Halloween Kills

This middle chapter in the legacy sequel trilogy (following on from 1978’s original Halloween) doesn’t quite live up to 2018’s first instalment, but there are enough new ideas (and inventively brutal kills) to avoid it feeling like a rehash of any of the earlier films.

Premise: Following on immediately from the events of the last film, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is rushed to hospital after trapping the serial killer Michael Myers in her burning house. But when Michael escapes the blaze and continues his rampage through Haddonfield, the townsfolk – including other survivors from the 1978 massacre – unite against him.

Review:

Middle chapters in trilogies can be tricky, but perhaps none are trickier than a middle instalment in a horror trilogy. Knowing that this legacy trilogy will be concluded with Halloween Ends in 2022 means that a certain level of suspense is arguably missing from Halloween Kills, because the audience knows that key pieces will have to be kept on the board by the end of the movie.

Perhaps this is why Halloween Kills makes two very noticeable departures from 2018’s Halloween. Firstly, whereas 2018’s Halloween had a slow burn start and focused on generating suspense (much like 1978’s Halloween did), Halloween Kills strives for a different tone entirely, focusing much more on Michael Myers’ violent murder spree and his increasingly brutal (but, for horror fans, wince-inducingly inventive) kills. Less of a thriller or a character study than 2018’s Halloween was, Halloween Kills is a much more visceral experience.

“…feels more like a love-letter to the original 1978 film than even the 2018 sequel did…”

The second big change is in terms of the cast. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis is back as Laurie Strode, but after having been badly injured in the last film, she spends almost the entirety of Halloween Kills in hospital (given that this film happens later on the same night as the 2018 movie). This was a bold decision by the filmmakers, given that Jamie Lee Curtis was the heart and soul of both the 1978 and 2018 films. However, it does achieve a number of things, such as allowing the audience to feel that there are consequences to the violence in the first film, and enabling the filmmakers to expand the focus of the franchise outside the Strode family (played by Judy Greer and Andi Matichak), while still retaining them at its core.

In this respect, Halloween Kills perhaps feels more like a love-letter to the original 1978 film than even the 2018 sequel did. Anthony Michael Hall joins the cast as the now-grown-up Tommy, the boy that Laurie Strode babysat for in the original film. Just as 2018’s Halloween was interesting for showing how the trauma from the 1978 massacre had affected Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie, in Halloween Kills we get to see how Tommy’s feelings of powerlessness from 1978 have shaped him into the man now played by Anthony Michael Hall.

“…explores how the events of 1978 massacre affected the whole town of Haddonfield…”

But while Anthony Michael Hall is a new actor playing a returning character, Halloween Kills is also full of returning original actors, including Kyle Richards as Lindsey Wallace (the girl who Laurie babysat for in 1978), Nancy Stephens as Marion Chambers (Dr Loomis’ assistant from 1978), and Charles Cyphers as Sherriff Brackett (whose daughter was killed by Michael Myers in 1978). We also see more of the events from 1978 (not previously seen in the original Halloween) involving Deputy Hawkins, with Thomas Mann playing the younger version of the character played by Will Patton in 2018.

By expanding the cast, Halloween Kills is able to explore how the events of the 1978 massacre affected not just Laurie Strode, but also the other survivors from that night, and by extension, the whole town of Haddonfield. The film explores these ideas in some interesting ways, looking at how different people are affected in very different ways by trauma, at how fear and hysteria can affect the very soul of a town, and at how almost everyone who survived the events of 1978 now believes they have a personal connection to Michael Myers. Some of these concepts are arguably handled more effectively than others, but you have to give credit to the filmmakers for trying something different and avoiding the pitfall of simply making the same film again with different set pieces.

“…the mix of nostalgia, new ideas and gruesome kills works well…”

That said, the film isn’t without its flaws, and despite having some interesting ideas (not all of which land), the plot itself is arguably fairly thin (even for a slasher/horror film). It’s also fair to say that a number of characters make “dumb horror movie decisions”, and while some of them can be explained away (by characters acting irrationally in the heat of the moment due to fear), some are just egregiously stupid choices.

On the plus side, the film also plays with the question of whether or not Michael Myers is something more than human, even more so that the 1978 and 2018 films did. Up until now, the injuries that Michael Myers have sustained could – just about – be explained away as being non-lethal injuries (even his survival in Laurie’s burning house at the beginning of this film has a plausible explanation), but just as the brutality (and number) of Michael Myers’ murders increases as Halloween Kills progresses, so too do his apparent abilities.

Objectively, this film is perhaps only likely to appeal to existing fans of the franchise – but then again, why would a casual viewer jump on board with the third film in a four-film series? The mix of nostalgia, new ideas and gruesome kills works well, and based on 2018’s Halloween and 2021’s Halloween Kills, I’m intrigued to see how director David Gordon Green concludes his trilogy next year with Halloween Ends.