At this point, nostalgia has long since cemented itself as an incredibly profitable segment of the entertainment industry, and when Jamie Lee Curtis returned to her career-making role of Laurie Strode in 2018’s Halloween, the franchise became the latest to join the nostalgia machine that has seen so many fan favorites of yesteryear resurge with varying degrees of success.
Wiping the slate clean of the numerous lackluster sequels that followed 1981’s Halloween II, 2018’s Halloween turned out to be one of the better attempts at revitalizing a franchise.
Seeing a mature Laurie Strode return ready for battle whilst also examining the impact the horrors not only had on her life but also on that of her family and their interpersonal relationships, there was a certain degree of gravitas to the soft retread of the original 1978 narrative.
Picking up directly where the last movie left off, Halloween Kills unfortunately fails to adequately follow up on what its predecessor established.
In spite of what the previous film and the trailers for the new film put their emphasis on, the narrative of three generations of women dealing with the aftermath of how Michael Myers’ evil deeds affected their lives in various ways is largely sidelined this time around.
Instead, Halloween Kills puts increased and, frankly, much too heavy emphasis on nods to the previous films, both in terms of recognizable imagery and revisiting a myriad of characters from the original film. While the roster of returning characters so many years later – with several of the characters being portrayed by their original actors – is impressive, this level of fan service nonetheless becomes more of a distraction than an enrichment.
As such, Halloween Kills takes the focus off what gave the 2018 film a slight advantage in the nostalgia market, and with a clumsy vigilante townsfolk narrative overshadowing the story of the Strode women, and relegating Curtis in particular to regurgitating dialogue as a passive character, the film falls short of what it could have been. This is only exacerbated by lashings of ham-fisted attempts to interject emotion that largely fail, and occasionally veer dangerously close to being outright silly.
In terms of the gore, the R-rating is once again earned with varying degrees of success, but many of the kills are nonetheless gruesome, at times being reminiscent of the middle portion of the now non-canon sequels. While much of this should certainly please the gore hounds, it does somewhat veer The Shape into a territory that was supposed to have been left behind, and it muddles the message of reconnecting with what Michael Myers was in the very first film from 1978, and why Laurie Strode’s struggles are so compelling.
Much like 2018’s Halloween was a retread of sorts of the 1978 original, Halloween Kills is also a retread of sorts of 1981’s Halloween II, and therein lies part of the problem; while Halloween II was part of one of the most memorable and brutal years in the annals of the horror genre, it nonetheless had nothing on its predecessor in terms of atmosphere. Similarly, it also saw Laurie reduced to an overly passive character and instead focused on cheapened – if effective – thrills, chills and kills. Still, Halloween II is still a more streamlined effort than Halloween Kills, as the 1981 entry was at least not bogged down by an excess of intertwining characters and narratives.
The Halloween franchise has always been its best when it revolved around survivor women, and sidelining them in favor of excessive fan service does not take a the saga in a satisfying new direction. That is not to say that Halloween Kills is devoid of entertainment value, but the narrative and sense of peril could nonetheless have been elevated further had the film fulfilled the promise of its promotional material and continued to focus on how the characters arcs of the Strode women would continue to develop before finally putting the legacy of Michael Myers to rest for good, as will supposedly be the case with 2022’s Halloween Ends.
Verdict: 5 out of 10.
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Produced by Malek Akkad, Jason Blum, Bill Block
Written by Scott Teems, Danny McBride, David Gordon Green
Based on Characters by John Carpenter, Debra Hill
Directed by David Gordon Green
Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak,
Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Anthony Michael Hall
