Halloween: Part 78
*** (3/4 stars)
Directed by Q-BRiC
Written by GPT-23
Halloween 78 is a return to form, back to the roots of the terrifying masked slasher, Michael Myers—in more ways than one. The title refers to this being the seventy-eighth movie in the Halloween franchise, but it also refers to the years the story is set, 2078 and 1978, the latter being the year the original John Carpenter horror movie was released.
Halloween 78 opens twenty years from now in 2078, after time travel has been invented. Michael Myers, now over 100 years old, is still alive and strong thanks to cyborg enhancements, regenerative medicine, and an ancient Samhain curse. His greatest regret in life was letting teenage babysitter (and his secret sister) Laurie Strode (played by deepfake Jamie Lee Curtis) get away on that Halloween night in 1978. So Michael uses a time machine to travel 100 years back in time to find Laurie and finish the job.
Michael proceeds to correct the mistakes he made the first time around by first neutralizing his former psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis. He then traps Laurie alone in a house and is ready to stab her—except they are not alone. Young Michael Myers is there too, and he wants the kill for himself.
In the final act of the movie, a cat-and-mouse game ensues as the two Michaels try to hunt and kill each other so they can be the one to kill Laurie. [SPOILER ALERT] The film ends with future Michael Myers decapitating his younger self, creating a temporal paradox, which causes the older Michael to disappear into thin air. With young Michael Myers dead and future Michael Myers nonexistent, Laurie survives to live another day… Or does she?
A post-credits teaser scene shows the Michael Myers from Halloween H2O arrive in 1978 via time travel—followed by the Michael Myers from the 2018 remake—then the Rob Zombie Michael Myers, followed by the Myers from Halloween on Mars. Cut to seventy-eight madmen with knives wearing deformed William Shatner masks, one Michael Myers from each of the movies in the franchise. They all traveled back in time to Haddonfield on Halloween night 1978 with the goal of being the Michael Myers to finally kill Laurie Strode.
Halloween 78 was directed by Q-BRiC (Quantum Bits Rendered in Cinematography), the AI film-generator, using a dataset including previous John Carpenter movies to re-create his directing style. The screenplay was written by GPT-23, based on the previous Halloween scripts, plus the scripts from Back to the Future and Terminator for time travel inspiration. RoboBach, the music-producing AI, was used to compose a score matching Carpenter’s original signature synth soundtrack. The CGI was done by DALL-E 12.
Halloween 78 II is currently being rendered by Q-BRiC and is slated for release galaxy-wide next week. Rumors are a deepfake of John Carpenter makes an appearance in a meta twist. The director travels back in time to kill all the Michael Myers—not to save Laurie, but to erase all the crappy Halloween sequels and remakes from this timeline.