Halloween Kills Review

October 27, 2021 at 10:53pm
By Jason Stettner

Evil ends tonight! Or well, it really doesn’t and that’s not a spoiler since this is the second part of a trilogy. I absolutely loved the previous entry in the series that found Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) preparing for a battle with Michael Myers. The two met, and we’re dealing with the aftermath of that in this sequel. It’s a bit of a weird shift, as this one really isn’t very good and felt almost entirely unnecessary. From the silliest of actions, to the weird sub stories that were going on this felt like a mess.

It was weird, as they aimed for some sort of mob mentality that the regular people are the monsters at times and that was just stupid. That whole sequence was just, stupid. I initially thought they were going for more of an intense angle from the opening action like scene where our apparent superhero took on a squad of firefighters. It was gory, as were all the kills and at the same time it felt a bit odd. This is a character of the night, one that shifts in the backdrop and strikes with insane animal like efficiency.

Now, that intensity was present but it felt almost too action like where if you had him taking out bad guys it would almost be a regular superhero film which was so strange. I also really disliked how this one ended, it felt rather out of place. This also did a really poor job of setting up the third movie. It’s like they wanted it to be standalone which is fine, but they also wanted to setup the third one and it was all over the place in that regards. I did like that they had some flashback like footage which was creative in presentation.

This is very much a slasher sort of film that has some excellent kills to it. The gore was fantastic, as was the creativity and general savageness that was in play. I did find that some of the cinematography was really awful in this. Just montage like slayings at times that were really zoomed in for some reason.

I assume that’s since most of the cast that pops up is really old, but still. Past that, so many nonsensical moments from the group. Laurie was essentially not even in this and still acting weird whenever she was. It was neat how grounded what she did do was, but it felt like such a waste in this. Might as well have just had her for a single scene or something. There was only one really sensible individual, that being Karen (Judy Greer) and even she wasn’t apparently too bright.

I once again enjoyed Allyson (Andi Matichak) as I somewhat feel that they’re setting her up to sort of take things over. She didn’t make the best of choices, but I like what they may be setting up for it so I’ll leave myself as intrigued at this point for what’s to come. Tommy (Anthony Michael Hall) felt like a wasted character, just wanted to note that.

The Conclusion

Halloween Kills is a disappointment, particularly coming from the previous entry with this one going for gruesome kills instead of properly acting as a middle piece to this story. The execution of the concepts they had in mind were straight up sloppy and I’m really not sure where they’re heading for this next one.

I have some ideas of course, but I’m not really too excited about it after this one. I’m intrigued by how it’ll wrap up, at the same time I felt as though this one entirely killed my hype for it. There are only so many times that I can suspend my disbelief for the stupidity of folks attacking some old person. I get that there’s a mysticism here, but it’s poorly displayed and it felt just silly so many times in this movie.

It was also very poorly shot, so that didn’t help it. Maybe I expected a lot because of the last film, but this slides back into the territory of quality that would rest alongside the sequels we’ve attempted to forget. I did like the Big John/Little John combo, that was entertaining. Also, Myers is strangely quite the artist with the bodies, poetic almost.

Halloween Kills Review at Theater with Standard Viewing

Rating Overall: 5.2