Rent Halloween Kills (2021)

Halloween Kills review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

It’s disheartening that Halloween Kills, the sequel to 2018’s Halloween, finds little else to explore. The reboot sequel of 2018 was unique in that it found something more to delve into with the character of Laurie Strode. While we got the classic Michael Meyers who says little and kills a lot, Laurie goes through an interesting arc of trying to recover from her PTSD of the killing spree that was Meyers. She banded together with her family to ensure that Meyers would never again kill.

Now we come to the sequel and the franchise once more slips back into familiar territory. Meyers comes back to life from his fiery tomb thanks to some firefighters. The kills continue as the Halloween of the previous picture hasn’t ended. More suburban residents are slaughtered in gruesome ways. On this level, the kills are quite grotesque and viciously cruel. Meyers hasn’t lost his touch for quality slasher moments.

What has been reduced, however, is the level of introspection that was present in 2018’s Halloween. The problem this time is that we’re following a whole bunch of survivors who have suffered at the hands of Meyers in the past. Having grown fearful of this figure for years, they treat the recent news of Michael being loose as an opportunity to put to bed their lingering terror of the past. A band of survivors rallies together to form a mob that will find and kill Michael Meyers. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) spends most of the movie in a hospital and speaks endlessly about how Meyers has to be killed. Survivor leader Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) commits to brandishing his baseball bat, leading a charge into battle.

There are some good ideas in this film about looking inward to face demons of the past. One character trying to come to terms with himself is a cop who wrongfully shot his partner while confronting Michael Meyers. The problem that fogs this picture’s greater appeal is, well, Michael Meyers himself. While the cop does feel bad about killing his partner and covering up his crime, he somehow feels even more bent out of shape about not killing Michael Meyers that night. Another confounding aspect is how the film treats the depiction of the mentally ill. Another escaped mental patient cowers in fear when the mob targets him, believing that the man is the unmasked Michael Meyers. The patient suffers a terrible fate and there’s a moment when the mob believes they’re the monsters. But, also, Michael Meyers is pure evil and needs to die!

There’s also a major conflict between comedy and tragedy. Meyers has not one but two stops to homes of eccentric couples. The first is a middle-aged couple who talk about Laurie being a bad-ass and then receive brutal savagery by Meyers as they hardly question the strategies of handling a serial killer, while still succumbing to the cliches. The second is a gay couple of Big John and Little John who reside in Meyer’s childhood home. They make dry humor and threaten the intruder with cheese knives while Michael tries to recapture his childhood. Though the film is ambitious for attempting this balancing act, it can’t quite pull it off.

Halloween Kills has some decent ideas that are constantly being reworked and undermined at every turn. Just when it feels like there may be some powerful commentary about vicious mobs wanting revenge, the film will double-down on itself and portray that mob as correct, even if their savageness proceeds to a scene where we weren’t meant to sympathize with them. The final result is a strangely off and dissatisfying sequel that still delivers on the kills but lacks in just about everything else.