I decided to do a movie outside of Shudder, as I do every so often. And this time I thought, hmm, there are two recent horror movies with little girls on Peacock, but which? And I decided to go with the newer one, since the older one I’m already way too far behind to accomplish anything useful for my hungry public.

And so, I watched Abigail, which is a crime turned horror movie about a kidnapping. See, there’s this ballerina kid, and a whole bunch of people in masks who don’t know each other (a la Reservoir Dogs) come together to kidnap her. Then they go to an isolated estate to lay low and wait for the ransom, which might have gone according to plan except that they decide to not trust each other. And once things start going wrong, boy howdy do they escalate, in all kinds of ways that you would never have considered possible.

I mean, unless you watched the trailer. Don’t watch the trailer, for the love of all that is holy.

But that aside: you know what, obviously the Tarantino movie does a better job of being a crime movie, and I could name a few horror movies along these lines that do a better job of doing what they do (spoilers below the cut), but as mashups go? I’m pretty happy with this one!

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I just got extremely lucky[3].

See, in doing my research for Jigsaw, a movie that I didn’t even know existed until like a year ago, I came to realize that I never[1] saw Saw: The Final Chapter aka Saw 3D not aka Saw VII[2] like it should have been. But now I’ve already seen number eight! Which is where the lucky comes in, because this one is set ten years after the original several movies, all of which spanned a relatively short series of months, and thus the Jigsaw killer has been dead for like ten years, and this plot is something completely new. ….or is it?? More appropriately, …or is he [dead]??

Which is where I run into my main complaint about what was otherwise a pretty straightforward entry in the franchise. One of the best things about the movies, aside from inspiring me to coin “rube goreberg device”, is that Jigsaw has a code. And the code is, if you follow the rules, you get to live. Which meant that when following the rules seemed only moderately tangential to living in this particularly movie, I had to spend most of it trying to figure out if it was a crappy Saw movie or if something else was going on.

Normally, it would be a spoiler to indicate whether I will continue to seek out additional movies in the franchise, but, well, it’s me. So at least I’ve got “no spoilers” going for me, which is nice.

[1] here we go again
[2] In retrospect, I sort of knew this one existed. I just forgot to watch… it… oh hell, no, I did see it. That’s embarrassing.
[3] No, it turns out I’m less lucky and more forgetful. Blame me, not the movie.

From a plotting perspective, Halloween Kills is very obviously the middle chapter of a trilogy. That is to say, very little happens that is irrevocable (cliffhanger climax excluded), but everything is moved into position from the first episode, which was written to be a complete story just in case sequels weren’t greenlit (cf Back to the Future or Star Wars), to a place where not only was the story not over after all, but now we’re itching for a satisfying conclusion. This is simply the way these things are done, and except for how much you care or don’t care about specific characters and what happens to them, it’s functionally impossible to spoil, because it came that way, you know?

The commentary it was making was pretty compelling, though. Well, stay with me here. Lunatic mob in search of a killer is not new ground, I admit, nor is the “but what if they’re wrong?”motif, but I will say that there was good tension in my waiting every other scene for a good guy to shoot a different good guy, for example. And I very much like what was done with Tommy and Lindsey, the babysat kids from the original film. Anyway, my point about the A-side commentary the movie is making is that a well-worn message about the dangers of the mob, moderately well-presented and with characters you have some history with, it can be a good reminder instead of a used up cliche.

But the B-side commentary leading into the future third movie, man, that I’m excited about. Slasher movies work like this, you see: they are set in the real world, where supernatural occurrences do not exist. And so when you have your jasons out in the woods, and they get shot or stabbed or electrocuted or burned down in a house, over and over again, but they still keep getting up and implacably following their victims, it gets handwaved away as maybe they weren’t shot that well, or only the audience saw everything that happened and so the characters don’t know to question things. And in sequel after sequel, these deathless killing machines continue to seem like they maybe should have died by now, but it never happens, and that’s just how it is.

But in this movie, someone has finally given voice to the idea that, uh, why isn’t Michael Myers dead? Have you seen the shit we’ve done to him, collectively? Maybe something else is going on here. And my point is, I am really and truly excited for a sequel in which the real world rules slasher victims are finally willing to sit up and take notice that something supernatural has to be going on here, nothing else makes sense, and so, now what do we do??