The first horror movie I ever saw was Halloween. I remember watching it with my sister after Trick or Treating. I may have been 5 or 6 at the time. Young I was, but I was hooked. I was fascinated by Michael Myers. (The Shape) His ghostly mask, the fact he never spoke and his motive was all just a mystery. I loved it all and for Christmas I got one of those Michael Myers dolls that when you press the stomach the classic music plays. I have probably seen the movie 20 or 30 times. My favorite scene is when Jamie Lee Curtis finds the bodies of all of her friends and as she is sitting in the hallway, you can see Michael’s mask start to appear in the darkness behind her. Loved it.
Of course with any worthy horror movie made on a small budget, it turned a big profit, and the studio wanted more. John Carpenter (G.O.A.T. of horror movies) wanted nothing to do with it. In order to get the studios approval for The Fog, and Escape From New York he had to write the script for Halloween 2. He got drunk and threw it together. They shot it and the franchise continued. Halloween franchise was suppose to have a different plot and different villains that all occur on Halloween. Halloween 3: Season of the Witch was suppose to be the start of that, but fans complained and the whole thing was scrapped. I liked Season of the Witch and I think a modern remake may do it some justice. However, I doubt it will ever happen.
They following sequels Return of Michael Myers, Revenge of Michael Myers, Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H2O, Resurrection, Remake 1, and 2 all spawned from it. Some were good, (4 H2O) and the rest were trash…… (Rob Zombie) Eventually someone came with a vision to restore Michael Myers back to being who he is suppose to be. (The Shape) No Laurie Strode sister shit, no black thorn cult, no white horse trash. He was and is the symbol of pure evil in human form. The blackest eyes, the Devil’s eyes. Loomis explains all of this in the first movie. Halloween 2018 kept that tradition going by ignoring all the sequels and making a true sequel to the classic film. A film put together by David Gordon Green and Danny McBride.
2018 was great. Made tons of money, critics seemed to like it, fans loved it. The vision of The Shape was in full force. They even invited John Carpenter back, but to do the music only. He is mostly retired from directing. His music was great, the kills were creative and fun. Dropping the teeth in the bathroom stall was a nice touch. Laurie Strode turning her house into a death trap seemed a little ridiculous but interesting. The movie had a few funny moments followed by brutal deaths, and the climax was great. Of course with any slasher film it was already set up for two more. Halloween Kills, and Halloween Ends. The plan was to do a sequel trilogy.
Now….onto Halloween Kills (spoilers)
Halloween Kills takes place seconds after the fiery end of the first one. Laurie screaming because she wants him to burn, which pretty much means Myers will kill all the firefighters and he does. The city is in a panic, Anthony Michael Hall plays Tommy Doyle who was the little boy from the original. Now he is an adult and wants revenge. He rallies the town up and goes on a witch hunt. Little Lindsey Wallace is also all grown up and its pretty cool that she is played by the original actress Kyle Richards. Charles Cyphers has a small role, returning as the long retired sheriff Brackett. His daughter was Annie who was killed in the original. Laurie’s grand daughter, Allyson decides to get a gun and join the hunt…because that is smart….
Myers is waking around with a half melted mask doing what he does best. Laurie is put in the same room in the hospital that Deputy Hawkins is in. Thought dead in 2018, Allyson’s dumb boyfriend finds him clinging to life after being stabbed by that Dr. Loomis clone. Laurie and Hawkins have heart to heart conversation about how they hooked up in a bar years ago or something. It was boring and did nothing to their characters and was pointless. Hawkins does show a flashback when they caught Myers and how he accidently shot and killed another officer. The police covered it up. Cops killing innocent people felt a little on the nose…hmmmm.
Myers attacks the nurse from the original who is once again portrayed by Nancy Stephens. She is bad with the gun and is quickly killed. Two other background characters from 2018 are killed and Kyle Richards tries to fight back but it goes really bad. She plays the final girl characters and runs and hides in a creek and escapes Myers. She ends up in the hospital living to fight another day. The lynch mob falsely accuses someone that escapes the bus in 2018. He goes to the hospital to get medical help for his injury and they chase him to the upper floors scared out of his mind. He takes his own life by jumping from the window knowing he will die either way. They realize that wasn’t Myers. They way the broke into the hospital resisting authority makes you think of something that happened last January right?
In the years that passed. Myers old house was bought by a gay couple and we watch their relationship throughout the movie. They get tricked by trick or Treaters listen to music, dance, and are really only getting scenes to show the world that Halloween Kills is progressive right before they are brutally killed by Myers. It was really just a filler for the film. Allyson, her boyfriend and his dad go to the Myers house to look for him. The dad does the dumb thing and goes in alone….and you guessed it he is dead. The teens do the dumb thing and go in to look for him and the boyfriend was brutally killed, Allyson barely survives as her mom, Judy Greer comes in to distract Myers. He chases her a block over into a trap set by the lynch mob. She yells gotcha (call back to 2018) and the mob beats, stabs and shoots Myers to the point they think he is dead. Wrong. Myers gets back up and slaughters everyone…and I mean everyone. A block over medical staff and police are at the Myers house and Judy Greer sees a young Myers in his clown costume looking out a window in the house. Was this a vision or just her distorted imagination? We may never know. She goes to the room and is slaughtered by Myers. Roll credits.
Now with all of that said…let’s break it down. Let’s start with the good….
The kills were practical effects, something lost in a lot of movies these days. They were fresh, brutal, and a bloody good time.
Returning actors were fun easter eggs.
John Carpenter’s music and score for the movie was excellent.
It was a very ambitious thing to try on a slasher sequel and that can be a good thing.
Now for the bad
Starting with the mob who want to hunt Myers…..this was already done in Halloween 4. Why try it again? They were more annoying this time around.
Laurie Strode doesn’t have a single scene with Myers, instead she and the injured cop lay around and talk about some fling they had years back.
Lots of filler scenes that threw the pacing off. There was so much filler they would randomly throw a kill in between those scenes just to remind the audience this is a slasher film.
With the pacing off and a bunch of random scenes I found the movie slow and boring at times.
Now I normally like strong women characters like Ripley, Sarah Connor, Buffy Summers, etc…..but Allyson was the worst character. No depth, just angry and constantly does the dumb thing, breaking and creating new rules to horror movies. Her acting drove me crazy and if she was suppose to be the final girl, they did a terrible job with her. I wanted Myers to finish her off.
It was a very ambitious thing to try on a slasher sequel which can be a very bad thing.
With all of this in mind, I sat for days and weeks just judging it. Every single time my thoughts falls on the ambitious parts of the film and my brain splits in half.
I like it, I hate it. How do I rate this?
Ambition has been behind alot of modern horror films. New ideas, and creative plots have changed horror in recent films. Movies like Hereditary, Midsummer, Get Out, The Lighthouse, and the remake of The Invisible Man….just to name a few. This movie’s ambition was to really hint on the fact that Myers is a supernatural being.
In 2018 they show that he can sense his mask without wearing it. In Kills Laurie Strode says the more he kills the stronger he becomes or something odd. She is either speaking in riddles or she knows more than the audience knows. He has the hell beaten and shot out of him and he gets up like nothing happened except to piss him off. Oddly if you notice that when he takes a hit you can hear him change his breathing into a slight growl as if he still feels pain like a man. Also, when you look at his left hand, you can see he wrapped up the wound from when Laurie blew half his hand off in the previous film. If he can’t die then why would he bother wrapping the wound? What is he beyond pure evil? It is all Loomis needed to say and that was it. This movie, starting with the previous one was hinting that there is a reason to his evil, some super natural force that I believe they might reveal in the next movie, Halloween Ends. If Ends turns out to be great with a ground breaking finale and reveal, then maybe the little hints and clues sprinkled through these movies might save it all. It may make Kills more interesting and smarter than how we remember. However, if there is nothing, then this was all a waste of time.
Based on my personal rating system out of 5 stars I give it a 2 with a chance for it to go a bit higher depending on the finish of the franchise with Halloween Ends. I still have my confusion and am still torn about it, but until next October, I remain broke on Halloween Kills.
In The Spider's Web 