(Streamed via Peacock)
I was not a fan of the 2018 Halloween reboot. That said, I am always up for some more Michael Myers stalk n’ slash. I was not opposed to this immediate sequel. (This is by my count the third second Halloween movie.) I mean, there was nowhere left to go but up. Right? Right? Shit.
Say what you will about Halloween ’18 (and I have said plenty, but the short of it is, it sucked), but at least it had a committed performance by Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. This one finds her in the hospital healing from her wounds from Michael’s rampage on Halloween night. (This is by my count the third time Laurie has been admitted to the hospital after being attacked by Michael on Halloween night.) In the first Halloween 2, she was sidelined in the hospital for two thirds of the movie. Here, she spends even more time in the hospital bed. She must have the same agent who got Eric Stoltz his role in Anaconda as she sleeps through half the movie. Even when she’s awake, she doesn’t do anything meaningful. Heck, she and Mikey Boy don’t even share any scenes together! What a fucking rip-off. In fact, she had more to do in Halloween: Resurrection, if you can believe it.
Where is Busta Rhymes when you need him?
David Gordon Green is a good director. It’s just hard to see what he sees in the Halloween franchise. Aside from the opening firefighter smackdown, there is not much to recommend here. The kills are brutal, but feel more like they came out of a Rob Zombie Halloween, and you know, I have to say Rob did it better.
You know you’re in trouble from the opening scene that takes place in 1978 where a young cop has a run-in with Myers. I’m not opposed to flashbacks showing new characters reacting to the events of the first movie. What I am opposed to is them continuing to have flashbacks throughout the entire running time that offer no insight to the matter at hand.
From there, we flashforward to the present for a long ass open mic night scene that features a bunch of ventriloquist shit before Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) hops onstage to commemorate the victims and survivors of the original massacre. You can say a lot about Haddonfield in the years after Myers’ initial rampage, but it has a thriving open mic night community. Tommy then receives word that Myers is still on the loose and whips together a mob to take him down themselves. (Shades of the posse in part 4.)
At its heart, Halloween is about good vs. evil. The best moments in the series spring out of Laurie fending off Michael’s attacks, vanquishing evil until the next time October 31st rolls around. This one denies us that confrontation. Laurie and Michael never share a scene together, which is pretty bogus if you ask me.
In fact, Halloween Kills is like Rocky 2… if Rocky had spent the whole movie in the hospital while someone else fought Apollo Creed and the guy in the bed next to him had flashbacks to fighting Apollo Creed.
The way Green tries to hammer home the Trump parallels is laughable. Tommy’s “Evil Dies Tonight” mantra, which is repeated back by his seething followers is clearly a riff on “Make America Great Again”, and the way he leads the mob into storming the hospital is not unlike the seditionists who stormed the Capitol on 1/6. I’m sure the fact he is portrayed as an angry, bald, white dude was purposeful too.
Half the movie is this shit, and the other half of the movie is Myers crushing skulls and stabbing people. At one-hundred-and-five minutes, it’s way overlong too, and the constant cutting back and forth between the plotlines results in little if any forward momentum. The flashbacks to the original night of terror as seen through the sheriff’s eyes (Will Patton, who has even less to do than Curtis) is also completely useless and could’ve been excised entirely. When the two plots finally converge, the finale is rushed and unsatisfying. I know they made this and Halloween Ends as a two-picture deal, if any movie ever suffered from “middle chapter syndrome”, it’s this one. Maybe that’s because they forgot to put an actual movie in there.
This is the second time I have been tricked by Green and company. Maybe Halloween Ends will be the treat. More than likely, it’ll be another razor blade hiding inside a cinematic apple.
You're dead wrong about this film, it's damn good.
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