Halloween Kills (2021)
Evil Dies Tonight.
Working that backlog again tonight - and being on my own for the movie night has it’s advantages. Namely, in the case of tonight, I can pick up somewhere else I left off without having to force someone to start in the middle of something and get all confused. Not that tonight’s movie really takes a whole lot of brain power to process, but it’s always a nice touch to know what your getting into when it’s a multiple movie run. Tonight, we watch what I should have saved for week 666 - tonight, behold as Halloween Kills.
The story for this one picks up literally at the end of the one that came before it - our Heroines on their way to a hospital, firefighters on their way to put out the blazing carnage, and a flashback. Okay, yes, the flashback wasn’t really where the thing left off, but it’s trying to set up a situation as far as backstory to take the “blame” for events and shuffle it to a new character so we can play more psychological mind-games with the deep-thinkers. Suffice it to say, the shape is back and leaving a path of carnage with a body count so high it’s amazing there’s much of a population left in Haddonfield on November 1st. Unlike some of the others, that is all the plot this time around - we don’t go for any twists or anything past that flashback blame-game swaperoo. What this tells me is that there might be a pretty solid reason for people to be dropping this things online rating to a 55% - but I’d be lying if I said that I personally came to this movie looking for an amazing plot - couldn’t be worse than some of the past ones after all.
The characters are pretty wide, with characters returning from the first movie - like, the actual first movie. Remember the kids who got babysat by our main scream queen? Yeah, they are all growed up and on the “Murder Mikey” bandwagon. This does give the movie a little to play with - you know, giving some characters the chance to pitch the “overcome your fears” or “dealing with traumatic past” initiatives to really try and shine. They don’t, but it’s better than nothing and it isn’t bad it just isn’t really stand out character arcs. There’s a moment you think it might amount to something, but it kinda just putters and blows past it. Our trio of surviving ladies from that last are also all back, with Lori not really having much of an arc at all at this point - more like having one epiphany moment that leads to some commentary, and her remaining family not getting much better. Her daughter gets juiced up with go-getter attitude, but let’s be real here - her target is something that doesn’t hide the fact it’s an unkillable inhuman deity that just wants to stab anyone in the way of what he’s trying to do. Interstingly on that note, it does put a little bit of motivation - or logic, perhaps - behind our killer and what he’s doing. I will say I’m inferring a good amount here for it, but hey - if you aren’t going to explain why he’s the Highlander, you can at least give me a bearing on his direction.
The actors do a good job here. Like, I’ll be honest I can see some people still not really like the acting jobs just because the rest of the movie that it’s inside of, but nobody here does a really bad job. There might be a line or two that could have gotten delivered a bit better, but nobody feels like they are on the phone for a paycheck, and for the most part feel like they are genuine towards the in-movie setting. That being said, this is where - if I hadn’t lived through a pandemic and witnessed the human race coated in a glorious primer coat of chrome - I would point out that there are people who make a lot of bad decisions here. Not just bad, but sometimes straight up idiotic. Now, that will bug people - not everyone has come to terms with the fact that every brain-hurting stupid thing a person done in a movie is a totally valid action someone in the real world would do like I have, but it doesn’t make it feel any smarter when you watch it regardless. Yes, you can chalk some of it up to things like “the character is scared out of their mind” or something along those lines - to which you’d be acknowledging the deep-thought of the movie - but as far as enjoyment factor it always hurts a little when it doesn’t feel like someone in the screen is using their brain as opposed to acting like a sacrificial lemming.
You know it’s serious when even the firefighters start backing up.
The main villain is the main villain. He has a few stalker-type moments in the flashback to bring back that nostalgic feel that got him listed as “the shape” instead of Michael in the credits, but in the movie proper he’s something near unrecognizable from that mysterious everyday danger that made him so frightening. No, in this he might as well have been pulled straight out of Mortal stinking Kombat. You could put this guy into a blender of angry laser sharks and you’d find footprints leading away from a pot of neon shark fin soup. There is no point in this movie they ever make him anything but the Highlander, and in turn you never once think he’s dead - and considering how many times the movie feels like it wants you to think that maybe he is dead it seems like maybe they are underestimating our intelligence. I mean, seasoned horror fans already expect the villain to never die, so anything more than one “is he dead” moment is at best a grunt of “get on with it.” On the nice side, although he’s not creeping on screen as much, he does get plenty of moments of sneaking up on people that can be pretty effective stuff - perhaps not scary, but still pretty good.
What kills some of that is the effects and humor though. I love the jokes, because I like to laugh and my bar for entertainment from jokes is pretty low - but it does greatly go against horror in most ways. Still, the line from the couple about the angry masked man in their bathroom had me laughing because I didn’t expect it at all. Don’t get used t the jokes though - the movie effectively murders those off by the end when it decides to be quite serious about it. On the effects side of things, I think the movie might perform better as a not extended cut (the extended being the version I watched). The reason I say this is that some of the kills can be a bit… cartoonish. I mean, people getting stabbed or tore up or whatever is brutal like you would think from an ogre like Meyers, but when he starts squeezing eyeballs out of heads it sort of takes you back from “oh that’s brutal don’t do that” to “uhhh… what?” Other things, like the burning down house and most the violent bits are quite well done or dare I say convincing, whereas other times you’ll be questioning if this was shot in 3D, or if they really just made that knife out of computer work instead of practical work. It doesn’t normally take you out of it though, so I’d say as a whole the effects department still comes out net positive - even without me being able to comment much on costumes given the modern nature of all of them.
Then we come to the audio. Balance is good. Line deliveries, they are pretty good for the most part as well. The music - love it. Top notch, and not just the normal theme that’s probably liked more for nostalgia then it being mind blowing, but they had some really good stuff that still fit in with Carpenter’s original tunes that they used through out the movie that did a very good job of emotionally tweaking a scene for added effect. Of course, I’d be in the wrong if I didn’t mention the deep-thought stuff that I’m not equipped to really comment on because I don’t like to think real hard. Good news is, it’s pretty obvious the commentary on mob-thinking, panic, and the power of fear as a whole. It doesn’t even try to cover it up. They even have lines pointing it out - but, and here’s where it’s a take it or leave it kind of situation, it does fit with the movie and everything that’s happening in it and therefore doesn’t feel like it’s unnecessarily forced in to fit some ulterior motives.
Not my house, not my problem.
I’d say that yes, it is a pretty mediocre movie - but that’s not a bad thing. People wanting the intense tension of pure Halloween will be disappointed, it’s far more like Aliens if the town people were the xenomorphs and the villain was a nuke. It had a big old body count, and the kills were pretty brutal - but as far as action goes there’s two scenes that stand out above the rest. Plot is bare minimum but sets up a bunch of stuff to talk about outside the movie, and the music has a good time showing off. If you’ve seen the others, this probably won’t be replacing any of them as you favorite, but it is better quality than Jason goes to space.