable bogey), and if we're talking about awaiting a long-overdue Laurie-and-Michael reunion/showdown, I legitimately think "Halloween H20" may have surpassed this film in quality had Michael been outfitted with a less laughable and cringe-worthy mask.

This film's director, David Gordon Green, has sold himself as a lifelong admirer, lover, and devotee of John Carpenter's original, and while glimmers of that fanboydom shine through periodically, if not continually, they do so in the most ham-handed fashion imaginable (as when Laurie's thrown from a second-story balcony, only to disappear from view immediately thereafter, a la the conclusion of the original). I applaud and was nerdily delighted to see that the opening and closing credits were captured in the same orange font as the original's, but that fact is hardly worth praising when weighed against the sheer stupidity of the bombastic opening sequence (featuring the deplorable British podcasters producers) and the lackluster, anticlimactic conclusion.

A lot's been said and reported, too, of this film's significance in its depiction of a female protagonist dealing with the long-term effects of trauma and striving to reclaim her narrative. Fair enough, but that places upon Jamie Lee Curtis the onus of delivering a pretty bare, fierce, and no-holds-barred Laurie Strode performance. And does she? Well, if you've seen the trailers, you've seen the best of it. But JLC can hardly be blamed for the travesty that is hackneyed writing. Perhaps not every traumatized woman would resort to reclusion in a heavily militarized hermitage and restless rumination over and obsession with an event that occurred 40 years earlier. Laurie's struggles with PTSD are every bit the caricature that the ad campaigns suggest, with her booby-trapped home and arsenal of semi-automatic weapons. In point of fact, she feels more like Ellen Ripley or Sarah Connor than Laurie Strode, and whether or not that's a desirable transfiguration is, I guess, in the eye of the beholder.

But above all, I think this film's major transgressions are (1) that is isn't in ANY remote way scary, and (2) that it totally fails to capture any of the original film's essence of simplistic creepiness (which was, after all, the entire point and vision behind retconning out the sequel mythology that followed). Lest we forget that, in the original, Michael slit a chick's throat after choking her, stabbed a guy (once), and choked another chick with a telephone cord. Here, he brutally massacres victims in a manner that's totally on-brand for all of the stupid sequels that were so painstakingly left behind: he rips out teeth, decapitates, impales, and bludgeons, much like Rob Zombie's incarnation did. There's nothing simple, sophisticated, or high-brow about anything that's being served here. And while it may be a stretch to categorize any horror movie as "classy," Carpenter's original came damn close to that distinction. The "genre-defying" Green is fundamentally a humorist, and I don't think that he and his retinue, despite their admiration of and purported respect for the source material, were up to the task of producing a sequel worthy of the original (and when you forcibly scrap every intervening entry in the franchise, for better or worse, that's an expectation you set).

Using only the original movie as canon, it's been 40 years since Michael Myers' rampage. He has been mute under the care of Dr. Sartain in Smith's Grove Sanitarium. True crime podcasters Aaron Korey and Dana Haines have come to entice Michael to speak by bringing along his mask. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) has become an obsessive survivalist. She is estranged from her daughter Karen Nelson (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).

I think I expected too much. It's obvious that these guys have great respect for the franchise. The mechanics of the movie is well done and respectful of the original. There are issues with the writing. First, the retrieval of his mask cannot be an accident. It's convenience of story writing that annoyed me when it could have been a great way to show Michael's relentlessness. He should attack a motel where the two podcasters are staying. He could go from room to room murdering everyone until he found his mask. There is more horror in his relentless ruthlessness. In this movie, it's a happy accident. As for Laurie's house, I have issues with its construction. She's supposed to be obsessed with this inevitable situation and it's not as well prepared as it could be. First, there are a lot of windows. The walls seem thin. There should be one button to lock up the whole building and the windows (again) should be blocked by lowering metal bars. It makes no sense to set up basement to burn which seems to be more problematic than realistic. She should have better guns. She should have body armor. Did he bring in the mannequins or did Laurie have a bunch of them in the home? I do appreciate some of call-backs. This is a good horror. I'm just set for something great and it's a little disappointing.