Halloween Kills

Halloween Kills is not unique in being a year late into cinemas as we know all too well, and had things gone plan we would be looking at the conclusion to this particular collection of films. As such it’s a bit of an oddity as we know what happened before and we know that Myers will survive to a third film. So there has to be something more to this than just Michael Myers chasing Laurie and family around. And initially we get to a good interesting start.

We are taken back to Haddonfield 1978 with the town under attack and with the introduction of minor characters and an explanation of what happened to Michael that night that even further distances the film from the original arc. These people haven’t left Haddonfield and are still haunted by that night. Which is fair enough when you consider the trauma of the events.

Picking up directly from the Halloween (2018) we see the fire brigade rushing to save the house while Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), with daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Alyson (Andi Matichak) pleading for them to let it and Michael burn. All on deaf ears and we have a confrontation between The Shape (James Jude Courtney) and firefighters and a taste of things to come.

We then follow Halloween 2 (1981) with the film shifting to a hospital although with far more people in it and again with Laurie missing for large chunks of the film. With reports coming in, the townsfolk decide to take up arms against Michael with chants of ‘Evil dies tonight’. So a villager and pitchfork mentality develops with it all getting very nasty and somewhat clumsy too.

The desire to stretch the film beyond the core characters introduced in Halloween (1978) is not a bad one in itself as that adds some depth to the trauma that the small town - a close-knit community – would not doubt have gone through.

What could be more contentious is Dr Loomis (Donald Pleasance) and building on where the original film ended with Myers disappearing. We are offered a conclusion which is both logical and problematical as Loomis is cast in a different light that would tend to go against his initial instincts as a doctor but play on his baser human instincts based on what he knows and has witnessed of Michael Myers.

Director David Gordon Green and co-writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems have come up with good looking though quite crude film with acts of exceptional violence and cruelty from Myers, harking back to Rob Zombie’s tenure with the franchise. Added to this is the awkward satire that looks to set ‘Evil dies tonight’ along with ‘Make America Great Again’ mantra of the Trump era and the pack mentality that goes with those slogans.

The film sets up for the conclusion of this trilogy (or quadrilogy even) which is its purpose and the least this dark and unpleasant film can do.