"Halloween Kills" is a Love Letter to the Franchise

After 43 years, 121 on-screen kills, billions of dollars in merch sales, and one very unfortunate movie starring Busta Rhymes, Michael Myers has come back bigger and badder than ever in Halloween Kills.

And oh, what a glorious comeback it is.

I’ve been a die-hard fan of the Halloween franchise since the mid-’80s when we watched it at Missy Knorr’s birthday sleepover after her parents went to sleep. I’ve seen every single movie since and loved them all — even Halloween Ressurection, which was just terrible but did have a few scary moments. So naturally, when horror gods Blumhouse Productions announced in 2017 that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride would be rebooting the Halloween series as a trilogy, I was extremely skeptical. I suspect that a lot of Halloween fans were. These were the Eastbound and Down guys. They’re comedy people. It would be like if Greg Daniels and Mike Shurr from The Office remade Rosemary’s Baby.

Actually, never mind. That would be hilarious and awesome.

I digress.

As it turns out, Green and McBride had a lot of support from John Carpenter, aka Mr. Halloween himself, and horror goddess Jamie Lee Curtis. Also, Malek Akkad, son of original Halloween producer and champion Moustapha Akkad, was attached to the project. It couldn’t be all bad, right?

Wrong. It was SO. MUCH. BETTER!

2018’s Halloween was a direct sequel to the 1982 film Halloween II. Even though it ignored a lot of canon, it was still a banger. We met a 40-years-later Laurie Strode, survivor and survivalist, living alone on a heavily guarded compound and struggling to maintain relationships with her estranged daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson. Meanwhile, a maskless geriatric Michael Myers (played brilliantly by the original Mike himself Nick Castle) has been locked away in a sanitarium and is about to be transferred to a different facility. Obviously, he escapes, and all hell breaks loose.

By the end of 2018’s Halloween, Laurie, Karen (Judy Greer) and Allyson (Andi Matichek) have seemingly left Michael to die in Laurie’s basement while fire engulfs the compound. But everyone knows that our boy Michael doesn’t go down that easily.

Halloween Kills picks up minutes after Halloween ends. We see our badass trio of Strode ladies, bloody and bruised, in the back of a pick-up truck, and we watch their relief turn to terror as fire trucks fly past them.

“Let him burn!” Laurie screams into the night with a desperate, defeated conviction that will break your heart.

We’re then transported back to THAT NIGHT in 1978. Michael Myers is on the loose, and the Haddonfield Police Force is on high alert. As they scour the nearly-deserted streets, they come across a terrified kid named Lonnie Elam (Tristan Eggerling). Halloween fans will immediately recognize the name; this is the little asshole who teases Tommy Doyle about the Boogie Man in the original film. Anyway, Lonnie has just come face-to-face with Michael and lived to tell the tale. The officers send him on his way and head over to check out the Myers house.

Often movies fail miserably when they attempt to recreate past decades, but Halloween Kills nails it. This movie feels like the 1978 version in such an organic way that I honestly wondered if I was watching John Carpenter’s lost footage. And then, through some sort of magical movie hoodoo, the late Donald Pleasance appears as Dr. Loomis. Although It may have been a look-alike actor. I’m not sure. I don’t know how they did it, and frankly, I don’t want to know, but it was seamless and awesome.

Back in the present, Laurie is fighting for her life in the hospital while Karen and Allyson come to terms with the death and destruction of the past few hours. They assume that they’ve finally killed Laurie’s demon, and now the healing can begin.

Elsewhere, Allyson’s boyfriend Cameron (Dylan Arnold), is sobering up and realizing that he kissed another girl at the big dance. As he walks home and wallows in the misery of the worst thing that has ever happened to him, Cameron stumbles upon a wounded Sherrif Hawkins (Will Patton).

On the other side of town, a sexy doctor/nurse couple is trying to enjoy a night out at a dive bar and makes friends with the rowdy table of oddballs next to them. Turns out, this is the unofficial I Survived Michael Myers club comprised of Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), Lindsay Wallace (Kyle Richards), Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens) and Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet). The Halloween 1978 survivors meet here every Halloween to commiserate, toast to Laurie Strode and get wasted.

Soon the entire bar begins to get emergency text alerts. There’s a killer on the loose, and that killer is Michael Myers. We don’t know how he survived the fire, but we DO know that he slaughtered every single firefighter on the scene in delightfully splatter-filled fashion. Tommy Doyle decides that enough is enough, and he organizes a vigilante mob of angry townsfolk to hunt him down and end it once and for all.

Halloween Kills is a franchise-lover’s dream. Over the past 40 years and numerous sequels and remakes, we’ve always gotten a glimpse of Laurie Strode’s fate. As fans, we’ve often wondered what became of the other survivors. Now we know that Lonnie is deeply damaged but trying his best, Lindsay is a neurotic mess, and Tommy Doyle’s PTSD has taken an angry and violent turn. We now see how deeply the babysitter murders of 1978 have haunted the entire town of Haddonfield. They’ve been held in the grip of an inhuman monster, and we get the privilege of going with them on their journey to redemption.

From little Easter eggs like the Silver Shamrock masks from Halloween III to gritty, violent kills that would make Rob Zombie proud, David Gordon Green and company have incorporated something for everyone in Halloween Kills. Even though Laurie Strode is confined to her hospital bed, Jamie Lee Curtis is still sheer perfection. She serves as a Greek chorus of sorts here, sharing insights into Michael’s psyche while others get to do the heavy lifting. Our “final girl” this time is Karen, Laurie’s sensible daughter. Judy Greer’s Karen is smart, relatable and tough. She’s exactly the kind of hero we need, and her final showdown with Michael is nothing short of epic.

Sadly, we’ll have to wait until next year for the final installment of the trilogy (thanks, Covid). Halloween Ends is set to premiere in 2022. Meanwhile, Halloween Kills is a must-see. It does the franchise proud.

Halloween Kills is now in theaters and streaming on Peacock TV.

This story originally appeared at medium.com