I am a profoundly devoted fan of the original 1978 John Carpenter masterpiece Halloween, aswell as a fan to lesser degrees of many of the original sequels. This love of the series and the original text led me to head into the 2018 David Gordon Green reboot with trepidation but an ample amount of excitement. That film fulfilled that excitement in many, many ways and despite a few problems I greatly enjoy the film and re-watch it often. This led me with great excitement into the screening of Halloween Kills. But suddenly from the off-set something felt off. Scene after scene would pass and I quickly came to realise that despite having almost the exact same team in front and behind the camera that this film was dramatically worse in the script department, aswell as frankly in the actual direction and making of the thing. The quality of the 2018 product to the quality of this 2021 one had dropped to such an extreme level that I frankly was aghast for most of the picture. There were moments where the joys of 2018 were relived, but these were painfully few and far between. Halloween Kills can be looked at many ways as a fan of the franchise, but none of these ways can make it anywhere near a thing of great quality.
All in all Halloween Kills should have worked. It’s an easy enough thing to say now, but it really should have. 2018’s film brought new life into the franchise, taking the best elements of many of the sequels and bolstering them in a new timeline with a distinct focus on the reality. However once again we have delved into the absolute ridiculous in the case of this new entry. Meyers has gone beyond an unstoppable foe and has grown once more into a mythic being, without any explanation (who knows if in the next film we’re back to ‘the curse of thorn’). “The next thrilling chapter of the Halloween series” unfortunately is a desperately messy farce of loose plotlines and painfully forced characters, all brought together by a script so terrible, so shamelessly nostalgia mining, so cringe-worthily on the nose, that this fan can barley even come to terms with just how bad it was. I think the biggest thing for me on why I hated this film as much as I did is because of just how good 2018 was and how well it brought us back to the tangibility and realism of the horror of the first film, not to the really stripped down respect that I would want, but to a level that is probably the best we could expect in this current climate of films. This film however feels in its script that it can justify any ridiculous happening by just having the character literalise and mythologize the previous events of the other films to the extent where people are repeating themselves over and over again. It truly is rather abysmal. Look, everybody performance wise is still great. Myers is still and will always be scary. There are moments and there are scenes where suddenly we are given a decent sequel again, however all in all and all over this film is a desperate longing to take this film somewhere beyond a regular slasher, something transcended. In this regard it fails desperately.
I feel one is in a tricky spot when reviewing Halloween Kills, for one can’t talk anymore about the film just as an 1hr 45min horror, and perhaps that’s unfair in some ways. However many of the outside factor issues I have with the film have been brought upon the film by its own creators, actors and creative team. During the marketing campaign for this film, many of the stars and creative have made repeated allusions to the films commentary on larger headier outside social themes, as if the film being written and shot some 4 years ago made it unknowingly and powerfully prescient in some way. This worked for me in the case of 2018 and its incorporation of elements of the female reclaiming of trauma at the hands of violent male assaulters, of course if one is to make a sequel to the 1978 film then such a theme is not only deeply perfect but also feels integral. However in this case the filmmakers and writers have chosen to make this film, which features multiple scenes of an angry mob growing, and make comment that it relates to such things as the #blacklivesmatter movement. After watching the film however I can only comment that these correlations are dangerously over-simplified and painfully wrong-minded. Yes there is a group of people who want change, but this is a film where that mob is completely wrong for long stretches of the film and fuelled and blinded by rage and anger. That doesn’t feel like #blacklivesmatter to me in the slightest, I don’t know about you. Also the film has multiple flashbacks constructed around a lousy character arc based around police brutality, where the ultimate decision is that they were wrong to stop the police killing an unarmed apprehended suspect. I mean, come on. It can’t just have been me. On a script level the arcs don’t work, but on a deeper societal level the film is almost reprehensible. These are very big words to throw around for a movie such as this, however if the film was marketed as a simple enough enjoyable slasher film then we would not be in the situation where these comments feel nesercery to be made. However every single interview and piece of marketing is based around this embarrassingly self-righteous concept of the film being prophetic. I must once again elaborate Halloween is at its best when it is striving in the simplicity of the tale it is telling, the simplest and scariest of camp-fire tales, but when it is over-stuffed with plot, characters and outside social commentary – the film can implode, such is the case with Halloween Kills. And worse than all that, the film isn’t even scary. It’s thrilling at times and the action is exciting. But never once was it scary to this man in his viewing.
A terribly disappointing and painfully over-stuffed 5/10 mess. 2018 was no masterpiece, but the highs of that film fly far, far above that of this seriously lesser sequel. As a horror film it fails, having more or less completely adopted the action thriller elements of other entries. As a comment on society it feels painfully forced and dangerously misinformed. As a musing on the effects of the aftermath of the first film it’s fine. As a fun slasher it’s even great and fun. The performances too are all largely excellent. However this trilogy of entries has needlessly sidled itself with the burden and campaign of making it a prestige picture with a deeply serious allegory for greater themes and hence leads one to think that this fine slasher is a lot more, when it actuality that couldn’t be further from the truth.
P.S. Once again John Carpenter is the MVP, with his score composed with Daniel Davies and Cody Carpenter being another shining beam of light in this otherwise shoddy affair. Whether I be a whore of nostalgia or not, I will always enjoy these films on a very base level due to my love of the characters and the music itself, to such a case that when everybody is on screen I feel some notes of joy, but even with all these elements present, Halloween Kills did seriously push how far even I was willing to go.
P.P.S I guess this is my penance for having No Time to Die live up to and go far beyond my expectations ever could have comprehended.
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