“It’s Halloween. Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”

Kyle’s rating: Now that it’s all come to an End(s), I can kind of appreciate the Kills of it all

Kyle’s review: Halloween Kills is somehow the greatest ‘what could have been’ of the whole franchise for me.

Halloween: Resurrection is the undisputed nadir of all the films, made irredeemable in my eyes for having zero elements that could have been further developed or improved upon to create a better movie. Kills has multiple threads, characters, and plot developments that take a step or two toward horror goodness, or if not outright greatness. I can envision a version of this installment that’s a little tighter, a lot less indulgent, and features the sort of horror/comedy mixture we got with 2018’s Halloween.

But it’s all theoretical, of course. What we do have is Halloween Kills, which is… mostly a mess? How is this so messy? It’s shocking how messy this is!

I enjoy how the passage of time either hardens my opinions of films, or sometimes allow them to evolve in entirely unexpected ways. I used to find Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning unwatchable. Somewhere along the line, I started to really vibe with it. Same with Halloween 5, several of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, and most recently, Malignant. Things change. People change.

Halloween Kills, however, would seem to be eternally flawed. I have it playing while I type this, and I can’t believe how the story is progressing. My best guess is they really wanted to focus on the community of Haddonfield and to show how Michael Myers was truly an unique kind of evil for his ability to thrive, endure, and massacre against an entire town mobilized against him. But when the efforts against him are some of the stupidest I’ve ever seen, it really doesn’t make Michael immortally cool or legendary.

To me, the heart of this film comes just under an hour into the film: A SUV full of our ‘heroes’ notice some children playing in a park. They stop to ask them if they’ve seen Michael, which the kids have. In fact, Michael’s right over there! Now he’s going to take one a car full of armed amateurs and then Lindsey Wallace with a pillowcase full of bricks. I won’t ruin it for you, but I’m still not sure if we’re supposed to laugh or cry or wince at the results of Michael’s mini rampage. I mostly just feel embarrassed for anyone who would find the scene cool. That other characters discover that Michael chose to stage the bloody aftermath with Silver Shamrock masks is just one final insult to this whole enterprise.

Smarter reviewers than have noted how this trilogy hits upon multiple prominent elements of all the Halloween films that came before. Some things probably did not need to be emulated. Even true fans of Halloween 2 are not exactly fans of Laurie Strode spending the majority of the film in a hospital bed, so seeing that revisited was entirely unnecessary. Taking the angry mob outside the Myers house in that same film and multiplying it by 10 is probably not ground a horror sequel needs to tread.

You can tell everyone behind Halloween Kills thought the phrase “Evil dies tonight” was going to become a legendary mantra of righteous fury. Instead it’s a punchline to a wide variety of largely uninspired jokes. As I type this section, multiple minutes are being wasted on Laurie learning Michael Myers continues to roam the streets and deciding to propel her damaged body out of her hospital bed toward a final confrontation with him… that we knew even when Kills was in theaters wouldn’t be coming until the final film of this trilogy. What were they trying to accomplish with this instalment? I truly have no idea. So many questions abound, even years later. It’s honestly wild!

Ultimately, the greatest disappointment of Halloween Kills is that Michael Myers is electric in this movie. James Jude Courtney gives an absolutely incredible performance as the silent Michael and conveys more with physical movements than actors who won awards for their efforts. Beyond the way he moves, the movie shoots him in ways that add to his legend. If only the movie surrounding this incredible performance and character could have been even half as good, we’ll be talking about Kills as a major horror achievement.

Instead, it plays mostly as a farce. Considering Halloween Ends manages to feature even less Michael but manages to be a better movie because it tries to say less about the human condition and mob mentality, I’m going to have to say this trilogy is mostly a failure. I’d love to hear from people who either really enjoy Kills or think all three films are worthwhile. But all I can do is think fondly on the amazing Michael Myers performance, and think about what could have been.

That Michael versus firefighters scene is really, really cool, though. And great thanks to John Carpenter for another awesome soundtrack album!

Intermission!

• Jamie Lee Curtis, Charles Cyphers, Kyle Richards, Nancy Stephens, and Nick Castle were in the original Halloween, and they all returned for this sequel. The characters of Tommy Doyle and Lonnie Elam from the original also returned, but were recast with Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Longstreet. Brian Andrews retired from acting in 2015 and Brent Le Page never acted again after the original Halloween.
• David Gordon Green recalled that when they attempted to find a yearbook photo of one of Michael Myers’ victims from the 1978 film, he came across a yearbook photo of Bob Odenkirk that he thought resembled original actor John Michael Graham. The rights issues were resolved so that Green could use Odenkirk’s photo instead of the actual actor. Odenkirk is therefore credited as ‘Bob,’ despite not physically appearing in it.
• Twelve pumpkins are featured in the opening title sequence with the last one indicating Halloween Kills as the twelfth Halloween film.
• In the flashback scene to 1978, Michael attacks deputy McCabe (Jim Cummings) with a rope. In the original Halloween, Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers) responded to an alarm in a hardware store, and reported that a rope, some Halloween masks and a set of knives were stolen.
• Early in the movie, the wagon stolen by Michael Myers from Dr. Loomis and Nurse Marion Chambers at the Smith Grove Sanitarium in Halloween can be seen parked behind Young Hawkins and Pete McCabe during one of the flashback sequences to 1978.