Halloween Kills (2021)

Halloween Kills (2021)

 

3/10

Starring

Jamie Lee Curtis

Judy Greer

Andi Matichak

Will Patton

 

Directed by David Gordon Green

 

Lazy writing, lazy editing, and directed like a low-budget horror movie—Halloween Kills is packed with all the cliché horror movie antics but completely lacks style. This movie wasted the strong setup provided by Halloween (2018).

A third of the movie is just people running around aimlessly, getting in each other's way. The second third focuses on flashbacks and past events, which ultimately add nothing to the present. The final third is pure Michael Myers killing spree, riddled with every horror movie trope you can think of.

Back in 2018, when we returned to the Michael Myers saga, I wasn’t expecting much from the first movie—but it surprised me. Halloween (2018) had suspense, thrills, and just enough horror to keep you hooked and excited to see what the trilogy had in store. Now, after watching Halloween Kills, I can safely say they used up all their tricks in the first movie. This one was dreadful.

Honestly, you could skip the first 20 minutes entirely—it’s all flashbacks and scenes of the town losing their minds. After that, the movie crams in so much death and violence that it becomes boring.

Halloween Kills sticks to the typical slasher formula: one unstoppable killer wreaking havoc while everyone else scrambles in vain to stop him. The main takeaway here seems to be that even a mob of angry, bloodthirsty townspeople can’t put an end to Michael Myers’ killing spree.

After wasting the opening 20 minutes on rehashing events from the last movie and years before, we finally see Michael back on the prowl. He kills everyone in his path without missing a beat. The townspeople, now furious, form a militia to hunt him down. But as horror movies go, Michael is practically superhuman, and luck is always on his side. Either people run out of bullets right as he’s closing in on them, or they miss their shots entirely out of fear. You know how these things go—someone freezes in place, and he walks over and kills them.

One standout moment of ridiculousness involves a man sitting in the back seat of a car, waiting his turn to be stabbed through the eye. And of course, we get the usual “stupid people logic” where someone thinks, “Sure, he’s killed everyone else, but I’m different—I’ll take him on!” Spoiler: they’re not different.

The movie completely squanders the solid foundation laid by the 2018 reboot. Instead of building on that momentum, it kicks off with chaos and then bounces from one chaotic scene to the next. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) has little to do here since she’s recovering from her injuries in the first film. That leaves her daughter and granddaughter to step up. The granddaughter, in particular, decides that she and her group of soon-to-be victims are somehow qualified to stop Michael. Predictably, since there’s a third movie coming, they fail.