Halloween Kills (Film Review)

2021 Universal Pictures
Directed by: David Gordon Green; Written by: Scott Teems, Danny McBride, and David Gordon Green
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, and Anthony Michael Hall
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 105 Minutes
The Nicsperiment Score: 6/10

Michael Myers is finally dead! ...or maybe not. Last we saw Laurie Strode and her daughter and granddaughter, they'd left the sadistic, masked Myers to die in a house fire. Y'all should have made sure that you killed him! Now, Laurie's in the hospital getting her Myers-bisected stomach stitched up, her daughter's standing around looking worried, and her granddaughter is off with a gang of angry Haddonfield citizens because EVIL DIES TONIGHT. Yes, that's right, not only is Myers not dead, but the townsfolk, fed up with the decades of trauma Myers has inflicted upon their once happy town, have decided to take matters into their own hands. Now, they're cruising around town and up and down hospital halls with any weapon they find, making some really poor decisions that feed into an obvious mob mentality critique the film drives home with all the subtlety of a butcher knife. But bad politics isn't this motley crews' main problem--Michael Myers just took out a full crew of buff, heavily armed firefighters. Against that sort of force of nature, what the hell is this ragtag crew of civilians with baseball bats and daddy's gun going to do?
As a symbol of darkness and unfathomable evil, mass killer, Michael Myers, works best as a floating entity, filling the darkest corners of the rooms of viewer's imaginations. It's revealing then, that the two most entertaining sequences of 2021's Halloween Kills involve the masked psycho taking on huge groups of circling foes in broad view. 

Director, David Gordon Green's middle chapter in this new Halloween trilogy is an entertaining mess. This Myers sometimes stalks, but mainly walks into an angry crowd and starts swinging his knife and taking gunshots like a kevlar vest. You know what? I'm fine with that. As much as I love 1978's Halloween, and that version of Michael, Myers looks so incredibly badass here, and I hate the presented townsfolk so much, I don't mind seeing their shocked faces as he decimates their numbers, and pays off their bone-headed decisions and ineptitude with the sweat kiss of death. The film may have viewers sympathizing with the town's trauma at the start, but by the end, I was cheering Michael Myers on like Rocky.
While Michael is wreaking bloody havoc upon the town of Haddonfield, the film often cuts for long sequences to the Haddonfield hospital. In opposition to the thrilling hospital scenes in 1981's Halloween II, these scenes generally involve Laurie Strode lying in her hospital bed, while her nearby daughter frets, as the town mob chases someone they think is Michael Myers around the hospital halls. Schmaltzy music tracks these scenes, before that person, who is most definitely not Michael Myers, suffers an unjust fate at the mob's hands. This sequence is extremely over-the-top and obvious and heavy-handed, but it's put on the screen as if the filmmakers think these scenes are a work of genius. This tone then butts hard against the moments where the film tries its hand at camp, such as a scene where a couple, calling themselves Big John and Little John, are slaughtered by Michael, while over-frequently yelling each other's names across the house. I don't mind when these films are mean, but I do mind when that mean isn't as smart as it thinks it is.
Side-lining the series star, Jamie Lee Curtis' legendary Laurie Strode, is a huge gamble. The Strode role is right up with Ellen Ripley when it comes to iconic female characters in a genre film. Laurie's light versus Michael's darkness MAKES this series. It's a gamble that might have paid off if the surrounding film was stronger. As it is, Halloween Kills feels about as middle-chapter as possible, with Laurie's role in the background feeling like wheel-spinning, often solely consisting of spouting background soliloquies on the nature of evil, which sound like English 101 rejects. Add to that, nothing much changes from near the end of the previous film to the end of this one, other than the fact that a lot more Haddonfield citizens are dead.

Thankfully, the film is saved from total mediocrity by the aforementioned brilliantly staged scenes of slaughter, as Michael, at least aesthetically, is the symbolic icon the film wants him to be, even as the film fails miserably when it tries to verbally describe him as such. It is also saved by John Carpenter's fun new spins on his original, iconic Halloween musical score (outside of the music for that hospital mob scene). Carpenter, the famed, wizened director and composer of the original 1978 film, musically collaborates here with both his son, Cody, and his godson, Daniel Davies. He is missed behind the camera. 

I will say, a spectacular third entry in this series (Halloween Ends, coming October 2022) could shed new light on this entry, and thus elevate it. If it doesn't, Kills will go down as a middling and somewhat forgettable entry in this 40-plus year franchise.