Halloween Kills by Jonny Numb

The real boogeyman hanging over 2018’s Halloween was not Michael Myers, but the specter of looming expectation. After all, this was the film that wiped the prior sequel-slate clean to deliver what was thought to be the definitive sequel to 1978’s Halloween.

Director David Gordon Green, who co-wrote the script with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, approached the task with copious fan service, to the point where the film felt too beholden to John Carpenter’s original to break any new ground. Furthermore, the winks and nods to some of the allegedly discarded sequels – not to mention Rob Zombie’s much-maligned versions – came off as disingenuous.

Sure, Jamie Lee Curtis was back as Laurie Strode, but she had faced off against her Shatner-masked nemesis in Halloween H20 before being unceremoniously dispatched in Halloween: Resurrection. And her characterization in the ‘18 film didn’t carry much beyond a well-toned Linda Hamilton physique and attitude. It did introduce Laurie’s daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), but more as #MeToo placeholders than fully fleshed-out characters. The closing scene – in which the three bloodied and bruised women embrace – was poignant but robbed of impact by the general lack of interest up to that point.

 

An Impossible Weight

After a COVID-induced delay, the midsection of Green’s trilogy is finally here. And, once again, Halloween Kills carries an impossible weight on its shoulders. The hype and enthusiasm only seemed to grow as the release date lurched from 2020 to 2021.

Unlike the “certified fresh” 2018 film, Kills has garnered lukewarm-to-negative reviews from fans and critics alike. Some voices in the social-media wilderness aside, most people’s expectations – percolating since they declared their love for the previous film – were doused with a bucket of cold water.

That said, where does my opinion fall? After all, I’ve been upfront with my admiration for Zombie’s Halloweens and my dislike of Carpenter’s original (for as much as I’ve tried to love it over the years, it’s a bore). And, like I said, Green’s take certainly didn’t thrill me.

 

Unflinching Extremes

I admire the balls on Halloween Kills. The violence goes to unflinching extremes, not unlike the Zombie films. There’s queasy stuff about the perils of mob mentality in a place that hasn’t healed from the wounds of the past (all the kids from ’78 are grown up now, and still hanging out in the Haddonfield homestead).

Karen and Allyson become beacons of concern and recklessness, respectively – synthesizing Laurie’s traits (the virginal babysitter and the bitter vengeance-seeker) in a manner that gives the trio more agency than the previous film.

I also appreciated the sly running commentary toward the two oppositional approaches at play (the checks and balances of law enforcement clashing against mob rule), and how neither solves the “problem” in the end. In fact, both approaches actively worsen the situation.

Maybe that’s what I liked most about Halloween Kills. Intentionally or not, it posits Michael Myers as unstoppable “evil” – but also the equivalent of an Internet troll, hiding behind an avatar, striking quickly but leaving irreparable damage before dashing back into the shadows. You never know when he might pop up. And like certain repulsive folks on social media, he seems to get off on the suffering of others.

 

Semblance of a Man

I love the moment near the end where Karen holds out Michael’s mask while taunting the impassive killer. Green strategically films actor James Jude Courtney from a distance, or in obscured close-up. What we see is the semblance of a man with something unknowable behind those “devil’s eyes.” But what is beyond doubt is that this seemingly invincible troll has been rendered vulnerable – naked in the eyes of those who should fear him – without his signature Shatner mask.

The scenes of a gathered mob chasing after a suspect at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, chanting a cheesy slogan (“EVIL DIES TONIGHT!”) as the situation gets increasingly out of hand, parallels the Capitol siege of January 6, not to mention the empty, all-caps provocations that frequently go viral on Twitter. Despite popular opinion, shouting about a particular outrage does little to work toward solving said outrage – if anything, it obscures the root cause of the problem even further.

To that end, it’s painfully ironic – almost parody – how Michael makes short work of an SUV full of gun-toting townsfolk early on. These characters shoot like folks in a movie mob – blowing out windows; not paying attention to how many shots fired; not anticipating a ricochet. It certainly feels like there’s a gun-reform comment lurking beneath the carnage. We know the situation won’t end well (it’s far too early for the boogeyman to “die”), and Green uses this scene of over-the-top violence to segue into a moment of quiet tension as Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) hides from Myers. The juxtaposition of screaming and barnstorming violence against silence that borders on the queasily serene.

 

Spiral of Chaos

Whereas the 2018 film began with a smooshed pumpkin inflating back to life over the opening credits, Kills offers a succession of carved visages lit by candles, deteriorating into decay and burnout. This visual metaphor is key to the film overall: when you burn a candle from both ends, the dueling flames eventually cancel themselves out, leaving darkness to reign.

Circling back to the Internet trolls who subsist on creating spirals of chaos, voices of reason are often obscured by the overpowering cacophony of two “sides.” It’s hard to see through the weeds when your outlook hinges on the inarguable steadfastness of your belief being the correct belief.

There’s a magnificently suspenseful sequence in Kills where one of the mental patients who escaped during the bus crash is mistaken for Michael Myers. Karen locates the man within an empty hospital corridor, and for a few minutes, displays a humanity that resonates with genuine tension and human drama. The conclusion of this sequence is alternately horrifying and tragic, hinging on Karen’s pleading cries drowned out by the bloodthirsty mob.

 

Shredding Skin

In a move that brings Kills a bit closer to 1981’s Halloween II, Laurie spends most of the movie bound to a hospital bed with the wounds incurred from the previous film. (Those expecting a more active role for Curtis – as the misleading trailers proffer – will be disappointed.) That’s not to say her character is peripheral here. The wounded Sheriff Hawkins (Will Patton) becomes her roommate and relays his fateful 1978 experience to her.

These events are conveyed through a powerful prologue where the young Hawkins (Thomas Mann) makes a decision that winds up playing into the death toll 40 years later. The sequence daringly retcons the climax of the ’78 film in a manner that runs fluid with where the ’18 film picks up.

The alteration of Carpenter’s ending didn’t upset me in the slightest – in fact, it shows Halloween Kills shedding the skin of expectation that encased its predecessor.

 

World on Fire

As with the ’18 film, Kills is still content to cherry-pick from existing series entries for some of its ideas. There are callbacks to the hospital sequence in Zombie’s Halloween II, not to mention the extreme violence of that film. The attention to mob mentality brings the palpable chill of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers to mind. And centering the action around Haddonfield Memorial is a direct callback to 1981’s Halloween II and its increased body count (in an ironic twist, the dimly lit, seemingly deserted hospital of that film has been replaced with a crowded, abrasively bright building in Kills).

These callbacks would be annoying if Green and his co-writers (McBride and Scott Teems) merely threw them up on screen as-is. The interesting thing about Kills is that, not unlike Zombie’s Halloween II, it seems more comfortable in its own mythmaking skin. This entry feels truly liberated from the hesitancy, narrative familiarity, and overt fan service that hobbled Halloween ’18.

And while Halloween Kills works as an ultra-violent, modern-day “body count” picture and a piece of genuinely well-crafted suspense, it’s the needling observations on where we’re at as a species that render it so gut-stabbingly prescient. That this chaotic story wasn’t unleashed right before the 2020 election, or the events of January 6, allows its world-on-fire commentary to resonate even more now. Kills nails the unpleasantness of horror in appropriately ugly ways, presenting us with a cliffhanger that conjures nervous tension as it mercilessly slaughters one of the most likable characters in this new iteration.

Michael is a real motherfucker, and I can’t wait to see the places Green and company take him in Halloween Ends.

3.5 out of 5 stars