Halloween Kills (2021)
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 6:06 pm
At the end of Halloween (2018) we saw Michael Myers burning alive, trapped in Laurie Strode's basement while Strode, her daughter, and her granddaughter were hitching a ride to the nearest hospital.
Halloween Kills (2021) picks up where the previous film left off. As firefighters arrive to extinguish the flames, one of them falls through the floor and into the basement. Other firemen rush in to rescue their partner and unknowingly pull Myers from the basement. Myers returns the favor by showing them how to wield an axe.
Across town, a local tavern is throwing a Halloween open mic/talent show. One of the people who takes the stage is Tommy Doyle, the little boy who Strode was babysitting in the 1978 original film (played here by Anthony Michael Hall). When news gets out that Michael Myers has returned to Haddonfield, little Tommy starts a chant of "Evil Dies Tonight!" and quickly organizes a mob to hunt down Myers.
While the mob flows through Haddonfield in search of Myers (they're as successful as you might imagine), a wounded Strode is left behind in the hospital to give monologues about Michael Myers, the essence of evil, and all sorts of things that we've heard before.
A lot of Halloween Kills is too deep for its own good. The continuous chants of "Evil Dies Tonight!" are an obvious reference to "Lock Her Up!", and as the mob smashed doors and windows to enter the hospital while chasing an innocent man, I couldn't help but think of the Capitol insurrection. Laurie Strode pleads with the crowd, "can't you see? We're becoming the monsters!" to a sheriff who once had the opportunity to shoot Michael Myers in the head but didn't, and feels he could have prevented the movie's events. It's a lot to take in, but fortunately before too long Michael Myers chokes a doctor with his own stethoscope and decapitates a elementary school kid and things are back on track.
Halloween Kills is a bit of a mess with plot lines all over the place and a bunch of people that just show up to get stabbed, but the reality is this trilogy is building toward a final confrontation between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers, and that ain't gonna happen in movie #2. Halloween Kills is a two hour bloody mess whose only purpose is to tide viewers over until part three arrives next October. It has plenty of gore, but not much guts.