Halloween 2018 attempts to connect directly to the violent events which transpired 4 decades ago in John Carpenter's original version while feigning amnesia over the string of terrible sequels conjured by the likes of Tommy Lee Wallace, Steve Miner and Joe Chappelle (along with the crumbly exploration of Michael Myers' evil origins courtesy of the Rob Zombie films). Yet pushing the reset button still couldn't rescue it from plunging into a tomb of absolute incoherence and devastatingly stupid no thanks to an incompetently fashioned screenplay.

40 years on, Myers remains incarcerated at Smith's Grove Rehabilitation Hospital. He has greyed considerably, yet still cuts an imposing figure and continues to befuddle therapists with his faculties completely shut to the outside world. On the eve of Halloween he is scheduled for a transfer to another facility; all hell breaks loose on the bus ferrying him and other inmates, thus setting the stage for Mikey's return to Haddonfield on a murder 'em all free pass.

One too many inexplicable coincidences gnaw at the viewer, such as how his handler Dr Sartain went conveniently berserk and sabotaged the bus ride, or how evil incarnate himself managed to effortlessly track down the journalist pair who prodded him days earlier in the hospital courtyard, murder them both in a gas station toilet and retrieve his beloved Captain Kirk death mask...... just like that. Come treat or trick night itself, Myers treats himself to a carnage buffet, randomly walking into houses and uncreatively killing folks with kitchen knives - as he added to his body count things started to get repetitive and yes, quite so boring. Then talk about the unbelievable: lead salads of the bullseye variety dispensed from shotguns can't stop Mikey, neither could a cop car running him down.

Halloween 2018 is premised on a mano a mano confrontation between a much hardened, disillusioned Laurie Strode and Myers who failed to take her life as a teen, yet the showdown turned out to be an unsatisfying quick affair of close punches, stabbing each other's arse for the umpteenth time and lame ass dungeon traps. Perhaps it would have been way more awesome if granny Strode chose to lure him with a striptease show a la True Lies ( who could forget Jamie Lee Curtis gyrating her MILFy body in mere bra and panties 24 years ago), or a shower like her ma Janet Leigh did in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho?

Rating By Blue Blooded Specimen: 5.5/10