Halloween Kills Review: A Wobbly Mid-Trilogy Entry

Michael Myers is back (again) laying waste to the people of Haddonfield as I bring you my Halloween Kills review.

The nightmare isn’t over as unstoppable killer Michael Myers escapes from Laurie Strode’s trap to continue his ritual bloodbath.

Injured and taken to the hospital, Laurie fights through the pain as she inspires residents of Haddonfield, Ill., to rise up against Myers.

Taking matters into their own hands, the Strode women and other survivors form a vigilante mob to hunt down Michael and end his reign of terror once and for all.

Halloween Kills is the second movie in the planned trilogy of Michael Myers that was always (for me) a questionable move in the first place.

Milking the enigma that is Michael Myers to death is one thing but it just felt as though this new trilogy was just a quick buck making opportunity with no substance.

The trilogy started with Halloween (2018).It wasn’t the worst of starts, it had nice throwbacks to the Halloween movies of old and saw Jamie Lee Curtis kicking ass on the big screen once again but with that cliffhanger ending (and the news that two more movies were on the way) there was more to come, if albeit seemingly a bit pointless.

Halloween Kills delivers more of the same with nostalgia in spades along with easter egg throwbacks, old characters returning to the fold and Michael Myers once again refusing to die despite being shot, set on fire, stabbed thousands of times and beaten to a pulp.

What has been apparent over the last two movies is the weak script that sadly once again becomes the film’s downfall.

The dialogue is so excruciatingly poor with repeated lines, cliche’s aplenty and no substance to speak of.

The Halloween movies rely on their gruesome murders and Halloween Kills certainly lives up to the name as Michael lays waste to the people of Haddonfield including an absolutely insane firefighter kill sequence that is as iconic a scene as I’ve seen in a Halloween film for many years.

It’s gore aplenty but sadly with the poor structure of the script and the surface level development of any story of note it sort of falls into some frenzied special effects reel with Michael at the helm pulling all the strings.

I feel as though the writers have relied too heavily on the older characters returning that almost every other aspect of the script was cast aside.

If there is a positive spin on the weak script it would be that it keeps things simple, very simple. This means the audience can just enjoy the rampage of Michael Myers without worrying too much about keeping track of what is going on.

So our story begins as Michael survives being set on fire in the first movie and the audience is catapulted back to 1978 where it all began with callbacks, references and homages aplenty.

We then fast forward to the now grown up cast from the original movie who are on a mission to kill Michael for good this time.

Where have we heard that one before?

Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) and Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards), Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet) and more return and we pick up from where the first movie ended with Laurie Strode injured and hospitalised.

Laurie takes a back seat in this entire movie as the townsfolk of Haddonfield take it upon themselves to grab baseball bats and crowbars to fight a man who has been shot to pieces and still not died.

The residents of Haddonfield in this particular movie aren’t too clever and certainly come off as the dumbest townsfolk to ever grace a horror movie.

If Michael was such a threat when why is there no military being called or reinforcements to take him down?

Nothing in this entire movie makes sense, it serves only as a rather shaky reinforcement between the introduction and finale features within the trilogy.

Tying this movie to the past serves as the film’s downfall as it’s so caught up in trying up loose ends that it completely forgets to drive the story forward hitting a solid brick wall in the process.

It’s not even a slow burn film, not even close but no matter how much flesh is brutally destroyed throughout there’s not one wound that cuts through the convoluted mess of the script to progress the story forward.

Goodbye character arcs, goodbye finale progression.

But hey, we have another cliffhanger ending so eager Michael Myers fans can grab more tickets, more popcorn and see the entire film again (set 4 years later) in 2022.

Enjoy the carnage of this slasher in action but if you’re looking for a good horror movie that’s original in its design, please look elsewhere.

Let’s see what copy and paste formula we see in the third instalment, shall we?

Halloween Kills Review by Sean Evans