or “Candy Corn: the Movie”
Every so often a movie comes along that divides people worse than even religion or politics. Halloween Kills is one such movie. As a member of the Joe Bob Briggs Drive-In Mutant Collective, I’ve seen a social media civil war break out since HK (Hello Killy?) released. Which side of the Mason-Dixon do my opinions fall? Make room on your dance card and let’s do the Batusi while the Misfits warble “Halloween” in the background!
“You’re not ‘fine’! You had a knife in your fucking stomach!” – Karen
When last we left sexagenarian slasher Michael M. Myers (the M stands for “Murder”), the grumpy grandpa was in quite a pickle. Unable to spoil anything thanks to that fortune teller’s curse, I won’t go into details, but let’s say it looked like the ladies Strode had finally put their family’s very own boogeyman to rest for good. Someone should’ve told them this new timeline’s a trilogy of sequels though, because the false-faced night stalker evades his seemingly unavoidable demise, allowing him to carry on killin’ the citizens of Haddonfield.
Made seemingly indestructible by his near-death experience (Myers is a secret Saiyan, confirmed) Mike is now a total tank build, mass murdering with aplomb, including the now infamous “slaughter of the volunteer fire fighters” and “killing of a gay couple” scenes that got some folks in a social justice uproar. Despite his goal of ending everyone in town by daylight, Mike harkens back to his original rampage when he takes time out of his busy schedule in one scene to POSE SOME VICTIMS’ BODIES ON A PLAYGROUND…what a fucking theater kid!
The townsfolk aren’t willing to die without a fight, so they organize a mob and take up arms under the leadership of old man Tommy Doyle, his baseball bat, his hilariously contrite dialogue and the rallying cry of “EVIL DIES TONIGHT!”. The allusions to the blind anger and idiocy of mob mentality (Jan 6th riot, anyone?) is groan inducing, especially so when we get the inevitable “we were the monsters the whole time” trope. Did the writers intend this movie to be a parody? Because their approach to these parallels is so ham-fisted, they’d have to have typed the screenplay while wearing roasted pig boxing gloves. It’s almost enough to make me swear off bacon. The only good part of this mob frenzy is that frightened idiots with firearms are always a recipe for wackiness.
The most repeated defense of HK that I’ve seen is that it’s a slasher movie, and therefore you have to shut your brain off and go into it no expectations beyond joyous violence. It’s not like A Quiet Place, where a whole new species of creature is introduced and pseudo-science is needed to explain it. Michael Myers is just a big evil person who stabs people and leave it at that. However, even cutting the power on my mental processor didn’t help me in this case. Michael is NOT just a psycho in a jumpsuit and mask.
He is obviously a supernatural death machine impervious to pain and incapable of being stopped. Laurie goes so far as saying that he’s beyond human and is made more powerful with every person he kills. You can say she was just spouting metaphors, but no human would be able to survive the multiple wounds this “man” suffers without bleeding to death, or just straight up dying from the trauma. HE WAS SHOT IN THE FUCKING HEAD AND WALKS IT OFF! The “Cult of Thorn” bullshit from the original sequels may have rubbed people the wrong way, but you can’t shit on those movies while also defending what Michael survives in the modern series! YOU FUCKING CAN NOT! That level of cognitive dissonance should be illegal.
Even ignoring the fact that Michael is a fucking Highlander now, the rest of the movie annoyed the crap out of me. Since everybody of interest was either killed in the last movie or hospitalized in this one, we’re introduced to a new batch of fodder, none of which matter outside of the returning characters from Halloween ’78. The worst of which being Tommy, who’s now played by Anthony Michael Hall (yes, the ’80s brat-packer extraordinaire) and who can’t look badass no matter how many times he poses with his Louisville Slugger or leads the chants of “LOCK HER UP!”, I mean “STOP THE STEAL!”, I mean “EVIL DIES TONIGHT!”.
The time that isn’t spent with rioters angrily indulging in their lowered IQ or watching Michael make mincemeat of the cast we just can’t be bothered to care about or listening to everybody’s theories on what Michael’s motivations really are (and how the chaos is supposedly all part of his master plan), are instead spent recapping the events of the previous two movies over and over and over again. If you’ve watched said flicks (which you likely have if you’re watching this 3quel), and managed to retain even a modicum of what happened in them, all the expository pablum on display in HK will drag your enjoyment down into the root cellar of entertainment where it will beat you violently over the head until you beg it to stop. Even when we’re not re-capping the other movies, characters start re-capping the first half of THIS movie!
So, even if you turn your brain off, Halloween Kills can still annoy the crap out of ya. As it did me and my Evil Dead Bride and a lot of other people who couldn’t watch it through rose/blood tinted glasses.
On the plus side, the CGI Dr. Loomis used in the flashback bits is really well done…and the overall violence of Myers’s killing spree is delightfully hardcore…but that’s about it. C’est la cinema.
One roll of Necco wafers out-of-Five
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