OnScreen Review: "Halloween Kills"
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
When Halloween was released in 2018, it was a refreshing return to the roots of an iconic horror movie killer. Michael Myers was one of the OGs of horror slashers, a silent and hulking figure that just kept coming. It also cast aside decades of poorly conceived and poorly received sequels with convoluted mythology surrounding the character and made itself to be a direct sequel to the first, classic film. The film was so popular that a sequel was almost immediately announced. And now, after a delay of a year, Halloween Kills has arrived.
The film opens with a reframing of the original events from 1978, with a few new elements being introduced that further establish what is essentially a new timeline of the murder spree of Michael Myers, including his capture with a CGI-returning Dr. Loomis. In the present, the film picks up directly in the aftermath of the 2018 Halloween. Michael Myers is left to burn to death in the basement of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). As Laurie, her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) go to the hospital, they pass firetrucks heading in the opposite direction. And while Laurie goes in for emergency surgery, Michael emerges from the fiery house to slaughter the firemen and continue his bloody rampage. When the townspeople of Haddonfield learn of this, they decide to band together and take the fight to Michael.
Halloween Kills starts with an interesting take on the horror sequel. The town banding together to hunt down the killer in their midst on the loose is a unique turn. The townsfolk are led, loosely, by a band of friends who survived Michael’s murderous escapade 40 years ago and gather together every year at the bar to honor Laurie, acknowledge the loved ones they lost, and to never forget the grief and pain that was imposed upon them that changed their lives. The head of this group is Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), one of the boys Laurie babysat back in 1978.
I liked the idea of this group being bonded by their tragedy and marked by their loss. I liked the idea of them deciding to take matters into their own hands and to not be passive participants when they realize it is happening again. I liked the idea of collectively fighting back in a horror movie being a cultural stand-in as social commentary on the increased light being shined on powerful, predatory men. Unfortunately, these ideas are poorly executed in Halloween Kills.
Practically the entire town of Haddonfield gets a case of collective beer muscles when they realize that Michael Myers is back and it is all happening again. Rather than being coordinated and actually taking the fight to Michael in a way they can win, the stage is merely set for Michael to make his way through a few of them at a time until the final act. Does this lead to some creative deaths at the hands of Michael Myers? Sure, so if that is all you are looking for, then I guess you will be satisfied. If you are looking for anything more, you will be sorely disappointed.
It is almost comical how badly the collective response of the town is portrayed, how quickly a crazed mob mentality takes hold, and how quickly that is all brushed aside by a pro forma speech when the mob demanding blood ends up with blood on its hands. Also, one could play a drinking game whenever the words “Evil dies tonight” are uttered if one did not care for their own liver.
It’s also worth noting that Laurie Strode is completely sidelined for the entirety of the movie mostly to the recovery bed, sharing a room with Deputy Hawkins (Will Patton), who managed to survive being stabbed in the neck in the previous movie. When the mob is at its peak frenzy, one of the funniest moments of the film happens to occur, where Laurie is trying to calm people down and a doctor actually runs by, shoving her out of the way and opening her abdominal wound in the process. Intentionally funny or not, it elicited a laugh.
What is becoming increasingly laughable for me, sadly, is Michael Myers himself. Michael is supposed to be the boogeyman. Michael is supposed to be pure evil. In the words of John Carpenter himself, Michael is supposed to be “almost a supernatural force – a force of nature.” Halloween Kills drops any pretense of “almost” when it comes to the supernatural nature of Michael Myers. No matter what happens to him, no matter where he is stabbed, Michael Myers is going to keep getting up and moving forward.
Even though this new continuity eschews all of the previous sequels, Halloween Kills is a Halloween sequel that can join the ranks of those very sequels it sets aside in making Michael Myers something that transcends his human body. He’s basically a terminator without the exoskeleton underneath the skin. Also, it’s worth mentioning that the character is now in his 60s. How far past qualifying for AARP does an evil entity stop being believable as an imposing, menacing force of nature and an unstoppable killing machine? It’s like watching Hulk Hogan or Ric Flair wrestle into their 60s. At some point, it just becomes sad. I guess, in some ways, the need to bring Michael Myers back and rely on him as a entity of evil to induce scares and thrills in audiences is itself a sad commentary on the state of affairs of Hollywood’s reliance on these nostalgia acts. It’s fitting that I compared Michael Myers to a terminator, we saw a similar pattern of going to the well one too many times with that franchise trying to reboot itself with a new continuity.
Halloween Kills offers a few cheap killing thrills, but is a poorly executed follow-up to a surprisingly successful sequel, which is a rarity when practically everyone from the previous movie behind the scenes returned this time around. There is bound to be a third one, as it appears that this relaunching of the franchise was conceived as a trilogy. Perhaps that closing chapter will reveal which of these last two was really the outlier, but for now, this is another sad chapter in the tale of Haddonfield.
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
(Halloween Kills is currently streaming on Peacock.)