Mike Myers is…ONCE AGAIN back to his murderous ways in David Gordon Green’s latest entry to the Halloween franchise, Halloween Kills. This movie, while delivering on high gore content, suffers from continuity issues and frankly bizarre creative decisions. One saving grace is a new soundtrack from the original director and horror legend John Carpenter. Sadly, that is all he contributes.
The film begins with a flashback to 1978, the year the original film came out, and then switches back to 2018, where Halloween (well the 2018 version) ended. Confused yet? The film continues trying to retcon things from other movies, and it frankly makes the entire thing a confusing mess.
Halloween Kills picks up at a bar, not at the house where Laurie Strode and co. have left Michael to die. Tommy (Anthony Michael Hall, who is genuinely trying here), one of the children Laurie was babysitting the night the original Halloween occurred, is drinking there. He’s joined by new character Lonnie (Robert Longstreet). The two reminisce on that fateful night forty years ago (this phrase is repeated an insulting amount of times in the film’s 105 minutes). Tommy decides to rally the town to go against Michael, but his efforts swiftly devolve into mob violence as they chant “evil dies tonight” over and over. These two phrases feel shoehorned in, as if Gordon Green was trying to cash in on a catchphrase.
The film is an ideological mess, and it commits the sin of underutilizing its star heroine Jamie Lee Curtis, who is confined for most of the film to a hospital bed. Gordon Green has nothing new to say about Michael Myers. Halloween Kills lacks thrills. Aud, C, P.