Directed By David Gordon Green

Starring – Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak

The Plot – And the Halloween night when Michael Myers (Nick Castle) returned isn’t over yet. Minutes after Laurie Strode (Curtis), her daughter Karen (Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Matichak) left masked monster Michael Myers caged and burning in Laurie’s basement, Laurie is rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, believing she finally killed her lifelong tormentor. But when Michael manages to free himself from Laurie’s trap, his ritual bloodbath resumes. As Laurie fights her pain and prepares to defend herself against him, she inspires all of Haddonfield to rise up against their unstoppable monster. The Strode women join a group of other survivors of Michael’s first rampage who decide to take matters into their own hands, forming a vigilante mob that sets out to hunt Michael down, once and for all.

Rated R for strong bloody violence throughout, grisly images, adult language and some drug use

halloween kills trailer – YouTube

POSITIVES

– Carnage Candy. There is certainly no false advertising when it comes to this movie’s title, sifting through a variety of gruesome gore and ferocious violence that is second to none in terms of devastation, making this the darkest and most devastating Halloween film ever put to film. Make no mistake about it, this is Michael at his absolute most devious, bottling as much ingenuity for creative kills, and intensity for macabre that makes each of these victims feel personal for what he inflicts on him, and giving us a full-fledged evolution of the character that serves as the culmination to this unstoppable monster that the Laurie Strode arc of his character has pertained to. The imagery is exploitative in the most expressive way possible, but I felt that everything contained served the impact and imposing nature of his character brilliantly, and made the stakes and consequences of each character feel as vulnerable and helpless as the script requires them to be. If you’re someone who watches Halloween films purely for the violence that fills your tummies, and rots your teeth, you’ll find plenty enough with these conflicts to snack on.

– Fan service. Highly valuable production lends itself to a transformational quality of consistency within the film’s presentation that contains some of the best special effects that I have seen in quite sometime. This is with respect not only to de-aging actors, which brings more than a few surprises for just who pops up in this installment, but also in elements of the lens, which vibrantly immerse us back into the atmosphere of 1978 with some of the best color correction that I have ever seen in a horror film. This allows the visuals to attain an air of authenticity and believability so thick that no aspect of props or background style ever keep it from breaking our concentration, instead persisting through various flashbacks throughout the film that feel like they literally lifted scenes from the original film, and restored them to the integrity of this story in order to fill in the gaps from some of the emerging plot holes that have surfaced as a result of removing most of the franchise’s continuity. It never amazes me just how much Hollywood is able to push the envelope for what is physically and creatively possible, and if this were a film that took place entirely as a 1978 remake, I would be completely on board.

– Family affair. Aside from the aspects pertaining to the foreground of this story, with the Strode family of women eluding a knife-wielding psychopath, there’s an equally alluring genetic aspect to the film’s musical compositions that brings forth some of the more elaborate instrumentals and deviations that this franchise has ever known. The legend himself, John Carpenter, is of course back in the saddle again, but this time brings with him his son, Cody, in engineering a unique take on a series of decades old classics. Most definitive is the sizzle of synth, which offers a complimentary dread and electronic underlining to the main theme that expands on its thematic growth with a musical unraveling mirroring its depth. On top of this, the Carpenter’s original work for the film, contains an elevating anxiety that perfectly captures the dread and overwhelming panic of the town’s people, bringing to life audible evidence to the nightmares transpiring in each of them, that seem them being the monsters that Michael created, instead of vice versa. This series would be nothing without the Carpenter family, so it’s nice to see the man who started it all still have a resonating impact to the next direction of the franchise that has shifted its shape as much as Michael himself, in 43 years of iconic cinema.

– The devil inside. Unfortunately, most of the performances for the film are forgettably bland at best, but the beaming influence of James Jude Courtney as the unstoppable Myers, brings with it an energy and strength that may have just cemented my single favorite portrayal of the killer in twelve movies. Part of Courtney’s measurement for the character does rely on physical stature, as the actor stands at 6’2, 180 lbs, but the more alluring aspect of his portrayal comes in the psychology of his investment, presenting a humanistic side to the often robotically monotonous Michael that feels redundant after so many films. Because of such, when Michael feels pain, we the audience register it with the kind of detailed body language that Courtney conveys in his reactions, saying so much without actually speaking a single line of dialogue anywhere throughout the film. Beyond this, the speed of his movements feel very in-tuned with how a man of his age would properly instill, never feeling unreachable or paranormal with how he’s able to elude confrontation, which gives the character design a very lived in and cerebral quality that values Michael’s movements in ways no film, nor actor, truly has.

– Detailed ramifications. As to where most films deal with Laurie and Michael going head to head as the primary focus throughout, “Halloween Kills” is very much about the town of Haddonfield, and how the influence of such a presence can hold a lasting effect on those immediately impacted by it. What’s cool about this is not only does it illustrate a psychology and commentary that plays wholeheartedly into the atmospheric dread of the Halloween season, but it’s also responsible enough to depict that more than a few people are affected by what transpires with Michael, all the while feeding into the lore of the legend that expands with each passing instance. The characterization certainly leaves more to be desired, which I will steer through in a second, but I found it refreshing to see a film deviate from a decades old structure, in order to conjure up the next breed of notable protagonists in this franchise. This is certainly the case for Andi Matichak’s Allyson, who takes commend of the rebellion against Michael, while steering through her own emotional frailty for the toll that she has paid while Michael has taken away so much from her once peaceful existence.

NEGATIVES

– Messy script. Is it possible for a screenplay to contain so many arc’s that it feels cluttered in its responsibility to pay attention to each of them, yet hollow for how little it actually progresses the overall narrative for the duration of this trilogy? That’s what “Halloween Kills” is able to pull off remarkably, stitching a completely brand new story pertaining to old supporting characters of the 78′ original, with the unfurling of the Strode women narrative that steered the 2018 first chapter, resulting in an execution that overtly clings to the first, while almost entirely ignoring the second. It leads to several heavy-handed exposition dumps and character reminders that quite literally halts the storytelling in its tracks to play “Hey, I remember you”, with none of them adding anything even remotely compelling or palpable to escape one-dimensional characterization. It often feels like two different films fighting for control of the one that is right in front of it, creating a disjointed and disorienting plot that feels like it was vastly rewritten as shooting took place, and feeling all the more arduous for the level of underwhelming editing, which fails to juggle each of their stories with attention competently.

– Painfully forced dialogue. What halts the characterization for the film, especially that of the 78′ characters who arrive just as Michael escapes, are these cheesy, robotic lines of inspirational dialogue, whose only purpose feels to be selling the trailer, and not actually fitting into the context of the scenes they’re adorning. Easily the worst of the film is the line “Evil dies tonight”, which is repeated so often that characters nearly tattoo it on their heads, so that we the audience never lose sight of the mission at hand. Other groan-heavy winners involve “Michael Myers is flesh and blood, but a man couldn’t survive that fire. The more he kills, the more he transcends into the essence of evil”, or when Laurie declares, “Next Halloween, when the sun sets, when someone is alone, he kills”. Thanks Laurie. I know this kind of dialogue has been a part of these films dating back to when Sam Loomis unloaded them like Candy Corns to the bad kids of the neighborhood while trick or treating, but that was one character with his own ties to Michael’s history, and not literally every single character repeating the same sentence in ways that only deviates by shifting words in different places so that they’re easily interchangeable. It could lead to either the greatest or worst drinking game of all time, and makes me wish this was a silent film, with only the Carpenters’ score tickling our ears.

– Comedic overload. Unfortunately, the one aspect from the previous film that I hated is doubled down on for this corresponding sequel, and attains an effectiveness in registry that is somehow even less than that aforementioned effort. This certainly creates a tonal inconsistency that is prominent throughout the duration of the 100 minute feature, but even worse than that carries with it several instances where the building tension and atmospheric dread is sacrificed for cultural musical chairs, showing us everything from the scintillating spunk of black people, to the flaming femininity of gay people, whose names are actually Big John and Little John, and I wish I was kidding. The comedy itself is so bad and unfulfilling that it is made worse by how long the script actually stays committed to it, leading to a horror movie that wants so badly to attain self-awareness that it literally becomes a parody of itself, and crushes the movie’s pacing under the weight of campy clumsiness that just doesn’t fit properly into this world that Green and company have spent two films developing.

– Unoriginality. “Halloween Kills” now makes two movies where this franchise have borrowed from the same movies that it tried so desperately to remove completely from story cannon, but still borrowed from shamelessly, none the less. For this installment, it takes from “Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers”, in that the townspeople created a brigade to hunt and kill the dangerous serial killer, with personal discoveries about each of them along the way. This not only leads to a completely moral ambiguity that said previous film also couldn’t quite steer in execution in one way or the other, but also leads to several instances where it creates a series of plot devices in moving the script from one scene to the next, with regards to mind-numbingly awful character decisions that make no sense. This is certainly nothing new to horror films, but when you consider Green and his team have made it a point to create a wiser, more responsible franchise, it continuously defeats their cause when they fall for the same tricks that made most of the Halloween sequels a bumbling disappointment that never even came close to capturing the lightning in the bottle of the 78′ original.

– Unfinished emphasis. It’s becoming a growing problem in cinema when a sequel is greenlit long before the current film has even finished shooting. Such is the case with “Halloween Kills”, which undercuts the tension and unpredictability of its current narrative for the promise of a third and concluding effort that hangs just off in the distance of the 2022 movie season. What’s even worse here is that this film feels like a half a movie because of it, remaining dormant bland in a way that feels like everything contained could’ve been cut all together or at least slightly abriged into the final chapter, instead of stretched and shoe-horned into its own movie. Even with a first film (2018) that we knew was the first in a trilogy of movies, there’s still that satisfaction of seeing a resolved narrative, and a book-ended chapter that also leads into the next one. Not with this film, as I felt the resolution lacked finality in a way to send audiences yearning for the next. Also troubling is how this film wraps up, with nothing resolved or fulfilled in even a temporary instance, with the movements of the conflict itself feeling so rushed and clumsy in execution that they sort of come across questionably as dream sequence afterthoughts, instead of the urgently riveting climax needed to send audiences home happy. It does build for that third and final movie, but at a cost of compromising unimportance to this one, making this one sequel that falls short of its predecessor in nearly every single aspect of comparison.

My Grade: 5/10 or D+