Halloween Kills Review
15 Oct 2021
Halloween Kills
“Evil dies tonight!” shout the stoked-up Haddonfield residents as they take up arms — at one point there is a literal pitchfork — to track down boogeyman incarnate Michael Myers. Unfortunately, evil isn’t the only thing dying in David Gordon Green ’s film, the 12th instalment in the series and a follow-up to his 2018 Halloween . Also stumbling to a shallow grave are logical behaviour, winning characters, tension, style and any understanding of what makes John Carpenter ’s 1978 classic so special.
Halloween Kills picks up moments after Green’s 2018 incarnation ends, with Myers surviving being burnt to a crisp by Laurie Strode ( Jamie Lee Curtis ). Laurie, bleeding profusely, is being taken to hospital by her daughter Karen ( Judy Greer ) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). It’s at this point that the hospital, for no reason whatsoever, becomes a focal point for the town to congregate and begin a frankly piss-poor manhunt to take Myers down.
_Halloween Kills_ bends conventions to breaking point, making it impossible to root for any of the dumbass victims.
The plot divides into two, with Myers picking off victims at will and a mob (led by ex-Brat Packer Anthony Michael Hall ) growing increasingly angry and spending an inordinate amount of screen-time running up stairs. Green and co-writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems are circling an idea that our response to serial killers can make monsters of all of us. It’s just a shame they deliver the notion with a sledge hammer.
Elsewhere Myers is going about his business offing townsfolk but with zero sense of surprise or suspense. There are no red herrings or sleight of hand: when there is a creak in the floorboards, a figure in the playground or a presence in the empty back seat of a car, you can bet it’s Michael Myers. Perhaps worst of all, when he is confronted by a group of firefighters with water hoses and axes, Myers turns into a one-man-army in a boiler suit, Jason Bourne with a plastic mask. It’s a genre staple, even expectation, that people will behave stupidly in a horror film, but Halloween Kills bends the convention to breaking point, making it impossible to root for or care about any of the dumbass victims.
Some flashbacks to 1978 capture the texture of the original — there are a couple of inventive kills (including a terrific accidental one) and that theme always rocks — but, perhaps the biggest problem of all is that Laurie Strode becomes a bystander in her own story. Laid up in hospital, there is a (laughable) moment where she stabs herself with morphine to numb her pain, yet still she fails to enter the action. Not utilising both Curtis’ skill and her character’s intense baked-in relationship with her nemesis seems like a dropped ball, just one more way Green’s film goes awry. As Alan Partridge might put it: stop getting Halloween wrong.
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Halloween Kills Reviews
To use Goya’s words, “the sleep of reason produces monsters,” and Michael Myers is the Fear that we all carry within us, and that we come face to face every day, when we look at ourselves in the mirror.
Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 17, 2024
John Carpenter had a sense of pacing which heightened the tension with judicious kills whereas “Halloween Kills” is all chaos cinema and Beauty and the Beast’s Mob Song without the music.
Full Review | Jun 10, 2024
Never was there a film truer to its name. They’re sliced up with kitchen knives, hollowed out with a fluorescent strip light, bisected with a chain saw and impaled on banisters. The body count is phenomenal. We love this stuff. You know we do.
Full Review | Sep 16, 2023
The entire story is Michael Myers kills stupid people who chase him.
Full Review | Original Score: 0.5/5 | Aug 10, 2023
Halloween Kills may fall flat in its commentary, but it excels in its pure slasher carnage. This is the most brutal we have ever seen Michael Myers.
Full Review | Aug 9, 2023
Shockingly bloody and violent from the get go, Halloween Kills is a fast paced, gory bloodbath that has its repetitive moments yet hits high on the entertainment scale.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 27, 2023
A Sadly just a fun mixed bag of a movie. I was so EXCITED, & left let down by certain story choices. The concept when executed greatly is great!!
Full Review | Jul 26, 2023
...it also does a lot really well, and in many ways this is the most gloriously ambitious of all the sequels...
Full Review | May 3, 2023
There are interesting ideas for vivisection here, but the execution’s a mess.
Full Review | Feb 11, 2023
Halloween Kills is a worthy sequel and continuation to the original story as it ups the violence and gore.
Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 21, 2023
It is a shame after David Gordon Green’s effective soft reboot/recalibration of the franchise, all that good will is squandered here. After 106 minutes of people shouting “EVIL MUST DIE TONIGHT!”, perhaps it is time for the franchise to finally die.
Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 12, 2022
Halloween Kills attempt at addressing mob rule and the dangers it poses doesn’t mesh in a movie about an unstoppable killer.
Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 4, 2022
I am not entirely certain what happened with Halloween Kills. I am not even too sure if I particularly liked what I saw.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/10 | Oct 24, 2022
We were cool with the "Kills" part of the title.
Full Review | Oct 17, 2022
Halloween Kills inches dangerously close to taking itself too seriously...
Full Review | Sep 14, 2022
Kills takes the respect earned by it's predecessor and squanders it for buckets of gore. Myers continues to be a standout as he tears through a series-high bodycount. The script and characters; however, are the movie's biggest fatalities.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.75/5 | Aug 19, 2022
There simply isn’t enough story progression and too much time is wasted on shallow, meaningless side characters. Here’s hoping “Halloween Ends” puts the Strodes back in the spotlight and gives us a fitting finish to make it all worthwhile.
Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 16, 2022
This is not the best horror, certainly not the best Halloween, but this gives the fans plenty of expected moments and old favourites.
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2022
With such a strong premise for the first film of a reboot trilogy, it’s unfortunate that Halloween Kills is such a slog.
Full Review | Jul 21, 2022
I have a soft spot for Michael Myers movies, so it is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, but hopefully the next one is better than this one.
Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jun 9, 2022
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