There are many mixed feelings about the newest additions in the Halloween franchise. The most notable is that with the 2018 Halloween, it invalidated all Halloween movies in between the original 1978 Halloween. Most of them weren’t particularly great anyway, but Halloween H20, which would bring back Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode), was not bad. I also didn’t care much about the weird magic witch demon story line that was going on in Halloween II to the Curse of Michael Myers.
Anyways, Halloween (2018) was an overall great movie, which justified its hype at the time. Halloween Kills? It was more hype than it was great. It’s still a success, because it did great in the box office, especially considering that the movie was also available to Peacock users. Though I say it’s not great, it’s not horrible either. It had it’s good moments. One of them being in how it dealt with the past. It flashbacks to the original Halloween massacre in 1978, recreating or using old footage.
The 1978 environment just feels authentic. Even footage from Halloween II (the invalidated sequel) was supposedly utilized. The cherry on top is the reappearance of several of the characters in Halloween 1978, most of which played by their original actors (except for Brian Andrews, who originally played Tommy Doyle. Tommy Doyle was played by Anthony Michael Hall instead). Tommy was the most significant reappearance, as he would be the fuel for the mob mentality of vengeance against Michael Myers.
This is another good element in the film. It was sending a message overall that mob mentality isn’t great, as vengeance more often than not leads to harming (killing) the wrong people (one of the prisoners that broke out in Halloween 2018 was targeted, believed to be Michael) and more death. I mean, it’s one thing for Michael Myers to seek people, but for people to actively seek and spoon feed Michael?
Ultimately, what was bad about the film is that it was hard to ascertain what direction the film was going. The flashback seemingly offered some context as to what makes Michael tick. While Michael was going about his usual slaughter, his intention all along was to get to his childhood home, which was occupied by a gay couple (Michael doesn’t discriminate in who he kills apparently). After this point, the mob finally gets to meet Michael Myers. They try to kill him, and almost seem to succeed, but he slaughters them, obviously. End. Yup. With no real conclusion or resolution, the ending was undoubtedly disappointing.
So about that chance for redemption? There’s another Halloween movie after this: Halloween Ends. I don’t know how I missed that part, but that’s really great to know. It is planned to debut next year in October. Judging by the next film’s title, it may be the ending we were all looking for. We’ll see next year.
