And the Halloween night when Michael Myers returned isn’t over yet. Minutes after Laurie Strode (Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) left masked monster Michael Myers caged and burning in Laurie’s basement, Laurie is rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, believing she finally killed her lifelong tormentor. But when Michael manages to free himself from Laurie’s trap, his ritual bloodbath resumes. As Laurie fights her pain and prepares to defend herself against him, she inspires all of Haddonfield to rise up against their unstoppable monster. The Strode women join a group of other survivors of Michael’s first rampage who decide to take matters into their own hands, forming a vigilante mob that sets out to hunt Michael down, once and for all.
Will Michael Myers ever die, or will audiences receive endless sequels for the rest of time? Let’s hope for the former to be completely honest. As most know, the original Halloween debuted in 1978, followed by a number of sequels over the years. However, all sequels were retconned with the 2018 film taking second place right after the 1978 film in the linear timeline. This new Halloween Kills (2021) is now considered the third chapter in the overall series, and it’s already been announced that the fourth chapter (Halloween Ends 2022) is on the way.
Now if the studio just wants to make a profit, that’s completely expected in this industry, but the appearance that they actually cared about a compelling story (even in a horror slasher film) would be appreciated. This film is also one hour and forty-six minutes, and that’s entirely too long for the story that was told. This could’ve easily ended in ninety minutes, and everything would have turned out greater. That’s where the problems start within this film. Unnecessary story details to try to enhance the experience ended up being its downfall. Instead of providing a simple follow-up from the events of the 2018 film with the character Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) being rushed to the hospital, the filmmaker over-complicated the story with attempted character development that fell flat. This series of events lasted over decades and the film tries to flashback in time to provide more details for the present day about a younger policeman encountering Michael for the first time but they were so uninteresting. This led to sloppy jarring editing as the timeline jumped back and forth, and the subpar acting made it even worse.
That’s another issue that runs rampant during this runtime. The acting was all over the place for some of the performers. No one is expecting the best performances of the year, but I at least want to be convinced that people are concerned with life and death. This is true for some characters doing what they need to do on screen while others actors didn’t take it too seriously and come across as comical within their delivery. Even Jamie Lee Curtis was convincing enough, and she’s proven that she’s talented countless times over her career. It is also painful that she’s not even in the film that much. She barely has any screen time and when she does, her character is hysterical.
However, all of that isn’t even the worst part. This film will probably be entered into the Guinness Book of world records for the amount of dumb idiotic characters that has ever assembled in one film. It’s baffling how ridiculous some of the deaths are in this film because of the level of incompetence from some of the characters. Characters are literally standing around watching their peers being executed while not stepping in to intervene. In some instances, they’re actually standing in line waiting to die and it’s sad and embarrassing. When you have your bad guy surrounded, it’s common sense for all parties to attack at once. Now one or two people may be harmed, but in the end, justice should prevail. Apparently, these characters here didn’t get the memo and appeared helpless for no justifiable reason.
On a positive note, towards the beginning of the second act, the film looked promising. The character The Shape (James Jude Courtney) started to use common sense tactics that their town has a better chance of survival if they stick together. You know the whole strength in numbers mindset. This is perfect, but hurt my soul moments later when some characters decided to veer off from this plan. There were just too many cases where characters made the conscious decision to go after Michael alone instead of sticking with the group. Even after it was acknowledged that Michael is super strong, evil, the devil, and difficult to kill, these decisions were still made and it’s mind-blowing.
If you’re a horror slasher film fan, that loves Michael Myers, and just want to see him walk around killing folk in the most gruesome ways, you’re probably going to have the best time of your life. That is one aspect that the filmmakers mastered over the years by giving the audience a villain that’s terrifying. The deaths in this movie are extremely graphic, bloody, and creative. Every time you think you’ve seen the nastiest way someone can perish they deliver a new shocking example a few scenes later to keep you at the edge of your seat. So for that fact, the film can be entertaining. But still, after not having high expectations in the slightest, this film is horrible due to the unorganized editing within the story, too long of a runtime, the main character barely having any screentime, and a hoard of moronic characters it’s difficult to walk away satisfied. Only severely disappointed at the wasted opportunity of a great franchise that’s wasting too much time.
Video Review:
Official Trailer:
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