Halloween Kills

Good movie!

5/10

Good movie!

Good movie!

Good movie!

source: Halloween Kills

Let's be clear, if you are out for a story, you very likely will not like this Halloween movie. There is little to none here, the focus being the Kills (duh, I know, the title is sort of a giveaway, right?). But it is not just the Kills, it is all the small roles from the Original finally getting their 15 minutes of fame - though for some it is way less than that. Now if you suspend your disbelief enough (especially when it comes to what makes sense or not, like how the Killer looks and who is being chased in the Hospital to name one example), you are going to be able to be quite entertained by this. It is a fan service - but it also may dissapoint some fans. Especially those who are here for Jamie Lee Curtis character - she is quite passive in this movie to put it mildly. That being said, there is enough tension here and the violence level is as high as any horror fan would wish it to be. There is even a scene with firefighters (and another one later on), that may remind you of action movies rather than horror. Still it works and the stunts and effects are as good as they can get. Giving us a motivation for Myers is kind of a risk - even more so, because apparently that does not involve Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) ... even if a sequel was not already announced, you'd know there is never an end. Even if there is one ... don't be mad at the characters here who seem oblivious to that fact ... even if they sort of come up with an explanation for the "unstoppable" force that is Michael Myers. A lot of throwbacks and winks to the fans of the original, starting once again with the opening credits. Love it or take it as pandering - up to you to decide. But you're better off if you go with the flow.

Early on I was enjoying the mindless slasher flick, especially the jaw-droppingly brutal kills. Unfortunately the characters in this movie are all morons. All of them. One more time for emphasis: ALL OF THEM. A hundred moments that make me shake my head or throw my hands up in exasperation. I even had to pause the movie a couple times and close my eyes to comprehend the stupidity. Other than that, this is a pretty bad movie in general. The acting is poor all around. Cliched lines of dialogue and cookie cutter conversations. And overuse of fan service without serving a purpose. Scream 5 did this the right way. (1 viewing, 3/4/2022) SPOILERS There are so many dumb moments I want to talk about but I don't have all night. So I'll only mention a few. Like how the 3 characters from the end of the last movie are all so sure that Michael Myers is dead and are all so shocked when they find out otherwise... but we saw early in the movie all three of them yelling when the fire trucks were heading there. "Don't save him, let him burn." Soooooo why were they so sure??? But the scene that really hurt me to my core is the car scene at the park. How many things can be wrong in 3 minutes? Well start by having the driver be the one to leave the car and check on the kids... why the driver of all people. You know a killer is on the loose. When he jumps on the roof, they want to get out of the car, but the doors are locked.................... ............. Is this a cop car? No. Child locks? Dunno. Terrible writing. So the wife in the nurse outfit smartly jumps out of the window and she has a gun. But maybe 90 seconds go by and she's nowhere to be found. I wondered if she just ditched her husband. After the husband is killed, the wife now comes back to shoot Michael, but she's like 30 feet away from the car, walking towards it...................................... ......................... What possible scenario could have caused that to happen. And she shoots multiple times into the car with her husband in it without knowing he's dead. But whatever, you have the jump on Michael, he's in a small space and you have a gun. But of course you walk right up to him and allow him to kill you. Dumbest. Characters. Ever. I wanted them all to die and I was happy when he killed them all at the end.

Imagine you had a $20m budget. You're a professional writer. You've got the backing of a major studio. You're given the Halloween story to do with as you please... And this is what you do. This is the best you could do with all of that. Half the film is people running around a hospital whilst Michael Myers is in a different part of town. Jamie Lee Curtis spends 1 hour and 4 minutes in a hospital bed, then she stands up and ruptures her spleen and ends up spending the rest of the film standing up in the room where the hospital bed is. Literally does nothing. Everyone who dies, does so because they make stupid decisions that no human would ever make. Nothing happens for at least half the film. Literally nothing. I expect trash from a slasher film but this was garbage. Stupid, unintelligent, pointless, boring garbage. Please stop making characters do stupid things, that no human would ever do, just because you aren't intelligent enough to write a realistic scenario. I don't want a documentary or a case study on serial killers but I also don't want to feel like an idiot, just for watching a movie. I genuinely feel insulted. Just think, the people who wrote this got paid more money than most of us with likely ever see in our entire lives and some of you are giving this 10/10.

Follow-up to, among other films in the canon, 2018's "Halloween", again directed by David Gordon Green, rather adroitly ties in flashbacks to--and new events from--that film and John Carpenter's original "Halloween" from 1978 (with Donald Pleasence lookalike Tom Jones Jr playing Dr. Loomis). Haddonfield survivors from '78's rampage band together with the 2018 characters to take down boogeyman Michael Myers, who somehow escaped the fire set by Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in the last installment. But what begins as an interesting concept soon turns into yet another illogical hack-'em-up, with Michael's victims acting like foolish sitting ducks (in a ridiculous sequence, Michael eliminates each member of a firefighting team--one at a time, because that's the way they do things in these movies--leaving the whole crew decimated). Curtis, recovering from surgery at Haddonfield Hospital, consoles a wounded police officer who blames himself for Michael's killing spree (seems he stopped Loomis from shooting Michael in the head in 1978--but, since Myers "isn't flesh and blood like the rest of us", the conversation isn't useful or productive). When an angry mob finally encircles Michael and has him on the ground, one might think executive producers Curtis and Carpenter would be happy to call it a night...not in Haddonfield, it seems, nor in sequel-hungry Hollywood. *1/2 from ****