Halloween Kills

By any metric I can figure, this season's HALLOWEEN KILLS is entirely unnecessary.  We know that it is part of co-writer/director David Gordon Green's new trilogy, and that middle films in trilogies tend to exist primarily to ramp up the conflict, to lay the bridge for the inevitable slam bang finale.  But here, there is little reason to include this chapter, as perpetual victim/nemesis Laurie Strode will be sidelined in a hospital (recovering from the events of the previous movie) while Michael Meyers goes about his nasty business in Haddonfield.  At this point, this oft rehashed tale is all about Laurie v Michael.  Or at least, should be.   Tighter focus might've yielded that rare contemporary re-imagining that actually brings something new to the game.

Instead, we get a cluttered death march that brings back characters introduced way back in John Carpenter's 1978 original.   Good idea, but putting them front and center was a mistake.  This is especially true of Tommy Doyle, one of the kids Laurie was babysitting.   He's a local who never moved past the confines of his small world, or the horror of the night Michael came home.  This is without question Anthony Michael Hall's most intense performance, and sure to be amusing for anyone familiar with his '80s nerd roles. Tommy will eventually lead the entire town on a hunt to take down the unstoppable killer, creating a bloodthirsty mob (with according toxic mentality) that very awkwardly is used as some sort of social commentary.  Nice try, Mr. Green. 

Meanwhile, Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) writhes in her hospital bed, ignorant for much of the movie that Michael is still very much alive, having escaped a fiery inferno and dispatched a flank of firefighters with their own weapons. 

HALLOWEEN KILLS , like many sequels, tries to outdo its predecessor in the gore department.  I remember watching all those grade D '80s slashers (which this movie resembles and is no better than), which would come to be judged on how creative the kills were.   Green scores a few points here; there are some truly brutal moments with axes, saws, baseball bats, even fluorescent light tubes.   The director also does a decent job concocting the look and feel of John Carpenter's classic, opening the film with an extended flashback to the night it all started.  Later, there's even a reference to HALLOWEEN III, a moment that is at least better than that entire film. 

But the characters who log most of the screen time - including an entertaining gay couple seen watching MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ - are mostly arbitrary and distracting.  As I said with 2018's HALLOWEEN, what would make these new films truly interesting is an in depth psychoanalysis of the contrasts/similarities of the Laurie/Michael dynamic.   Psychological horror is always more interesting than just the bludgeoning kind.  I was also disappointed that the primed up girl power (which included Jane Greer and Andi Matichak as Curtis' daughter and granddaughter) promised at the end of the previous film was all but jettisoned here.

In the end, HALLOWEEN KILLS is just good dumb fun.