Movie Info
Movie Name: Halloween Kills
Studio: Universal Pictures/Miramax/Blumhouse Productions
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): September 8, 2021 (Venice Film Festival)/October 15, 2021 (US)
MPAA Rating: R
Fake Loomis is the Best Loomis!
The ultimate trap set by Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) to kill Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney/Nick Castle) has failed, and now Michael is on a rampage. The town of Haddonfield is washed with blood as Michael kills those he encounters and a group of Michael’s old survivors led by Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) has decided enough is enough. As Laurie is operated on in the hospital her daughter Karen Nelson (Judy Greer) and her granddaughter Allyson Nelson (Andi Matichak) come to grips with what they’ve lost, but Michael Myers isn’t finished…and evil dies tonight!
Directed by David Gordon Green, Halloween Kills is a slasher horror movie. The film is a sequel to Halloween from 1978 and Halloween from 2018, but its planned release for 2020 was pushed back to 2021 due to COVID-19. The film premiered in theaters but also was released to the streaming app Peacock. It was met with mixed to negative reviews.
This is fine
Halloween (1978) is a classic. The sequels that followed it ranged from interesting to pretty bad. Halloween’s sequels were retconned with Halloween: H20 then the franchise was relaunched by Rob Zombie in 2007. The Halloween of 2018 once again retconned everything after the original Halloween and was rather interesting as a straight sequel…this movie jettisons a lot of that good will.
The movie does keep moving and speeds along as Michael carves a path through the city. This Michael seems even more ruthless and relentless in his killing and is rather intimidating in that sense (despite being a man in his 70s). The last film made Michael a man, but this movie seemed to return him to his almost supernatural “boogeyman” elements that were amplified with the Halloween sequels.
Evil dies tonight! Which involves breaking into smaller groups with homemade weapons…good plan, Tommy
What really waylays this film is the side-plot of Tommy Doyle. He is a survivor but comes off as almost an ignorant redneck who rallies up the other townspeople into a murderous mob. After events in the United States in 2021, seeing an angry mob chase breach a hospital and force an insane man to kill himself takes different meaning than it would have if the movie came out in 2020 as intended. It is an unfortunate COVID side effect, but I don’t enjoy this storyline.
The cast continues to be strong for what they have to work with. Jamie Lee Curtis is largely taken out of the equation in this movie due to her injuries and Andi Matichak looks much older than her character is supposed to be. Judy Greer plays the daughter who still doesn’t seem to get what is going on and original Halloween actors Kyle Richards (playing Lindsey Wallace), Nancy Stephens (playing Marion Chambers), and Charles Cyphers (playing Leigh Bracket) return. The movie also has a recreated Loomis played by Tom Jones Jr. and voiced by Colin Mahan.
Looks like someone’s not going to get to see the Silver Shamrock special
Bloodier and more dangerous, Halloween Kills earns its title (though I don’t know why they didn’t go with Halloween: Evil Dies Tonight). The movie, however, is rather all over the place and has characters acting unrealistic or reckless (especially considering the events of the previous movie). The Tommy Doyle attack plan goes down in the record books as one of the worst ways to deal with a slasher serial killer. With a guaranteed sequel in the works being shot back to back with this, the energy level of this movie dropped and the stakes were lowered since you know Michael will be back for another Halloween. Halloween Kills is followed by Halloween Ends in 2022.
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