David Gordon Green’s Halloween is a hugely entertaining, surprisingly funny, scary slasher, and a welcome return to form for both Michael Myers (Nick Castle and James Jude) and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). Even though it doesn’t quite match the quality of the original despite an interesting premise, its iconic leads haven’t been this great in decades.

Halloween takes place forty years after John Carpenter’s classic, ignores all the other films in the series, and follows Laurie as she prepares for the inevitable round two against her nightmarish stalker. Laurie was traumatized by her first encounter with Michael, and has spent most of her life waiting for him to escape from the sanitarium he’s been incarcerated in since that fateful night. Her house is a fortress and her aim with a revolver is great, but her obsession with protecting herself and her loved ones from the Shape has put a strain on her relationship with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). However, Laurie turns out to have been right, as her past does indeed come back to haunt her. Michael returns to Haddonfield for another night of carnage, which forces the Strodes to fight for their survival.

Halloween gets some great mileage with this new, damaged take on Laurie. A single, awful night defined the rest of her life, and this is made painfully clear when seeing her interact with her family. Laurie may have survived, but she didn’t really spend the last four decades living, and Curtis’ performance makes it easy to believe. But when all Hell breaks loose Laurie goes full-on “Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2” badass, making the cat and mouse moments between her and Michael extremely intense. Michael may be the merciless serial killer, but Laurie seems almost as deadly this time around.

Unlike Laurie, 2018’s Michael hasn’t really changed since the original film and that’s a good thing. He may be older, but he’s still the same unfeeling, relentless, mysterious killing machine he was before the numerous sequels and reboots tried humanize him, explained his motives, gave him supernatural powers, and pitted him against Busta Rhymes in one-on-one combat. Green and his co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley took Michael back to basics, and it worked brilliantly. He’s big, strong, creative with his kills, and scary as Hell.

In addition to the expected scares, there are a few unexpected moments of humor in Halloween too. Green and McBride – who are known for movies and shows like Pineapple Express, Your Highness, and Eastbound and Down- inject their brand of humor in between the horror, and it works quite well.

What doesn’t work well are a few unnecessary, cliché scenes surrounding Allyson’s social life, and a particularly awful character twist that had me shaking my head for far too long. Halloween had been a strong, scary, and smart slasher until the aforementioned twist, so I was extremely disappointed to see something so stupid happen in the middle of it all. It wasn’t terrible enough that it ruined the entire movie for me, but it definitely stayed on my mind until the final act. Luckily, Halloween’s last few scenes are phenomenal, featuring a handful of truly awesome callbacks and one of the most simple, yet badass lines in horror movie history, and it comes from a fairly surprising source.

Overall, Halloween is a worthy follow-up to its legendary 1978 predecessor. It’s not the masterpiece the original was, but it’ll definitely please fans of the classic, or those looking for a great slasher flick.