Premise: Michael Myers is still alive and this time is fighting mob justice.
(I treat this as assumed knowledge before any movie I see or write about, but I'm struggling. I really need to say it before I talk about this one.) It's a minor miracle any movie ever gets made. A lot of people put a lot of time and effort into making sure it gets done and gets done right. Most of the people on any set are skilled professionals. The way that so many people, sometimes with competing visions or difficult tasks come together to make something is incredible. Just to complete a movie is an accomplishment. To make a good movie is astounding. So, I make a point to go into any movie with kind eyes. I don't like tearing a movie down. That's nor very interesting or very helpful. Most days, I'd rather watch a bad movie that a forgettable one.
I think you can see where this is going...
The 2018 Halloween was a corrective for all the bad attempts to continue the Halloween franchise. After numerous attempts to deepen the mythology and play with the tone, they finally came to a realization: Halloween isn't Michael Myers; it's Michael Myers and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis). Better yet, it realized for the sequel that Michael Myers is the Terminator and Laurie is a badass Sarah Connor in T2. The movie wasn't perfect. The plot armor on some characters was a little obvious and the plot contorted to make things convenient in a few places. But mostly, it understood the assignment and delivered a sequel fitting of the original.
Planning a new Halloween trilogy always sounded a little too ambitious for me. Halloween isn't really a story for a grand arc. Frankly, each movie needs there to be a little doubt about if Michael dies. Knowing he's lasting for three movies takes away suspense. It seems that the strategy David Gordon Green and company used is to make a straight down the line classing Halloween movie with the first one to prove they can do it then expand on things in the later installments. In other words, Halloween Kills has more of their authorial voice in it, and it turns out, I'm not a big fan.
Halloween Kills is a frustrating movie. On the surface, it delivers the slasher fun we're hoping for. There are a lot of deaths in a variety of ways. It looks at Michael's long-term effects on more than just Laurie. It even has a fun thought experiment wondering what the presence of a Michael would do to a town.
That's about where the good stops though. This becomes a movie about the dangers of mob justice that ends up sidelining Michael and Laurie. Given how the last movie ended and that this picks up later that same night, Laurie spends most of the movie in a hospital bed. Without the clear target of Laurie or her family, Michael just exists through this movie. In their place is Anthony Michael Hall as another survivor from the original movie leading a group a vigilantes, including Laurie's granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), to stop Michael. I know the movie was filmed in 2019, but it sure feels like a lazy commentary on the 1/6 storming of the Capitol building. It's got the same senselessness.
I don't understand the logistics of this vigilante group. This is a group big enough to organize in a single night and storm the hospital in numbers, yet Michael is able to travel freely through this (I'm assuming) small Illinois town. Where are the police in this town? Michael has killed many people this night, including an entire fire department squad. How have no reinforcements been called in? I've seen four cop cars pulled aside for a speeding ticket in real life but you're telling me they can't call in backup for a known dangerous fugitive. In the age of cell phones and kids who all want to be internet famous he would've been spotted. And Michael Myers only makes sense in a context where his movements are unnoticed. He can't function tracked this closely. This presses against the "same night" idea too. This movie picks up minutes after the previous movie but it plays like a story where everyone has had the time to digest those events already. The logistics don't make any sense.
Then there's this "elemental evil" thing. I really hated that. Laurie has a speech at the end basically calling Michael supernatural. At the same time, Michael is receiving mob justice on the street. Just when we think he's about to get killed, he manages to fight and kill this crowd of people, walking away, uhphased. I am screaming at my TV* this entire time. 15 minutes ago, this mob overran a hospital. The whole point of the movie is about how dangerous and unruly mob justice is. Yet, then this group decides to hesitate against Michael? It doesn't make sense. And Michael isn't an "elemental evil". He just has screenwriters and a director who construct contrived ways for him to get out of messes.
*I was really planning on seeing this in theaters, and I sort of glad I saved my money for something else.
I guess my opinion of Michael is make him a man or make him a mystery. If he's a man, he's real, and what's frightening is his ability to survive. If he's a mystery, then all I need to know is that he always survives. Leave him in a burning basement and he magically comes back the next day without a scratch. Look away for a second and he disappears behind that passing car that briefly blocked your view. Halloween Kills tries to bridge the gap and hurts both cases. He's a man in his 60s, I think. They still cast Nick Castle to play him, so they want him to wear his age some. Seeing something like how he escapes Laurie's basement and kills the fire squad is silly though. It's answering the wrong questions.
I'm pretty scattered in my thoughts on this. I'm just frustrated. I really thought they cracked the code with the 2018 movie. Then they try to reinvent the wheel in this movie and lean into so many of my least favorite things in slashers. This wasn't any fun to watch.
this.
Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend
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