Movie Review: 'Halloween Kills' Starring Jamie Lee Curtis

Halloween Kills stars Jamie Lee Curtis once again in the role of Laurie Strode. If you recall the previous entry in this franchise, you will remember that Laurie, along with her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak), trapped Michael Myers/The Shape, inside of Laurie’s home and set the place on fire. It appeared that they’d put a stop to Michael for good but the next time we see them, riding to the hospital to save Laurie’s life, firefighters are on their way to an unfortunate rescue.

That’s not how Halloween Kills starts however. Instead, we begin in flashback, Haddonfield circa the early 1980s. After one of Michael’s escapes from the institution, he’s returned to Haddonfield and is being tracked by Police all over town. Eventually, a pair of young cops, including Officer Hawkins, Will Patton’s character in the present story and played by Thomas Mann in the flashback, track Michael back to his childhood home. We see Hawkins try to kill Michael only to end up killing his partner before subsequently saving Michael when he’s confronted by cops and Dr. Loomis, a CGI Donald Pleasance, by keeping Loomis from shooting him.

Back in the present time frame, Laurie’s at the hospital and the firefighters I mentioned early are all dead. Michael Myers escaped the fire and is working his way back to Haddonfield killing people along the way. Meanwhile, Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), Lindsey Wallace (Kyle Richards) and other people who have survived Michael Myers in the past are sharing a bottle of champagne at a bar in Haddonfield. The party is interrupted when news of Michael’s murder spree hits social media.

Eager to put an end to Haddonfield’s bloody nightmare, Tommy raises a mob to go after Michael. Too bad no one thought to go to Michael’s childhood home. There, a lovely couple, Big John (Scott McArthur) and Little John (Michael McDonald), are enjoying a Halloween cuddle when a disturbing knock on the door seals their fate, Michael Myers has returned home. Meanwhile Tommy Dewey and his mob have followed bad information to the hospital where Laurie and her daughters sit unaware of Michael’s survival.

That’s a thumbnail sketch of the plot of Halloween Kills which in some ways does improve on the 2018 reboot and in other ways is deeply inferior. The good stuff is all about Michael Myers. The kills in Halloween Kills are bloody, scary and inventive. One scene has Michael dispatch one of the canon fodder extras by hitting their gun causing it to spin around and shoot the extra. It’s a darkly comic moment and one of the few times the movie demonstrates a little of the dark humor people claimed was in the 2018 movie.

Other attempts at humor however are far less successful. I mentioned the occupants of Michael’s childhood home, Big John and Little John. You can sense that the filmmakers want to make a joke out of the effete weirdness of a gay couple who call each other Big John and Little John but they are also worried about being called homophobic. Thus, this inclusion just flounders while the actors struggle to find a balance of obviously gay but not too gay.

Then there is the matter of how Big John and Little John’s story plays out. Michael decides to play a game where he knocks on the backdoor and then knocks on the front door and then runs around to the backdoor which he then sneaks in. I can’t help but burst out laughing anytime the supposedly menacing Michael Myers decides to play little games with his victims. The original film has him playing peekaboo with Laurie in the bushes and other sequels have Michael similarly toying with victims for no good reason.

I can't help but giggle over the bizarre incongruity of Michael Myers, this lumbering, unstoppable, murderous monster, also having an impish sense of humor. I keep imagining Michael giggling like a child as he runs from the back door to the front door and back to the back door of the house like a real prankster who also happens to be planning to gut the people inside the house. How this doesn’t ruin the supposed menace of Michael Myers for anyone other than me is baffling to me. How do you take him seriously? I have no answer for that but the makers of Halloween want it both ways, they want Michael to be a childlike weirdo with a macabre sense of humor and the most formidable killer alive and they fail at this notion every time.

Another example of how Halloween Kills can't get out of its own way is the fate of Lindsey Wallace. Lindsey narrowly avoids a massacre as she and a group of characters go out to hunt for Michael. She manages to hide from Michael in a genuinely tense sequence. The timing, editing, and Kyle Richards terrific performance, make for a really exciting moment.

Naturally, director David Gordon Green cannot leave well enough alone. When the movie returns to Lindsey's story, Michael has, at some point, returned to the scene in order to pose his victims. Why? Why would Michael bother returning to this scene that he just left in order to carry and pose the bodies of his victims? Is it solely so we can see the masks from Halloween 3 as a nostalgic reference and visual joke? If so, it's not worth it.

Oh and what happened to Lindsey? Was she found by Michael? Did she escape? We see her alive but she's also seemingly hurt and needs to go to the hospital but I can't tell you if she's alive or dead. Regardless of Lindsey's fate, this notion of Michael having a bizarre sense of humor that causes him to pose his victims is the absolute worst aspect of the Halloween franchise.

The biggest problem with Halloween Kills however is a distinct lack of the characters who were so interesting in the 2018 reboot. Laurie and her daughters are kept out of the action of Halloween Kills for most of the movie. Laurie is laid up believably due to her knife wound from the first movie but Judy Greer’s Karen and Andi Matichak’s Allyson are each shunted to the side while we are stuck with Anthony Michael Hall’s macho moron Tommy Doyle and a series of cannon fodder extras who are lining up the stabbed in half by Michael Myers.

Greer gets a good moment late in the movie but remember, we’ve already been told that there is another Halloween sequel, Halloween Ends, coming next year so anything cool that happens in Halloween Kills is pretty much filler. I did like how the mob story came to an end, that was shocking and surprising and by far the best idea that the makers of Halloween Kills developed as they were creating this story, But, the mob story is also why Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer and Andi Matichak’s stories have been pushed to the margins, so a bit of a mixed bag on this positive note.

I liked this Halloween story better than the last one but, realistically, how good can Halloween Kills be when we know that Michael Myers will return in Halloween Ends? We can’t buy in on the idea that anyone will be successful in stopping Michael Myers when we know Michael has to come back again. Thus, so much of Halloween Kills is wheel spinning, well staged, bloody and gruesome wheel spinning, but wheel spinning nonetheless.

Halloween Kills is only for audiences who are deeply invested in this story and not for anyone just looking for a few cheap horror thrills. Halloween Kills opened in theaters on October 15th as well as streaming on Peacock.