Rating: 7.8/10
One of the reasons for the success of the 1978 "Moonlight Panic" is the image of Uncle Mai, not to mention how simple the mask is, the key is that it is difficult for the audience to guess the various expressions and reactions revealed by Uncle Mai behind the mask when he murdered. This pure sense of unknown gives the audience a chill that penetrates into the bone marrow. But after 40 years, when all the horror elements are in full swing, what changes will "Moonlight 2018" have to make to attract a new generation of audiences?
The screenwriter and director gave us a clear answer : no longer let Uncle Mai stand in the C position! Instead, let the final girl Lori, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, become the absolute protagonist of the play, and let her be the Ripley in "Alien", "Terminator" , a female revenge character like Sarah Connor in
But how about the effect of the film, let me talk about the good and bad sides of this film first
On the bright side: the series has a new look
Making the Lori family the focus of the character description can be said to bring a new look to the series, because this time in the slasher film we can see the impact of an event from the perspective of the victim and how the victim tries get out of this shadow
After Luo Li personally experienced the incident of Uncle Mai killing her friend and herself, she was psychologically entangled by this shadow and became extremely vigilant (after all, Uncle Mai is still alive and detained in the treatment center). Therefore, we see in the film that she has experienced two failed marriages and has been living in an environment where others are talking about it, but like Sarah Connor, in order to protect her daughter Karen and her family, Lori not only armed herself , and gave Karen a lot of survival skills lessons when she was a child. . . . .
Here, it can be seen that the screenwriter and director wisely chose to emphasize the perspective of the victim to describe Uncle Mai, how this cruel killer hurt the hearts of others and left a great shadow on the follow-up . Especially from the description of the three-generation background story of Lori's family, it can be seen that Karen later left her mother, and during these moments when she was away from her mother and even with her mother, it was not difficult to perceive Karen's complaints to her mother, which was even worse. The thing is, this influence also brought to Lori's granddaughter, Karen's daughter, Alison, however, Alison's psychological quality is not bad, the suggestion that Karen and Lori get together was proposed by Alison , after all, Alison and Lori actually met in secret many times, and their relationship was pretty good.
It is precisely because of this that this also sets the stage for the subsequent revenge drama, and makes the audience closely connect with these victims, looking forward to how they can overcome their inner shadows, so these somewhat show that the main creator of "Moonlight 2018" chose to make this series and In line with the trend of the times: the cry of feminism, especially the promotion of women's rights protection (women's self-help)
So we saw that these three generations of women began to confront Uncle Mai: Lori brought Uncle Mai to the main battlefield carefully arranged by her, Karen was no longer weak at this time, and used the skill training she received as a child to assist (after shooting Uncle Mai) , Lori pushed Uncle Mai into the basement, and after the three of them came out of the cellar, Alison was responsible for repairing the knife), and finally the three sent Uncle Mai into the underground cage set up. Lori lit the flame and roasted Mai directly. uncle
If the confrontation between Ripley and the Alien Queen at the end of "Alien 2" is a confrontation between two mothers, and the victim confronts the perpetrator, then "Moonlight 2018" has evolved into a confrontation between the female victim and the male abuser, which is completely in line with Recent Social Calls
ps; It is worth mentioning that the mirmax company was founded by Weinstein in the title, but now it is owned by another media, which is really ironic
The bad side: The film's "out of focus" problem
But, but, this film still made the mistake of "out of focus"
The out-of-focus error comes from two points
First, there are many characters
There are many characters in this film, some of which are really not helpful to the progress of the plot, and the background is unknown, but the screenwriter inserted them on time, such as the black child, Alison's boyfriend
But at the same time, there are a few characters behind the issues that are more interesting, which will cover up Lori to a certain extent, such as the psychiatrist
It was a psychiatrist who helped Uncle Mai escape from the car that was going to the treatment center (Uncle Mai killed a father and son on the road to get the car and drove into the town), apparently this psychiatrist, who has been working for 40 years. In the research, he had a deformed worship of his patient and was extremely fascinated by murder, so he wanted to try to observe various murder phenomena in secret to gain pleasure, enlightenment (and even the duel between Lori and Uncle Mai, he also intervened ----- Directly send Alison and Uncle Mai to the final battlefield), which undoubtedly conveys a twisted, cult-like worship, especially many cases in history also reflect this, if there is a sequel, from Uncle Mai It is a good choice to start with the topic of believers (after all, Uncle Mai was roasted in the end, but he is not dead yet)
ps; Of course, there are also little investigators, who report great curiosity and a spirit of death, and want to give Uncle Mai an unbiased report, which, as usual, also satirizes the news media who risk moral hazard to report news indiscriminately in order to increase their popularity.
Second, out of focus in style
First of all, the use of jump scare in John Carpenter's "Moonlight" or John Carpenter's horror works is not reflected in this work, which also shows that the use of jump scare today is really cheap. Old John's jump scares first captured the audience's attention by setting the atmosphere, and then, at a certain point of time, unexpectedly scare the audience. To give a very simple example, in Old John's "The Thing" , in the process of Kurt Russell's blood test to identify who is an alien, old John gradually piled up the tense atmosphere (no one wants to be an alien), until Lasseter detected a certain A blood sample was rejected (here there is a jump scar), the audience not only reacted with fright, but also more convinced of Lasseter's theory, and surprised that the person was cloned by aliens
Another example is the scene in Wen Ziren's "The Conjuring 2", that is, when Vera Farmiga and the nun are trapped in a room, the nun does not appear in the way the audience expects, although the audience knows it will come out. Here, Wen Ziren gradually stacked the atmosphere to let the audience hold their breath. When everyone thought it would come out of the frame directly, Wen Ziren chose another way: let it hold the frame and force it to Vera. Therefore, the tortured Atmosphere creation coupled with surprising ways to frighten is the essence of jump scare
But here, without the creation of the atmosphere, just come up and be scared (and know in advance which character is killed by other means), the effect of shock is there, but the process of the audience being tortured in the middle is ignored. Reduce the audience's surprise reaction
Secondly, as a horror film, "Moonlight" does have a lot of unrelated jokes. The proper placement of jokes in the middle of the plot can play a very good role. The placement of jokes in superhero movies reflects the character or the relationship between characters to some extent, while the jokes in horror movies can play a role in reducing the tension of the audience a little, but the setting of the jokes in this film has little to do with the main characters. Second, it will seriously distract the audience. For example, after arriving at a certain tense scene where Alison's life and death are at stake, cut to the picture of unrelated characters eating sandwiches and share food experiences?
Also, Danny , so it is not surprising that there are scenes of teenagers taking drugs
Where is Uncle Mai going?
This time, Uncle Mai is still the undisguised murderer in this film, and his background story has not been explained (yes, the background that Lori is Uncle Mai's sister has also been rewritten).
Uncle Mai, who is not in the C position, seems to be a lot of cartoons----simply as some kind of evil existence, it is indeed much bleaker compared to the more flesh and blood Lori in this work, but this is also what this series needs to take. I am glad that this step is still safe (although the above shortcomings hurt this game a lot), after all, halloween, translated as Halloween, but its focus may not always be on Uncle Mai.
Therefore, I personally think that although it is not necessary to stand in the C position, the image of Uncle Mai must be preserved, and the follow-up stories of the characters related to him need to be explored. In this way, the development of the story direction has become diverse and the series freshness is maintained.
Epilogue
"Moonlight 2018" has many problems in the play, but the overall execution is good, and the theme has a new development. It is a good commercial film, at least much better than the sequels after "Moonlight 2"
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