Hal­loween Kills

There’s a con­stant refrain in Hal­loween Kills that Michael Myers has ​“come home”. Pick­ing up right where his well-received 2018 reboot left off, David Gor­don Green’s direct sequel sees a ter­ri­ble truth dawn on the wider pop­u­la­tion of Had­don­field, Illi­nois: the boogey­man is back. Only, he nev­er real­ly left. For 40 years Myers has haunt­ed this com­mu­ni­ty, pop­ping up from time to time to wreak hav­oc in a very real sense while cast­ing an ever-present shad­ow through the psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­ma he has inflicted.

Inca­pac­i­tat­ed fol­low­ing her exer­tions in the last film, Lau­rie Strode (Jamie Lee Cur­tis) is side­lined for the major­i­ty of this one, leav­ing her daugh­ter Karen (Judy Greer) and grand­daugh­ter Allyson (Andi Matichak) to try and fin­ish what she start­ed. They’re ini­tial­ly aid­ed by Myers sur­vivor Tom­my Doyle (Antho­ny Michael Hall), who forms an angry (lit­er­al­ly pitch­fork-wield­ing) mob to take down the mon­ster once and for all. Pre­dictably enough, things don’t go accord­ing to plan.

“Evil dies tonight” is the famil­iar ral­ly­ing cry heard through­out the film – yet it is the towns­peo­ple them­selves who quick­ly become con­sumed by hatred and hys­te­ria, cul­mi­nat­ing in them push­ing an inno­cent man to his death in a rare moment of pathos for the series. If that isn’t what you signed up for, don’t wor­ry: blood is spilled in all man­ner of enter­tain­ing and inven­tive ways here, includ­ing a shock­ing­ly vio­lent scene which brings new mean­ing to the phrase ​‘buzz kill’.

In the process of pil­ing up the bod­ies of ran­dom sup­port­ing char­ac­ters we haven’t pre­vi­ous­ly had any rea­son to care about, Hal­loween Kills rather mud­dies its own mythos by hav­ing Myers tar­get spe­cif­ic indi­vid­u­als whose back­sto­ries are fleshed out for the sole pur­pose of keep­ing the fran­chise alive. The result­ing killing fren­zy, while well-exe­cut­ed on a prac­ti­cal effects lev­el, is a case of dimin­ish­ing, low-stakes returns. For all its reliance on gore and good old-fash­ioned jump scares, the film rarely rais­es the pulse.

John Carpenter’s orig­i­nal Hal­loween may not tech­ni­cal­ly be the first slash­er movie, but it is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered to be the genre’s urtext, hav­ing estab­lished a for­mu­la which many film­mak­ers still cleave to today. In recent years, how­ev­er, there has been a notable trend away from this tried-and-trust­ed tem­plate, with satir­i­cal and/​or social­ly-con­scious con­tem­po­rary slash­ers like Us, Hap­py Death Day and Pre­venge tak­ing the genre in a fun and excit­ing new direction.

Where oth­ers have dared to chal­lenge audi­ence expec­ta­tions for what a slash­er can be – look­ing ahead while still pay­ing respect to their hor­ror fore­bears – the Hal­loween series is strand­ed in 1978. It should prob­a­bly have been tak­en to the prover­bial wood­shed a long time ago. As things stand, Green could prob­a­bly make anoth­er cou­ple of sequels if he want­ed to (the short­com­ings of this film cer­tain­ly chime with its under­ly­ing theme of unfin­ished busi­ness). Let’s just hope this is the last time a Hal­loween film falls back on the adage that we have noth­ing to fear but fear itself. Because in 2021, that feels like a pret­ty glib message.