Michael Myers is back. Again. Like again again. I don’t know. I’ve lost track. With this sequel to the relaunch of the series, we get a direct continuation of 2018’s Halloween.
Halloween Kills starts immediately after the events of the previous movie (give or take a flashback or two). The women of the Strode family believe they have bested Michael Myers and taken care of him for good. Yet, evil doesn’t die that easily. News of the attacks that night travel through the town and the townspeople gather together with an unhealthy dose of mob mentality looking to kill The Shape that terrorized the town 40 years previous.
Director David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) returns to this planned second part of a trilogy. He is clearly a fan of the movies that have come before, even if he has tossed out every previous sequel to establish this new canon. He even includes side characters (with some returning actors) from the original Halloween as well.
David Gordon Green should have realized that Halloween sequels are generally cursed. For every Halloween, there’s Halloween 2-6. (Though Season of the Witch is a personal favorite). For H20, there’s Resurrection. And now, for Halloween (2018), there’s Halloween Kills to keep up that tradition of the slasher sophomore slump.
Jamie Lee Curtis is once again returning as Laurie Strode, but there’s just nothing for her to do here. She did get the spotlight in the previous movie. But now instead, the character focus is put on….the entire town. Halloween Kills so badly wants to establish a theme of a mob of people becoming worse than the monster they hunt, but it’s muddled and there just doesn’t seem to be anyone to care for.
The one thing this movie has going for it, (for hardcore slasher fans) is the amount of kills and gore factor. More than ever before, Michael takes his time to give horror fans exactly what they came to see. For some reason, he goes the extra mile and positions the bodies of his victims in creative ways for any survivors to find and be terrified by.
The issue here is….Halloween Kills is just not scary. Myers is always a looming unstoppable force and that itself is intimidating, but the movie only once tries to establish the fear of being pursued. Instead, it’s a hall of fame reel for knife fodder.
To its benefit, the whole feel of this sequel lends itself to campy ’80s slashers. It is over the top in all the cliche ways that the screenwriters have surely studied since their youth watching the classic slasher flicks during sleepovers.
Halloween Kills feels like the filler movie before we get to a (hopefully) grand conclusion with Halloween Ends next year. This movie does nothing to tarnish the quality of the franchise as a whole, but does remove most of the hype established with the relaunch a few years ago. What it lacks for in scares, it delivers in buckets of blood. I can really only recommend this for completists who have followed the franchise. D+
Comments are closed.