Halloween Kills

For over forty years and now eleven movies we have watched Michael Myers slowly walk and killed so many victims (not counting Season of the Witch, because the evil in that one was like Stonehenge or something). It looked like those days of murder were done, but in 2018 David Gordon Green and Danny McBride resurrected the franchise and put the Myers name back on people’s mind. Envisioned as two movies, the studio wanted to see how this new Halloween did before committing to two more films. So welcome to the “bridge” movie.

Of course when we last saw The Shape (James Jude Courtney) he was enjoying a toasty fire courtesy of  Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). She, along with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) thought after years of planning on Strodes part, finally had killed the evil that had stalked their town. Well thanks to first responders doing their job, the house wasn’t able to burn enough and The Shape got out and resumed his path of killings. Strode is not aware of this as she is on the way to the hospital, as this battle with The Shape nearly cost her, her own life. The town though has had enough of the evil that has stalked them all these years and as some of the survivors of The Shape’s past escapades like Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) are over it and vow that evil will die tonight. With 2018’s Halloween, you could tell the filmmakers were such fans of the first films and did a really gob job emulating it and paying homage by sticking to what we loved about the series.

With Halloween Kills it feels like they forgot that and went in a new direction, where the kills are more gruesome, but where they try and say too much, and end up saying almost nothing. With Haddonfield’s citizens deciding to do some hunting,  Halloween Kills gets lost and misguided with the writing from Scott Teems, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green becoming the biggest weakness of the film. With its repetitive plot that goes straight in circles and the lack of characters that bring any empathy for their deaths, Halloween Kills unfortunately ends up insignificant in the series. While the last film was all about Laurie vs. The Shape, this one though becomes The Shape Vs. everyone and as a result is kind of a mess.

Even as the first part of the film is what we want, as it gets to about the midpoint it begins to lose ground. At that point it wants to bring the fear, but mixes in some humor that really feels like they are trying too hard. Gordon Green does shoot a good looking film and the music by Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies hit all the right notes, neither though are enough to save this film from all of its own problems. If you make the decision to make a trilogy of films, you better damn well have the Battle for Helm’s Deep in there and not Neo having a confusing conversation with the Architect before your final chapter. This film reduces the impact of the first film’s conclusion and really puts pressure on Halloween Ends which is set to be the final installment. Hopefully they can get it right, but as for chapter 2 of this series it comes up on a dead end.