Halloween (2018) Parent Guide

​Halloween is the 11th and, hopefully final, installment of the highly successful franchise. In this production, Michael Meyers (Nick Castle) returns to the town where he traumatized Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) four decades ago. But Laurie hasn’t spent those years passively waiting; she is armed and ready for a fight. Not surprisingly, the results are extremely brutal. There are frequent portrayals of violence, complete with blood and other gory detail. The writers left no murder weapon unused and people are killed with guns, knives, and hammers, and are impaled on fence posts, thrown from cars, run over by cars, stomped in the head, slammed into walls, and strangled.

As if the violence were not enough of a concern, the sexual content is also troubling - not only is there female frontal nudity, but the woman’s bare chest is also seen with blood on it. Further content issues include profanity: the film features 42 instances of profanity, including over two dozen sexual expletives and a sexual hand gesture. Compared to these issues, the scenes involving teens smoking marijuana seem relatively mild.

These content issues are so serious that the film’s ironic sense of humor is not enough to save it. We do not recommend Halloween for family viewing in any circumstance.