Sometimes we see what we wanna see... not sure if this first review is one of those cases or if the themes are really there intentionally, at least as definitively as the National Review author states.
A Right-Wing Halloweenhttps://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/movie-review-halloween-right-wing-message-guns/In which evil gets its due and there is no feel-good lesson to be learned, except one: Guns protect you.‘The world is not a dark and evil place,” insists an exasperated woman played by Judy Greer in Halloween. “It’s full of love and understanding!”
I put the question to the class: Is she right?
In the new film (not a reboot but a sequel that occurs 40 years after the events in the 1978 original and ignores all intervening Halloween movies), the woman, a mom named Karen, is forever grumbling about her Parris Island–style upbringing. Her mother is Laurie Strode, played once again by Jamie Lee Curtis. Laurie has excellent reason to suspect the presence of dark and evil in the world, and she taught her daughter from a young age about firearms, the fallen nature of man, the failures of the state, the blessings of rugged individualism, and the collected works of Russell Kirk. Okay, maybe not that last part, but still: Halloween is a gung-ho, gun-loving, liberal-trolling, capital-punishment-backing conservative manifesto in the format of a slasher flick. It’s the kind of movie where if someone says he’d rather have dance lessons than shooting practice, he’ll soon be corrected.
...
The entire time Michael has been in prison, Laurie has been waiting, indeed praying, for his release because only then can an individual correct the failures of the state. One representative thereof even solemnly intones, “He’s property of the state. He mustn’t be harmed.” It’s a brief but acidic reminder of how bureaucrats can get the arrow of protection turned the wrong way. Awaiting the inevitable escape of Michael, Laurie has become a full-on prepper, with a panic room and an arsenal so large it would make Charles C. W. Cooke whistle with admiration. (An unexpected side benefit of the film is that Jamie Lee Curtis, a supporter of additional gun regulation, felt the need to clarify her position last week. “I fully support the Second Amendment,” she declared, which makes her far-right by Hollywood standards.) Laurie’s daughter comes to rethink her previous contention that Mom is paranoid.
The climactic scenes, with many male corpses strewn about the scenery but three women standing tall, constitute a witty reframing of one of Hollywood’s most consuming notions these days: that to be female is to be under threat. If so, Green’s movie replies, women should fight back. With shotguns.
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Rex Reed didn't like it (he thinks she's "out of her mind" for the very reasons the above reviewer thinks she is completely rational and prepared for reality):
https://observer.com/2018/10/halloween-review-jamie-lee-curtis-still-screaming/Jamie Lee Curtis Is Out of Her Damn Mind In the New ‘Halloween’Four decades have left her almost as demented as her tormenter, and she has spent the years cautiously—becoming a crazy town eccentric estranged from her mother Karen (Judy Greer) and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). Never mind. She’s been out of her mind with terror, permanently unhinged by paranoia and dread while preparing her house for the inevitable return of Michael Myers. [Which is, of course, exactly what happens... she might be paranoid, but that doesn't mean someone isn't out to get her!]
A master of self-defense, she has a hiding place under her floor like a bomb shelter and an arsenal of automatic weapons that outnumber the Republicans in the U.S. Congress. Smart girl, because, predictably, he escapes again from a fool-proof insane asylum and heads for Haddonfield faster than you can say “Bates Motel.”