Reagan era movie reviewers be like: "Halloween III manages the not easy feat of being anti-children, anti-capitalism, anti-television, and anti-Irish all at the same time."
Anthology was a great idea and this film has pretty good roots that unfortunately happened to go way off the rails at some point.
The concept of making Capitalism the villain in a horror film is a great idea. And from what I understand about the 80s and Reaganomics, the commodification of everything and corporate greed was promoted very much. Even to the point of pushing a town square into a commodity hellscape and calling it a mall. So it makes perfect sense that Halloween being turned into a holiday where everyone must go buy costumes from big companies and give away corporate candies is the setting for a horror film from this time.
In this one, the majority of the run time is driven by suspense about what big costume is hiding and why they killed a man who found out industrial secrets. It is a slight deviation from the slasher elements used in the original Halloween but then it loses the plot completely.
From the beginning of the film there were hints that something supernatural was going on but the third act goes bananas with it. Not only are the killers just giant toy robots that follow the orders of the greedy capitalist, but it also turns out the greedy capitalist is a witch and is planning to kill massive amounts of people for an ancient witchcraft Halloween sacrifice. And also they got a rock from Stenehenge to this tiny Irish-Anerican town, even though Stonehenge is not in Ireland and the rocks had nothing to do with plot until the end when they use magic powers to spawn bugs and snakes (which I understand some people think are scary) and then fire laser beams and disable the robot toys. Like I said this film lost the plot.
Everything about how this company was using a communal holiday to push profits and doing sneaky murders was interesting and cool, especially for a horror film. But they added in the supernatural nonsense for no reason and it did not vibe with me at all.
Anthology was a great idea and this film has pretty good roots that unfortunately happened to go way off the rails at some point.
The concept of making Capitalism the villain in a horror film is a great idea. And from what I understand about the 80s and Reaganomics, the commodification of everything and corporate greed was promoted very much. Even to the point of pushing a town square into a commodity hellscape and calling it a mall. So it makes perfect sense that Halloween being turned into a holiday where everyone must go buy costumes from big companies and give away corporate candies is the setting for a horror film from this time.
In this one, the majority of the run time is driven by suspense about what big costume is hiding and why they killed a man who found out industrial secrets. It is a slight deviation from the slasher elements used in the original Halloween but then it loses the plot completely.
From the beginning of the film there were hints that something supernatural was going on but the third act goes bananas with it. Not only are the killers just giant toy robots that follow the orders of the greedy capitalist, but it also turns out the greedy capitalist is a witch and is planning to kill massive amounts of people for an ancient witchcraft Halloween sacrifice. And also they got a rock from Stenehenge to this tiny Irish-Anerican town, even though Stonehenge is not in Ireland and the rocks had nothing to do with plot until the end when they use magic powers to spawn bugs and snakes (which I understand some people think are scary) and then fire laser beams and disable the robot toys. Like I said this film lost the plot.
Everything about how this company was using a communal holiday to push profits and doing sneaky murders was interesting and cool, especially for a horror film. But they added in the supernatural nonsense for no reason and it did not vibe with me at all.