Review
HALLOWEEN KILLS – Review
“Search every ravine, every crevice, but the fiend must be found!”
- FRANKENSTEIN (1931), James Whale
At the end of FRANKENSTEIN, angry townspeople are sent into a maniacal rage after a man wanders into town like a trance-induced zombie carrying his drowned daughter. No one knows what events transpired to cause her unfortunate death, but they are so easily swayed to fear an unknown assailant that they light their torches and grab their pitchforks without question. They are so quick to embrace revenge. They want to kill what they fear, even if they’ve never seen it. But even more so, they want their fears to be validated.
A festering wound that has lingered in Haddonfield has suddenly burst open in HALLOWEEN KILLS, and even if half the townspeople can’t put a face to their fear, they’ve taken it upon themselves to face their fear with trial by fire.
The story of Michael Myers is one that blurs the line of man and myth. Michael Myers has always represented an evil that could be right behind you. Around the bush. In your backseat. Outside your window. In the closet. Waiting, watching, and ready to attack you on Halloween night. It’s an evil that hides in the shadows, and in HALLOWEEN KILLS, it’s an evil that is forced to come into the light.
As the fiery posters and trailers show, Michael Myers emerges from Laurie Strode’s burning home to kill again, but there’s so much more that also comes to light in David Gordon Green’s sequel to his 2018 film. After a brief flashback to set the stage and add to the mythos of that Halloween night in 1978, David Gordon Green quickly establishes an intense tone early on to continue the night of mayhem. As the middle chapter in a proposed trilogy, Jamie Lee Curtis takes a back seat for the survivors of Haddonfield – a motley crew of characters from the original film that survived “the night he came home” but struggling with their own personal demons – to lead the charge against Michael Myers. Played with toxic-masculine gusto by Anthony Michael Hall, Tommy Jarvis serves as their willing leader and is presented as a vigilante fueled by revenge and rage, providing audiences an anti-hero that’s bound to divide fans.
Editor Timothy Alverson has his work cut out for him as he’s tasked with having to bounce back and forth between several different survivor groups roaming the streets and around the hospital, following what happened to Laurie and her family at the end of the previous film. Alverson manages to stay in control of the chaos and establishes a fast-paced tone that adds tension and suspense even when the stalking and slashing aren’t taking place. It’s a perfect complement to the rapid-fire dialogue and nerve-rattling anxiety of the Haddonfield residents.
It’s just a shame that the dialogue veers far too often into melodrama rather than a more nuanced look at revenge and collective guilt. Co-written by Green, Scott Teems, and Danny McBride, the script becomes a cyclical echo of phrases like “Evil dies tonight!” and “I need to kill him!” making these strong exclamations become less sharp and dull with each outburst.
What doesn’t lose its impact is John Carpenter’s score, now with the help of Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. It’s not a HALLOWEEN film without Carpenter’s electric touch. To add to the manic nature of the film, Carpenter and company are completely set free from the constraints of the iconic theme, providing one incredible new arrangement after another that varies from more methodical to an almost operatic frenzy of synthesizers.
And as I wrote in my 2018 review, the original 1978 John Carpenter classic was never about the kills and gory imagery on screen, but rather how the power of suggestion can make you believe that both man and myth can form a monster. The lack of subtlety in the new script of this new entry certainly matches the over-the-top violence on display. Even with KILLS in the title, never before have we seen violence in a HALLOWEEN film border on torture porn. In one scene, a woman slowly dies as she watches her partner get stabbed in the back with not one knife… not two… but five knives, one by one.
David Gordon Green seems to be not content with just one version of Michael Myers. In his 2018 film, we see a more grounded approach where the killer is first introduced locked inside a mental hospital. Seeing other patients and doctors discuss Myers like you would see on a serial killer documentary grounds the later events that transpire. But KILLS side-steps this thought by doubling down on the idea that maybe he is more than a man. By leaning into the supernatural element of Michael Myers and abandoning the idea that he can succumb to the same effects of anyone made of flesh and blood, he officially becomes an unstoppable evil. Not unlike how Jason Voorhees started as just a boy in Crystal Lake before morphing into a superpowered zombie in later installments. It’s hard to figure out exactly what they want Myers to be or represent when there are opposing ideas, but I guess that’s why we have an upcoming third installment.
While David Gordon Green’s film is often sensational in tone and outlandishly violent, he at least maintains a consistent adrenaline-fueled voice throughout while exploring ideas that add weight to the bloodshed and mythos (it’s hard not to think of current headlines and the spread of misinformation when watching the mob descend into madness). One of the main points of FRANKENSTEIN is whether or not the creature’s actions could have been avoided if he was treated less like a monster and more like a man by the townspeople. How easy is it for any of us to wield a knife and become a killer? As both FRANKENSTEIN and HALLOWEEN KILLS prove, it doesn’t take much for man to become an irrational creature prone to violent behavior. And when man goes to bed at night, what is scarier: the visceral terror of confronting the consequences of your actions or the myth of the “boogeyman” in your closet. This recent entry effectively shows that madness can transcend and linger long after Halloween ends.
Overall score: 3.5 out of 5
HALLOWEEN KILLS opens in theaters and Peacock starting October 15
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