Give Vengeance a chance
So, last week I suggested you get Peacock so you could watch the final chapter of the new Halloween trilogy. That may have been a mistake, but I also want to point out I did provide a long list of other reasons to get the streaming platform. Hopefully, you watched those instead. If you are looking for another reason to justify the $5-10 bucks you dropped, I hope you give Vengeance a try.
Blurb - A writer from New York City attempts to solve the murder of a girl he hooked up with and travels down south to investigate the circumstances of her death and discover what happened to her.
I first got wind of this movie when I went to see Bullet Train in the theater. I remembered thinking that the trailer just showed the entire movie and that I still really wanted to see it. Imagine my surprise when I saw it pop up as a Peacock exclusive.
B.J. Novak wears 3 hats with this film: director, writer, and the lead. He handles each one perfectly. He shows us 2 versions of the United States and does a brilliant job of highlighting the differences while making sure we understand in the end, we aren't all that different. The movie balances on a tightrope, where one misstep could take us from a sharp, in-depth look at each other to a parody where everyone is a fool. Novak never waivers, and delivers a movie that is funny, charming, embarrassing, a tad self-aware, and in the end surprising and overall fun.
I'm not sure how long it will be on Peacock, but I hope you give it a shot. If you do, let me know what you think.
*Spoilers ahead - sorta
This should be a post about Halloween Ends. It only makes sense given that I wrote about it coming out just last week. It might have been if not for the fact that I just watched Halloween Kills for the first time.
To be fair, I'm not a huge fan of the Halloween franchise. I've seen them all (well ... not the newest), but it's never been one I kept going back to. Because of this, a few years ago, I went and got the Halloween collector's set. I've watched the original 3 and the first of the Rob Zombie version and thought it might be fun to watch all the movies to see which timeline I liked best. I still do, but I know the latest one won't make the list.
I saw Halloween(2018) in theaters and thought it was a clever sequel to the original. I thought it was a mistake to ignore Halloween 2, but this isn't the first time the powers that be have made a mistake with the timeline. I found the movie start to finish satisfying. When I heard Halloween Kills was coming, I had my doubts.
They were so strong I decided not to go see the film and avoided it online(I'm pretty sure Peacock did the same promotion when it came out). I avoided it for a year, only deciding that I better see it so Halloween Ends made sense. After seeing Kills, I have no desire to see what the writers did to finish the trilogy.
Halloween Kills was terrible. I felt like it undid everything clever and fun with Halloween(2018). It was a collection of idiotic speeches, delivered by people who didn't seem to be bright enough to understand exactly what they were dealing with while telling you they knew exactly what they were dealing with. It was as if the creative team had never seen or heard about Halloween except for the note, "slasher".
This brings me to the point many people make when trying to defend this film. The kills are fun, original, and over-the-top. All would be good points if this was a run-of-the-mill slasher, but this is a part of the Halloween franchise. A franchise with certain rules and patterns that should be followed. Michael is a force of nature, he's a killing machine, but he's not sadistic, he's not playful, and this movie goes out of the way to paint him in this light. I can't tell you how many times I said out loud, "Oh come on" while watching this movie.
So I will not be watching Halloween Ends any time soon, if ever. I might, one day if I decide to do a deep dive into the franchise and breakdown each movie. Except I'd much rather forget about this timeline, and put in Season of the Witch.