The reason why "Season of the Witch" is such a strange movie is that it's a "Halloween" movie that does NOT have Michael Myers in it. I think that concept alone has turned a lot of people away from this movie. They aren't interested in random "Halloween" anthology films. They want to see the immortal, unbeatable Michael Myers wandering around town, killing people. And if no Michael Myers in a "Halloween" movie is a deal-breaker, then this movie might not be for you. However, despite the horrendous reviews this movie has received, it also has a good deal of followers that consist of people who are able to compartmentalize a bit and see this as what it was intended. Something completely different. That's why context here is important. You have to know what you're getting into and the history behind it all before you come to a rash conclusion about it. Honestly, I think the idea of it all was pretty great. If you haven't seen "Halloween II," Michael Myers went kaboom in a hospital. The idea there was that that was supposed to be it. The Michael Myers story was complete and the people behind the franchise wanted to do a series of other stories surrounding the holiday of Halloween rather than just doing movies about the character of Michael Myers.
People in the 80's weren't ready for that, though. The idea of doing a horror cinematic universe was about 30 years ahead of its time. Every studio trying to go for a cinematic universe didn't explode onto the scene until Marvel's "The Avengers" in 2012. Shortly after that is when we did get a horror cinematic universe with "The Conjuring" films, which currently include both films in the main franchise, a trilogy of "Annabelle" films, "The Nun" and the loosely connected "The Curse of La Llorna." There's also a whole roomful of objects waiting to be turned into movies as a third film in the main franchise coming next year. So the idea works in today's world, but in the 80's people just wanted their mindless slasher flicks with their unstoppable horror villains, ala Freddy, Jason and Michael. No Michael equals no money, which is why "Halloween III" only made $14.4 million, which was only half as much as "Halloween II," which earned $25.5 million the year before. So they quickly threw aside this idea of "Halloween" anthology films, labeled it a failed experiment, and brought Michael Myers back in "Halloween 4," which they subtitled "The Return of Michael Myers" as emphasis. Michael Myers has remained a central character in the franchise ever since.
I'm not going to lie, I was actually rather intrigued by this premise. Even though we don't have the classic "Halloween" theme music, the replacement score was still pretty effective while the opening sequences did a good job of drawing me in. Most of the town, especially the children, are fascinated with these masks and the commercials. They've essentially become a viral hit. But yet we have one crazy guy running into town, trying to get the message across that "They're going to kill us all!" Who are "they" and what does this guy mean? Before he can get his message too far out, he ends up injured in a hospital, then quickly terminated when one of our mysterious men breaks in. So he really only got his message out to a couple of people. Yet when his daughter comes to town, demanding answers from the police about what happened to her father, she grabs the attention of one certain hospital employee who was one of the only ones to hear the father's warning. So the two of them decide to team up and solve this mystery of what happened to her father and who these mysterious people are. I was sold by this. Not actually having had seen this movie before this week, I was caught up in the mystery of it all and I liked the idea of this being more of a suspenseful thriller.
Unfortunately, when the two of them go on this adventure, that's where this thing derails a bit. They travel to the town where the Silver Shamrock business is based in, and even though the town itself is sufficiently weird and creepy, the movie devolves into this awkward lustful love story. I don't know how old these two characters are supposed to be, but the actors who play them are 47 years old and 23 years respectively when this movie was released. And our older, nearly 50-year-old guy is who the movie is really focused around in terms of a lead protagonist and he's just this weird creep. He's slapping his female coworkers on the butt, saying he should've married them instead, then he goes to the crime lab girl and makes out with her in return for a favor. All this before going on a solo adventure with the daughter of his patients who was just murdered. Instead of quickly trying to solve this mystery, they rent a room together in a motel and start making love all night. And it's only in between their love-making sessions where he finally asks, "Wait, how old are you?" To which she responds, "Older than you think." In between all of this, he's trying to please his ex-wife by promising to take care of their two kids, a promise he breaks every 30 minutes.
When it comes to the original "Halloween," the reason why that movie worked so well is you actually cared about Laurie Strode and feared for her safety. A strong central lead character with a streamlined plot makes for an extremely effective horror film. The reason why "Halloween II" didn't work as well is because they threw Laurie into a hospital, turned her into a damsel in distress, then had Michael killing a bunch of useless red coats for half of the movie. So if "Halloween III" was trying to be extremely effective, having a borderline pedophile-type guy as the main dude we're supposed to care about is not the best way to go about things. The girl was pretty likable, though. However, she was no Laurie. And it was her that started things. In fairness to our lead guy, he actually offered to go buy another hotel room, but it was the girl that convinced him to stay and sleep in her bed. Anyways, that made the rest of the movie significantly less interesting. Even though the town and the atmosphere were still quite effective, I wasn't worried about the safety of the protagonists lives, which removed the intensity out of the horror. When the mysterious people started swarming our leads when they got too close to their, I was almost on the side of the bad guys here.
The uninteresting part of the ending is the final confrontation in the heart of the secret lab. Our lead girl, who was the most proactive in figuring this all out, becomes the damsel in distress as she's captured by the robot people and it's up to our pedophile lead character to save her. And when he does, it's all too easy. He throws his Halloween mask they put on him perfectly on the hidden camera, climbs through all the ventilation area to reach the girl and break her out, then they steal a box of those deadly medallions, dump them into the main base from up in the rafters and electrocute all of the robot people, leaving only our main villain left to fight. But that's not much of a fight because the Stonehenge rune, which, yes that exists in their secret base, zaps him out of there after he slow claps after seeing all the destroyed robots. It's all kind of bizarre. The big twist of the movie, though, is that when they're driving home, the girl reveals herself to be one of the robot people. That makes zero sense to me. Then the dude gets home, tries to warn everyone to not watch the TV commercial, calls someone to get it shut off... and fails? The movie ends as a kid is watching the deadly commercial in his mask, which infers that the evil plan worked? Question mark?
If that's the direction that they did indeed decide to go, that's quite the bold ending. And even though the whole love arc derailed the movie, and gets made more confusing when we learn the girl is also a killer robot, the movie manages to maintain its creepy atmosphere throughout. When you learn that the overall goal is to kill everyone who buys and wears one of those masks, the movie becomes quite unsettling, and finishes off on an extremely unsettling cliffhanger inferring that the plan worked. So yeah, this movie has a lot of flaws. But it's also a lot better than it has any right to be. And if you've dismissed it simply because there's no Michael Meyers, or because it has an IMDb score of 4.9, it's worth checking out for the sake of curiosity. Again, it does have a fairly large cult following and I understand why those people love it. As far as what I'm going to do next with this franchise in terms of reviews? Well, I might watch/re-watch the fourth, fifth, and sixth films at some point to see if there's anything worth talking about there. If they're as disposable as I remember them being, I might jump straight to 1998's "Halloween: H20," the first movie in the franchise to retcon previous movies. My grade for "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" is a 6/10.
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