Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to read so much press surrounding Halloween Kills, the follow-up to his 2018 sequel for John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic. Going in I knew this was the second of three parts, and even though I was entertained mostly, chunks of this movie came off like an advertisement for the third installment. I’ve enjoyed plenty of films that are also guilty of this, as this didn’t hurt my enjoyment of Infinity War or LOTR: The Two Towers too badly. My major complaint is more about how this latest movie feels the need to drive its themes and messages to a way-too-clear point. You’d think The Shape’s weapon of choice this time around was a giant cartoon mallet as opposed to a kitchen knife.
Following some time jumps to a flashback and then back to the present, the Strode family is hightailing it away from the blazing house they’d trapped Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney, as much of a silent terminator as ever) inside, and Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) is none too pleased about the firefighters rushing to put out the inferno.
The first responders learn a hard lesson, which apparently bothered some real-world fire departments because Michael just goes so ham on them with their own equipment. A group of Shape survivors at a charity event learn of the attacks on the news, and a man Laurie once babysat in the 70s named Tommy (an intense Anthony Michael Hall) leads a small army of townsfolk to fight back.
Since Laurie is dealing with a nasty abdomen wound, her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), granddaughter Allyson and her ex-boyfriend Cameron (returning are Andi Matichak Dylan Arnold) are on board with taking Michael down, while Sherrif Barker (Omar Dorsey) is more overwhelmed than ever with all of the destruction unfolding around him.
Though there’s some good development and human moments involving Laurie, still it’s a bit of a letdown that Curtis is on the sidelines for much of the movie given she was such a major highlight of that 2018 version.
So Michael seems to be in a real “extra” mood in this film, because he’s both more creative with his murders and a lot more brutal. He experiments with forcing a wife to watch him test out their cutlery collection in an unsettling fashion, reversing the townspeople’s attacks against them, and toying casually with people’s spines.
Green’s Halloween films have always been gorier than John Carpenter’s first movies, as there’s next to no blood in the original 1978 entry- most of the terror comes from Michael lurking in the shadows. We do get some of the more patient, slow-burn scares in maybe a couple of scenes, though generally, it’s all about The Shape wandering through the neighborhood and having his way with whoever runs into him.
Through the townspeople’s collective panicking, there’s a subplot Halloween Kills kickstarts with an escaped mental patient (David Lowe) trying to survive the night as everyone’s frantically searching for Myers in the hopes of killing him once and for all. Haddonfield is a personality in itself here, and I do admire the movie’s intent to give the city a sense of character development.
But the “are *we* the real monsters?” theme was a bit obvious at points, not totally bad but very on-the-nose. The way Karen reaches to the inmate and says, “I won’t hurt you, it’s okay,” like a lost creature while the mob chants “Evil Dies Tonight!” (that becomes a shared slogan surprisingly fast), I thought to myself “this is so Disney”. That’s not me knocking Disney, I’m a sucker for those kinds of sappy moments, but here in this grimy ass slasher flick. it felt a tad jarring.
There was more emotional nuance in the side-story with Deputy Hawkins (Will Patton, Thomas Mann in flashbacks) and his failure to stop Michael back in the late 1970’s. It’s part of a number of callbacks to the Shape’s past, along with a gay couple named Big John and Little John (Scott MacArthur and Michael McDonald) living in Myers’ old house and shooing away pranksters. They were charming, but it was with them that I noticed something that kept bugging me through the flick: the dialogue is strangely “trailer-focused”.
Now I did like many of the performances here, Curtis was good as usual, and there was a rawness in Anthony Michael Hall’s desire to see Michael put six feet under that was very effective. But even he had moments like during the charity scene, the way he whispers “It’s Halloween, he’s coming for you…”, how Big John warns kids “don’t you know the legend?” and the way in which Little John goes “Michael’s come home.” I can’t shake the vibe they almost know they’re in a Halloween movie. Like his next line’s going to be “Only in theaters and on Peacock!”
I get that Halloween Kills is meant to be the groundwork for the finale installment, but it didn’t need to be so apparent IMO. It’s ambitious in spots and I mostly had fun watching it, but there are definitely some flaws here. Still, I’d recommend it for die-hard Halloween franchise fans as it’s nowhere as bad as some of the 90s sequels. If you’ve had the chance to see it, let us know your take on it at FAN’s social media spots as always!
