Review: Halloween Kills (2021)

 Halloween Kills (2021)

Rated R

Score: 3 out of 5

I enjoyed the 2018 sequel/semi-reboot to John Carpenter's classic Halloween. No way was it gonna live up to the original, but as far as nostalgic sequels made forty years later go, it was pretty close to the best possible version of itself that could exist, and watching it again before I headed out to the theater to see this reinforced that for me. Halloween Kills, which follows on directly from its predecessor, unfortunately does not meet those lofty heights. It tries to tackle way too many things at once, most notably a commentary on mob violence/justice that didn't seem to know what it actually wanted to say on the matter and an ending that makes it really clear that this is the midpoint of a trilogy more than anything, taking one of the only real problems I had with the last movie and blowing it up to poster-size as it constantly jumps all over the place. Make no mistake, though, I still liked this film, no matter how few favors the writing did it. It all came down entirely to the scares, as befitting a film that put the word "Kills" right in its title, as David Gordon Green once again demonstrates his slasher horror chops with plenty of creeping dread released by some downright brutal and gory finishes. This isn't the smart exploration of trauma that its predecessor was; no, it's a violent body-count slasher that's at its best when it's "delivering the goods", so to speak. You want blood? You've got it.

Following on immediately from the Strodes fleeing Laurie's burning house at the end of the last film, we start with the fire department showing up to put out the blaze, inadvertently saving the life of Michael Myers, who proceeds to slaughter them and gear up for Round Three. Almost immediately, this film plays to its strengths by unleashing the older, meaner, more brutish Michael who made the last movie such a treat as a pure slasher, and it keeps it up throughout with a body count big enough that I just decided to give up counting halfway through and leave that to the professionals. (Oh, is that episode of The Kill Count gonna be a good one.) The violence is spectacular and does not hold back, establishing Michael as a monster of an old man who's just too angry to die, the film leaving it up in the air whether or not his strength is supernatural or the result of him being just really damn tough but strongly tilting towards the former. The special effects work is a grisly mess that will have you wincing in pain, even on the comparatively tamer kills like when Michael is thrashing a poor bastard in a stairwell. There are moments in this film that would be among the standout kills in any other slasher movie, from the sharp end of a Halligan bar to the face to the broken end of a fluorescent light to the neck to a gory eye-gouging, and while Michael may now be as tough as Jason Voorhees, he still retains his trademark stealth and ability to get the jump on his victims. James Jude Courtney's performance as The Shape was without a doubt one of the best things about both this movie and its predecessor, the motto "old guys rule" taken and applied to a villain for the ages.

The characters both old and new were also an interesting mix. From the cannon fodder to the surviving members of the Strode family, all of them were interesting, at least on the surface and initially. The multigenerational family dynamic between Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, Judy Greer's Karen, and Andi Matichak's Allyson still holds up, even if it's no longer the focus amidst the big cast, with a lot of time given to Anthony Michael Hall as a grown-up Tommy Doyle, one of the kids who Laurie babysat that fateful Halloween night in 1978. He immediately gives off a particular kind of vibe, that of a rather provincial man for whom a lot of things rub him the wrong way, and when it becomes clear that Michael is still alive, he kicks off the other major plot of the film, raising a vigilante mob to hunt Michael down upon deciding that the police have proven themselves useless. Hall gave a very good performance as that kind of guy, and even when the writing was letting the character down, he kept me invested in Tommy for far longer than I probably should've been and made him more interesting than he probably deserved. The supporting characters were also fleshed out a lot more than cannon fodder in slashers usually is, from a bickering elderly couple to members of Tommy's posse (including Kyle Richards, now more famous as a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills, reprising her role as Lindsay) to the middle-aged gay couple who now live in the Myers home, each getting plenty of scenes of development that made me want some of them to live a bit longer. Their scenes, taken on their own, could've easily made great Halloween spinoff short films in their own right.

Alas, there's the rub. This did not at all feel like a coherent film, but a collection of really cool moments held together by a threadbare plot that felt like it was just setting the tables for the real grand finale coming next year. I saw at least one critic compare this movie to Avengers: Infinity War as a slasher, and I definitely see the comparison, as without spoiling anything, both films are clearly setting up sequels by leaving a ton of loose ends hanging. The difference: Infinity War wrapped up its central story, that of the supervillain Thanos, by giving him a clear resolution. This is obviously not something that one can do with Michael Myers, given this film's dedication to staying faithful to the 1978 film's ethos of him being less a character than a force of nature. Instead of making its villain the protagonist, this film instead fluttered between the Strodes and Tommy's mob as its focal points without settling on who to give its attention to, all while taking detours into unrelated subplots (seriously, as much as I liked the gay couple, what bearing did they really have on the film?) that provided only further distraction. A film that focused on the Strodes could have emphasized how Laurie's conviction that Michael was targeting her specifically was just her paranoia speaking, and used that to continue the prior film's themes of how she never escaped the trauma of 1978 no matter how much she trained herself physically, while also giving Curtis more to do on a low-key acting level given how she spends much of the film in a hospital bed. A film that focused on Tommy's vengeance crusade, meanwhile, could have been used to explore the themes of mob violence and vigilantism that his character's words and deeds heavily tilt towards, ultimately causing tragedy of their own that only makes matters worse.

Instead, we get a film where Curtis felt wasted, especially after having been one of the best things about the prior film, and the plot wanted to have its cake and eat it too when it came to Tommy, at times portraying him and his followers as idiots but also clearly wanting them to succeed as they hunt Michael down. Greer and Matichak, despite also giving fine performances, get too little time on screen to really carry it, with a few standout moments on their part but the story constantly cutting to ten different places at once as it tried to tell a grand epic story that felt beyond its grasp. The halfway point wasn't just when I stopped trying to count the kills, it was also when I started shutting my brain off and really digging into the popcorn, embracing this movie's strengths when it came to atmosphere and brutality but caring less about the story the closer it came to its conclusion. The ending ultimately felt hollow despite delivering a shocking moment (and a standout display of why you do not mess with Michael Myers), feeling less like a proper ending than a cliffhanger for the next episode. Halloween Ends, you better live up to your title.

The Bottom Line

Halloween Kills disappointed from a writing standpoint, but in terms of pure slasher goodness delivered with excellent production values, it was 105 minutes of solid entertainment. Once you see through this film's failed stabs at greater depth and embrace its standout carnage, it goes down a lot easier.