'Halloween Kills' trailer
Universal
Armed with a sense of gravitas that it never really earned, along with a seemingly “made it up on the press tour” narrative about the film representing traumatized bad-ass women taking down the patriarchy, Blumhouse’s Halloween capitalized on generational amnesia to present its legacy sequel as something new and of-the-moment. We seemingly forgot that we already saw kick-ass survivor Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) taking back the night in Steve Miner’s Halloween: H20. And while maybe we were wrong in 2007, we were supposed to be disturbed by and appalled by the grotesque and pain-centric violence inflicted against innocent civilians in the Rob Zombie-directed Halloween remake. Even if I was “wrong” about the 2018 Halloween, David Gordon Green’s Halloween Kills is exactly the kind of sequel that such a nostalgia-driven success inevitably spawns. Universal’s Blumhouse film depends too much on its connections to the original Halloween.
We begin with an ambitious 12-minute prologue, taking place right after the events of John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s Halloween, detailing how this Elseworld version of Michael Myers’s 1978 rampage (during which Halloween II never happened) came to an end. Impressive period detail aside, the recreation merely serves an arbitrary debate held later in the film about who is to blame for this latest bloodbath. No spoilers, but everyone forgets about those meddling podcasters from the last film. You could skip the first 21 minutes and still pop in right as the present-tense narrative is kicking into gear, as we see the Strode women (Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer and Andi Matichak) begging the approaching fire trucks to let Michael burn in Laurie’s trap-house. Spoiler: the firemen don’t heed the advice, and we get the first of a few tightly shot and awkwardly staged mass-murder sequences.
The violence is as brutal and cruel as last time, which is fine considering this franchise. Maybe we were wrong to whine about Rob Zombie’s rampages, but the generational hypocrisy is bemusing. It’s also somewhat disconnected, with a couple of quick “mass slaughter” beats surrounded by a few conventional “Look out, it’s Michael!” stalk-n-kill sequences. Mikey, pushing 61 as of the last movie, puts up a fine score with over/under half his combined Halloween-to-Halloween VI kill count. To paraphrase my favorite line from Kentucky Fried Movie, Michael has the chance to kill two, maybe three dozen people. Even as the film arguably wants to be seen as, discussed as and received as more than a straight-up slasher sequel, Halloween Kills is a slasher flick. So that it delivers the carnage as a straight up sequel in the ongoing Halloween series counts in its favor.
Once we get to the present (following a sloppy sequence where characters introduce themselves in relation to what role they played in the original Halloween), the film gains a little bit of steam. I took issue with the off-the-cuff way the patriarch of the Strode family met his almost comical end and how that arguably negated the film’s (retroactive) “girls get it done” messaging. To be fair the sequel almost overcompensates by repeatedly reminding you of that deeply personal loss. Judy Greer is easily the MVP this time out, including a heartbreaking early moment when it finally hits her that her husband is dead. In a movie that feels like much of the cast is playing to the bleachers, Greer offers up a nuanced performance, even if the movie can’t decide if she’s the voice of reason or the naïve defender of the status quo.
Karen stands against a panicked and manic citizenry, riled up by a grown-up Tommy Doyle (Michael Anthony Hall), who are attempting to take mob justice. The plot flirts with modern-day consequences to a horror-movie murder spree, while expanding the previous film’s generational trauma to all of Haddonfield. Alas, the mostly analogue reaction isn’t that far off from the panicked mobs riled up in Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers 30 years ago. Couple that with portions set in a hospital alongside an injured Laurie Strode (like Halloween II) and pontifications positioning Michael as more than just a human “boogeyman” (like Halloween VI: The Curse of Michael Myers), and you have a “Halloween 3 version 2.0” that feels like a loose cover of three of the first four Michael Myers-centric Halloween sequels. I guess they are saving Halloween V: The Revenge of Michael Myers for Halloween Ends.
Jamie Lee Curtis spends most of the film in a hospital bed. This deprives audiences of the “Laurie vs. Michael” variable. It also demands key exposition be repeated as separated characters learn what we already know. If you add up narrative redundancies and flashbacks to both Halloween (1978) and Halloween (2018), there’s shockingly little present-tense storytelling. Much of the impact comes from characters in the original Halloween dealing with their emotional trauma. The memorium is spearheaded by Tommy Doyle, who was barely initially more than a bystander. Hall, who I generally like (The Dead Zone is excellent), is not very good. His monologues and attempts at leadership suggest a man inserting himself into a narrative for self-gratification. Alas, the notion of disproportionate reactions to the original event, in a film opening 20 years after 9/11 no less, is something this overly reverential movie cannot dissect.
Halloween Kills is slightly more enjoyable and slightly more compelling film than its predecessor, in the same way many franchise-specific sequels are superior to their predecessors once we get the origin stories out of the way. Halloween Kills is still another sequel cut from the “It’s all connected!” cloth of F9, The Crimes of Grindelwald, Spectre and The Rise of Skywalker. Your eyes may roll into the back of your head during the copious Halloween callbacks and nostalgia-driven references. Making Tommy Boyle into a co-lead alongside Karen Nelson was a miscalculation. Moreover, as noted above, the film almost entirely depends on your emotional attachment to the first film for any kind of impact. However, there’s clearly an audience for this kind of “Member Berry” franchise filmmaking, and the copious blood and gore deliver on that front with at least a couple of polished kill sequences.
On the plus side, I honestly have no idea what to expect with Halloween Ends, especially as the film ends (no spoilers, I promise) with a finale that (like, offhand, The Dark Knight or The Last Jedi) could be a “new status quo” or “series finale” conclusion. But we’re getting a threequel, and the door is now wide open. With grandma getting the spotlight in 2018 and mom as a co-protagonist this time, I’m guessing the trilogy capper will focus on Andi Matichak’s Allyson Nelson. Like the (much-superior) Creed series, the first legacy sequel was a loose remake of the first flick while the second was a cover album of the previous sequels. And like Creed, there’s a third chapter on the way and now the new trilogy must somewhat stand on its own two feet. What’s Tom Atkins up to these days?
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