Halloween Kills (2021) Review
“Let it all burn!”
If we’re talking about the integrity of the Halloween franchise — that’s been long destroyed with needless cash-ins, reboots, and more. But what David Gordon Green managed to do with his last entry, Halloween (2018), is salvage the IP by creating a by-the-books slasher with modern sensibilities to reinvigorate the franchise, once more, for commercial appeal. I have my gripes with his last entry, and frankly every Halloween sequel tarnishing the perfect ending of the 1978 original, but it’s undeniable the impact it had; many finding themselves back into the franchise forty years later. And more Jamie Lee Curtis kicking ass so — who can really complain?
With Halloween Kills, Green goes back on many of the elements that made the 2018 sequel so likable. Kills feels like a jammed-in entry to a trilogy that’s been stretched too thin...for financial reasons. Miramax and Blumhouse took a significant risk hiring David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, both coming heavily from comedic backgrounds, to helm the revival. But when it turned out to be a commercial success, the rest of the trilogy was green-lit and fans started to eagerly await the next installment. But if Kills is any indication of where Green and McBride are headed for with this franchise — frankly I don’t even think they have a clue.
The film opens with a character presumed dead in the last one and as goofy as this franchise has gotten — this was forgivable. However, five minutes later, the year “1978” shows up on-screen and I immediately knew this was going to be a step down from the former entry. Ruining the integrity of the original film is a thought long past. However — advertising your revival trilogy as a direct sequel to the original, and then going back on that, feels like another cheap tactic entirely. Whereas the 2018 film shows Laurie and her family forty years later, without forcing too much added backstory, this latest entry makes it one of the pivotal arcs of the film. And none of the plotlines in this entry have any real purpose for Laurie’s character either, who ends up sidelined nearly the entire time. The film also brings back a handful of characters from the original such as Tommy Doyle, Lonnie Elam, and Nurse Marion Chambers; feeling as if they had to fill the void within this movie in order to prolong the inevitable confrontation between Laurie and Michael. And with this classic sequel setup, there’s great potential to slow down the main narrative and focus on some great character moments. But all of that goes up in flames when nearly all the dialogue stagnates into some variation of “Get Michael Meyers!”
David Gordon Green describes this movie as one that’s meant to blur the lines between the morality of “good and evil” — but its themes on mob mentality are half-baked and the film feels as aimless as it is tired; even of itself. There is undoubtedly some fun to be had within this entry but by the time it ends, it’s hard to care (or follow) what happens since all the kills blur together and the semblance of a plot fizzes out. Whereas the previous entry had proper momentum that, at least, transcribes into the tension of the final act — this one just meanders along kill by kill until it just...ends. If this film is all setup for the final entry in Green’s trilogy, it should have at least left the viewer with a greater understanding of its characters instead of making them even more one-dimensional than they already were. If the writers can focus on the elements that made 2018 so appealing, maybe they can bounce back from this dud in the franchise.
