Franchises: Halloween. Halloween Kills (2021)

Whenever something is a success, it's virtually an unspoken guarantee that there will be some kind of follow-up, but it's not often that we learn there are not one but two sequels on the horizon, as was the case with Halloween 2018. Even though that movie was touted as the final confrontation between Laurie Strode and Michael Myers (not unlike H20 twenty years before), and could have indeed left off as the second half of a two-film continuity with the original, when it became the gigantic hit that it was, we all knew we were going to get more. But I don't think anybody expected Blumhouse to produce not one but two sequels back-to-back, although that was exactly what they announced the following July, along with their titles and their release dates being within a year of each other. (Speaking of the titles, given my annoyance over how the previous film was just called Halloween, you can bet that I was praying that the next one would be called anything but Halloween II, especially given how it would technically be the third film in this timeline. And while I thought Halloween Kills was a rather odd and kind of awkward title, as it sounded like they were saying the holiday itself kills, I was still more than willing to go with it.) But then, like everything else, we ended having to wait an extra year to see both it and Halloween Ends due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the summer of 2021, I saw a couple of trailers, the first being a teaser, which showed that the movie was, as I'd heard, going to be like Halloween II and start where the previous one ended, showing Laurie, Karen and Allyson being taken away in the truck that picked them up, only for Laurie to become frantic upon seeing firetrucks heading for her burning house, yelling, "Let it burn!" The second, actual trailer, however, was much more impactful, as it gave more of an idea of the movie's approach: absolute carnage. While the previous one's trailer had been cool because of the novelty of going back to the original series and seeing the classic Michael Myers onscreen again, this one seemed to say they were going to go for broke in terms of sheer brutality and bloodletting, and depict Michael laying waste to everybody and everything after escaping the fire. And while it went against the basic principles of John Carpenter's original, it wasn't something I was against, either. I figured, if nothing else, it would just be a fun, gory as hell slasher flick and remind everybody why Michael is such an awesome villain.

And when I saw it at a Saturday matinee on the weekend it was released, I came out of thinking that, if nothing else, it definitely lived up to its title. Make no mistake, a good chunk of this movie's 105-minute running time is Michael fucking people up in extremely gruesome and brutal ways, and those sequences (for the most part), as well as Michael himself again, are awesome, as is the score by John and Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies. Also, the movie has several flashbacks to just after the events of the original 1978 film that are not only amazing in how much they really look and feel like it but, in retrospect, they help with one of my major problems with the previous movie. However, the story feels very fractured, with multiple scenarios going on at once, and a huge ensemble cast who are literally all over the place, leading to Laurie Strode herself being all but side-lined, and her daughter and granddaughter not faring much better. Speaking of the characters, a lot of them make the kind of typical dumb mistakes that get people killed in these movies; there are some who, despite the mistakes they make, you're supposed to root for but I really can't; and a number of legacy characters, many played by their original actors, are brought back, only to be rather wasted. But the screenwriting is the movie's biggest failure. There are some sections of dialogue and acting that are truly cringe-worthy, philosophical speeches about Michael that come off as really overwritten and pretentious, and the movie's attempts at depth and social commentary are way too heavy-handed. Yeah, make no mistake, I find Halloween Kills to be the weakest film in the Blumhouse trilogy, and I don't think I'm alone in that, either.

Haddonfield, Illinois. Halloween night, 2018. On his way home from the high school dance, Cameron Elam comes across Deputy Frank Hawkins, badly wounded but still alive after being stabbed by Dr. Sartain. Saying, "He needs to die," and that he himself is the one who needs to do it, Hawkins thinks back to Halloween 1978, when, as a rookie, he and several other officers pursued Michael Myers after he disappeared following Dr. Loomis' shooting him. He and Officer Pete McCabe tracked him down to his old house after young Lonnie Elam had a frightening face-to-face encounter with him. Inside, McCabe was attacked by Michael and Hawkins accidentally shot and killed his partner while trying to save him; shortly afterward, Michael was surrounded by Loomis and the police and captured. Elsewhere in Haddonfield in 2018, Tommy Doyle is spending Halloween night at Mick's Bar & Carry-Out, along with fellow survivors Lindsey Wallace, Marion Chambers, and Lonnie Elam, an annual tradition for their group. Unbeknownst to them and everyone else in Haddonfield, not only has Michael returned but is still alive after being left for dead in Laurie Strode's burning home. Firefighters who arrive to put it out are attacked and brutally slaughtered by Michael, who used the gun closet in the basement to shield himself from the flames. While Laurie, her daughter Karen, and granddaughter Allyson are taken to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, Michael resumes his killing spree, starting with Laurie's closest neighbors. Those at the bar, as well as the rest of the town, are then made aware of the evening's earlier murders on a local news alert. As the fear and panic spreads, Tommy begins whipping the citizens up into a bloodthirsty mob, determined to hunt Michael down and kill him once and for all. After Karen and Allyson learn that Michael is still alive, the latter joins Cameron and Lonnie in the hunt, while Tommy, following more murders and Lindsey nearly being killed, arrives at the hospital with her, determined to protect Laurie, who only then learns of Michael's survival. However, the mob that Tommy creates proves to be just as destructive and dangerous, while Michael himself makes his way back to his old home, which is now occupied.

Scott Teems

According to both Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, when they were first hired to revive the Halloween franchise, they'd actually thought about doing two movies back-to-back from the get-go, but decided not to count their chickens before they hatched and just focus on the one movie and see how well it did. Needless to say, they knew after the first weekend, when Halloween 2018, which was made for just around $10 million, opened to almost $80 million, that they were going to be back for more (the movie going on to make $259 million in all, the biggest hit the two of them had ever had, likely only served to seal the deal). But while McBride and Green would again collaborate to write the screenplay for Halloween Kills, their co-writer on the first film, Jeff Fradley, wouldn't be back, as he was now part of the writing staff for the HBO show, The Righteous Gemstones. In his place would be writer/director Scott Teems, who'd actually been friends with McBride and Green for many years, although this was the first time they'd ever worked together. Interestingly enough, the script for Halloween Ends, which was written at the same time as Kills (although both movies wouldn't be shot back-to-back as originally planned), would also have two new writers working with McBride and Green, rather than also with Teems. In any case, while the three of them did have high aspirations for the script and the movie's deeper meaning, as I'll get into, I think they really fumbled the ball.

I'll give David Gordon Green credit: when it became clear that he was going to do not just one but three Halloween movies, he opted to make each one as different from the other as possible, each with their own look and feel. As he himself said in the book, Halloween: The Official Making of Halloween, Halloween Kills & Halloween Ends, "The first one getting us grounded in the horror genre and these characters, getting us up to speed. The second one is an 'all hell breaks loose' action movie..." I'll also continue complimenting him on his filmmaking methods, even if I don't find them to be quite as inspired as they were in the first movie, and way of dealing with horror, as there are some truly brutal and downright disturbing sequences here, and there's also one that's genuinely tense. And since there is a lot of action in this one, you'd hope he'd be able to pull them off in the shooting and editing and, fortunately, he does. But, all that said, I feel he and his co-writers bit off more than they could chew, and some of the screenwriting in general makes me wonder just what in the hell they were thinking.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, I have to note just how much this movie is akin to the original Halloween II (which may not be a coincidence, as Green has said he likes that movie quite a bit), and not just because it's the second chapter in this trilogy. It starts virtually where the previous movie ended, much of the action takes place at a hospital, it's significantly more violent and bloodier than the previous one, and a part of the story concerns the people of Haddonfield learning about the killing spree that occurred earlier in the evening and their reaction to it. Moreover, its flashbacks to 1978 kind of serve as this timeline's own version of Halloween II, as they pick up from the original film's ending and show how Michael was captured. They even use a clip from the sequel itself, despite it not being canon here, to show Sheriff Brackett learning about Annie's murder, which didn't happen in the original. There's also some allusion to the opening sequence of Rob Zombie's Halloween II here, notably in the surgery you see Laurie go through after she arrives. The biggest difference is that here, despite there being carnage at the hospital, Michael doesn't cause it, as he never shows up there (technically, you could argue he didn't cause any carnage at the hospital in Zombie's film, as that turned out to be a dream, but whatever). Regardless, because of all these similarities, I'm going to be referring to the original Halloween II a lot in this review, so just bear with me.

Ironically, Halloween Kills is also guilty of a number of things that Halloween II has often been criticized for, chief among them being how Laurie Strode is out of the action for much of the movie; in fact, I'd argue it's far worse here. As much as people charge Halloween II with making her inactive, with very little dialogue, at least in that movie she eventually gets out of bed and hides when she realizes that Michael is in the building, runs for her life when she sees him murder Jill, and aids Dr. Loomis in defeating him during the climax. In Kills, the minute Laurie, Karen, and Allyson reach Haddonfield Memorial, Laurie has virtually nothing to do except lie in her bed following the surgery on her battle wounds (she doesn't regain consciousness until 53 minutes in), catch up with Frank Hawkins when he's brought in, eventually learn that Michael is still alive thanks to Tommy Doyle's big mouth, get out of bed and prepare for Michael to come for her at the hospital (which he never does), and get caught up in and, when she realizes the mistake, try to stop the riot that breaks out over the other mental patient, Tivoli, being mistaken for Michael. She gets badly injured as a result of the latter, and after they see to her wounds, she spends the rest of the movie in the recovery room with Hawkins, pontificating the effect Michael that has had on Haddonfield and ending the movie with an overwrought speech about what he is and the nature of evil, etc. She also blames herself for what happens, still thinking that Michael is after her, and thus, she's the one who needs to kill him. Because of that, she intends to go find and face him again, despite her injuries, but when Hawkins tells her that Michael isn't focused on her, that he only showed up at her house because of Dr. Sartain, that gets dropped immediately. For me personally, this is on par with Halloween: Resurrection in terms of how badly wasted Laurie is here. As insulting as her death there was, at least, like in Halloween II, she still did something. And as much as I thought her level of paranoia and preparedness was overdone in the previous movie, she still had a part in the story, while she may as well not even be in this film, and the filmmakers should've instead focused solely on Michael's continuing rampage and the effect it's having on the town. They seemed to think that giving her a lot more dialogue and scenes with other characters than she had in Halloween II would make up for it but, let me tell you, it doesn't.

That's not to say there's nothing to compliment about Laurie here, because there is. In the early scene where she sees those firetrucks heading towards her house, the anguish and horror in her voice as she screams, "Let him burn! No! Let him burn!", is palpable, and it's further compounded when it becomes apparent that, upon arriving at the hospital, getting doped up on pain meds, and awakening long afterward, she's completely forgotten about it. Upon waking and seeing Karen, one of the first things she says is,

"Michael's gone. We got him... We burned him to the goddamn ground." She's so happy and satisfied that it makes you feel bad for when she'll inevitably learn that he survived and is on the loose again. Laurie also has a really nice moment shortly after Hawkins is wheeled into the room with her. As he lies there across from her, seemingly comatose, she speaks to him and we learn of their past history: "Do you remember that night? At the bar? You know, I never said anything 'cause I couldn't be sure. I was so

messed up... but you helped me. I always liked you." Hawkins then responds, saying, "You so crazy," and Laurie affectionately says, "Fuck you," before the two of them start to reconnect, with Hawkins admitting he was hoping things would go farther between the two of them. She goes on to tell him that they killed Michael and Hawkins says, "It's about damn time," causing the two of them to laugh, then wince from their injuries. And when the nurse comes in to give Hawkins a shot, Laurie comments, "Hey, nurse. Will you do me a favor? Help out my friend here. Make it

a double." It's a nice moment, especially after how their few interactions in the previous movie were rather tense, since they were both hunting Michael at the time, and Hawkins told Laurie she was crazy for praying that he would escape from the asylum. On top of that, Laurie, as usual, proves to be a tough woman. When she first awakens in the hospital, Karen tells her to stop moving around, saying, "You're not fine! You had a knife in your fucking stomach!", but she says, "It's a paper-cut." And when she learns that Michael is still at large, though she's horrified, she

immediately toughens back up, telling Tommy Doyle, "We fight! We always fight!" She also gets out of bed and makes Karen get out of her way, despite her injury, and gives herself an injection, regardless of how painful it is, adding, "Let him come for me."

I could tolerate Judy Greer's character of Karen in the previous movie, but here, I find myself not really caring about or even liking her. Even when they first arrive at the hospital and, as Karen is cleaning her bloody hands, it hits her that her husband is dead, it doesn't really impact me, mostly because I didn't like that character and also because his death barely garnered any reaction in the last one. It's the same thing when she's comforting Allyson afterward; I should feel something but I don't. But where I really start to not like Karen is when she learns that Michael is alive. Granted, she's misinformed, thinking that he's targeting Laurie and is, thus, going to be coming to the hospital, but when she tries to order the police to beef up security, in a similarly petulant manner to when she was talking to them about their inability to find Allyson earlier, and yells at Allyson to go sit with her grandmother, I can't help but feel that she's really living up to her name. Now, at the same time, Allyson is talking about going out and joining the hunt for Michael, and doesn't explain how she knows that he really isn't after Laurie, but the way Karen demoralizes her by saying their plan failed, adds, "The police are out there looking for him. You think you're the one who's gonna find him?", and then says, "Sit in that room and wait with your grandmother. Now!", makes me want to smack her across her stupid face. She also puts the idea that Michael is coming to the hospital into Tommy Doyle's head, which leads into him rallying everybody into the frenzy that results in Tivoli dying. Speaking of which, during the latter parts of the movie, Karen does, like before, try to redeem herself by attempting to save Tivoli, as well as keep her seriously injured mother from unnecessarily endangering herself by not telling her that Michael is alive at first. And during the climax, she not only saves her daughter from Michael but manages to lead him into a trap where he's surrounded by Tommy and the mob, even stabbing him in the back after they've beaten him. But, right at the end of the movie, she dies for a reason that's not only stupid but is nonsensical.

While Karen spends much of the movie at the hospital with Laurie, Allyson (Andi Matichak), grieving over her father's death, and despite what her mother says, opts to join the lynch mob and hunt Michael down when she learns he escaped the fire. Fortunately for her, she joins Cameron and Lonnie Elam, managing to avoid getting slaughtered along with just about everybody in Lindsey Wallace's group. In the end, her group finds its way to the Myers house, where Lonnie and Cameron both die horrific deaths, and Allyson has her first true confrontation with Michael. He comes very close to killing her as well, but she's ultimately saved by her mother. Not nearly as much to say about Allyson this time, save for her admirable determination to stop Michael from killing anybody else, as well as for standing up to Karen and saying that she's no longer going to act like he doesn't exist, as she says she was forced to her whole life. And while it doesn't work, she does deserve credit for trying to draw Michael's attention away from Cameron, despite her having just injured her leg to where she can barely move. But, like I said, she could've saved a lot of trouble if she'd explained to Karen why she knew that Michael wasn't actually targeting Laurie (who knows if Karen would've listened, but she still could've tried).

It's been said that Will Patton was just as surprised as anybody to learn that his character of Deputy Frank Hawkins wasn't dead after being stabbed in the neck and run over by Dr. Sartain. It is rather hard to buy that he wouldn't have bled out or succumbed to serious internal injuries before Cameron came across him but, regardless, I'm glad that he is still alive, as he's one of the better characters here. Despite being too injured to get out of his hospital bed once he's brought in, we learn a lot about Hawkins that makes

him more well-rounded than the mere supporting character he was before. Like I said, we learn that he and Laurie have a bit of a history together, and he'd hoped the two of them could've become an item, but he knew about Laurie's crush on Ben Tramer (who, unlike in Halloween II, doesn't appear only to just die a random, fiery death here). More significantly, this film expands upon something that was briefly mentioned before, that Hawkins was part of Michael's arrest back in 1978 and even stopped Dr. Loomis from killing him. In flashbacks to that night, when he was just a young rookie (Thomas Mann), he's the first responder on the scene after Michael's disappearance, chasing him down a back-alley, only to lose sight of him. Meeting up with some other officers, he and Pete McCabe track Michael down to his old house, where Hawkins ends up fatally shooting McCabe while trying to save him from being strangled. As Michael is surrounded outside, Hawkins, after watching McCabe slowly die on the floor, is met on the stairs by Loomis, who asks him if Michael murdered someone else. Late in the movie, Hawkins confesses to Laurie about why he stopped Loomis from killing Michael shortly afterward: "I was lost in my own regret. I saw the look in Loomis' eyes. All he wanted was more blood, more death. I couldn't take it. And in that moment, all I could think was that, inside that monster, there was somebody's baby boy." We get into the regret he feels about doing that, that he feels responsible for everything that's happened now, saying, "I coulda made all this go away... But now I know, there's nothin' inside that man but pure evil." Laurie comforts him, saying he was just doing his job, and in the last flashback, you see that one of his superiors helped cover up Hawkins' mistake, assuring him that it was an accident.

The character I know I'm supposed to root for but whom I find it really hard to is Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy Doyle (the producers have claimed they approached Paul Rudd about playing Tommy again but he couldn't because he was shooting Ghostbusters: Afterlife; just try to imagine that). Like Laurie in the previous movie, Tommy is portrayed as a very paranoid person who suffers from severe PTSD due to what happened back in 1978. Before he and his group of friends are formally introduced, you can hear him suggesting that the murders at the gas station earlier that day were Michael's doing, although the others write it off as him being paranoid. And when Lonnie pressures him into going onstage as part of the bar's open mic night, he tells the crowd about Michael's original killing spree, about how he himself got caught up in it, and has them salute both the victims and those that survived, specifically his group of friends. He ends his stint by emphasizing his message that they mustn't give in to fear. When he and everyone else at the bar later see the newsflash about the murders earlier in the evening, as well as the crash of the transfer bus from Smith's Grove, he's immediately sure it's Michael. Thus, when one of the patrons claims Michael is in the backseat of their car, Tommy doesn't waste any time in grabbing the bartender's baseball bat and heading out there to confront him. Unbeknownst to them, it wasn't Michael, but rather Tivoli, who gets away without them seeing him. Regardless, Tommy is still intent on hunting Michael down and rallies numerous other townspeople to help, feeling that the police are unable to do anything. Though his intentions are good, Tommy ultimately just ends up getting more people killed, and almost causes Lindsey to die as well. When he brings her to the hospital afterward, he meets with Karen, who tells him that Michael will be coming there to finish off Laurie. While he does ask how she knows that, when he overhears that the hospital is on lockdown, he whips the crowd up into a hostile mob, declaring, "Michael Myers will be executed tonight, and it will not go without witness! We need all of you! Evil dies tonight!" When Sheriff Barker tries to restore order, Tommy tells him that they're not going to listen to him, given how they couldn't stop Michael from killing those he already has, and that they need to take matters into their own hands. And then, Tommy barges into Laurie's room, ignoring Karen telling him that he can't, and spills the beans that Michael is alive and vows to protect her.

Again, while I can see that Tommy has good intentions, he mostly comes off as a rash hothead who won't listen to reason and whose impulsiveness leads to total disaster. This is best exemplified when Tivoli shows up at the hospital and Tommy immediately buys into the misconception that it's Michael. Along with Laurie initially thinking it could be him, Tommy runs after "Michael," which leads to the crowd going nuts and unwilling to listen when Laurie and Karen realize they're after the wrong guy. Even when two

cops who learn of this try to stop Tommy, even telling him it's not Michael, he's so wound up and unreasonable that he not only doesn't listen but punches one of the cops and shoves the other away. It's only when Tivoli is about to commit suicide that Karen is able to get it across to Tommy that they're after the wrong person. Still, even after Tivoli has jumped to his death and they can see what he looks like, Tommy, when faced with the idea that he led to an innocent man being killed, says, "He's always

worn a mask. How do we know that it's not him?" I get that he's in denial and doesn't want to face the truth, which he later does, saying, "I fucked up. I'm sorry!", but after that, I find it hard to really like him, despite his determination to keep on trying. And even though he and the mob do manage to confront Michael in the end, it's ultimately for naught, as Tommy and everyone else dies.

Tommy Doyle is one of a number of legacy characters who return in this film. Another is Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet), the kid who bullied Tommy in the original Halloween but who's now his best friend. It seems like they bonded over their both having encounters with Michael that night, as the first flashback shows that young Lonnie (Tristian Eggerling) ran into him while the police were looking for him. Terrified, Lonnie curled into the fetal position, apologized for bullying Tommy and begged

for his life, only for Michael to disappear and Hawkins and McCabe to find him. After telling them that he saw the Boogeyman, Lonnie ran off in terror. You also learn that he himself was a victim of bullying, explaining why he victimized Tommy. As an adult, while he can be a rather loud drunk, Lonnie comes off as a pretty decent guy and father to Cameron, rushing to help him when he gets a cellphone call telling him that something bad has happened. That said, though, he not only opts to let Cameron join him as part of the mob to hunt down Michael, but he also has a bunch of weapons in the back of his van, some of which he admits he doesn't have permits for. As he, Cameron, and Allyson are driving around, Lonnie tells the latter some stories about him and her dad when they were kids, making her laugh, as well as mourn for him. Significantly, Lonnie correctly deduces that Michael is heading for his old home, but when the three of them head there, he stupidly decides to go in by himself, not wanting to risk Allyson or Cameron's lives, despite, again, having brought them along on the hunt. Naturally, he's promptly killed, and Cameron joins him shortly afterward.

After coming off as a cheating, gaslighting dickhead at the high school party in the previous movie, Cameron (Dylan Arnold), who's the very first character you see when the movie begins, does manage to redeem himself. Intending to make things right with Allyson somehow, he comes across Hawkins as he lies in the street and immediately rushes to his aid, as well as gets him taken to the hospital. By the time he gets there and meets back up with Allyson, Cameron is not only aware of what's going on but tells her that they're planning to go after Michael and asks her to come along. He also says he wants to help her in any way he can and does seem to have genuinely made a real turnaround (probably because he had time to sober up). In the end, when they reach the Myers house, and Lonnie goes in alone, Cameron and Allyson follow after him when they hear a gunshot. Inside, they find that, not only are the home's current owners dead, but so is Lonnie, whose body Cameron finds himself. Michael then immediately attacks and, despite Allyson's attempt to save him, Cameron dies a prolonged, brutal, and very painful death.

Among the other legacy characters are Charles Cyphers returning as Leigh Brackett, who's now a security guard at the hospital and gets caught up in the mob mentality that leads to the death of Tivoli (this was Cyphers' last role before his death in 2024, which is a shame, because I met him a couple of times at conventions and he was a really cool guy). In fact, he's out for Michael's blood before Tommy arrives at the hospital, arguing with Sheriff Barker about it in an early scene. And something I didn't

realize until I read about it is that this movie's climax marks the only time Brackett, be it Cyphers or Brad Dourif in the Rob Zombie movies, actually physically confronts Michael. Kyle Richards reprises her role as Lindsey Wallace, who comes very close to getting killed by Michael like everyone else in her group (she's the only who fights against him in a sensible manner and manages to escape his grip). And Nancy Stephens as Marion Chambers, who gets caught up in a similar situation like when she was with Dr. Loomis

in the original film, only this time, due to some dumb moves on her part, she doesn't make it out alive. (Not counting the remakes, this makes her the one character whom Michael has killed twice in two different timelines.) Also, if you hate that constant, "Evil dies tonight!" chant, you have her to thank for it, as she's the one who first says it. Speaking of Loomis, what's really cool is that you actually see him in the flashbacks. He's played by the movie's art director, Tom Jones Jr., who already looks like Donald Pleasence to begin with but the resemblance

was further increased thanks to some subtle prosthetics. His voice is provided by Colin Mahan, who also did it in the previous movie, but while he was good there, I find his performance this time to be a tad too over-the-top, really coming off as an impression. And as far as legacy characters go, you can't get more specific than the kids whom you see bullying Lonnie during the first flashback; they're actually meant to be the kids whom Laurie saw trick-or-treating on her way home from school in the original, which I also didn't pick up on at all until I read it elsewhere. Knowing this definitely adds an uncomfortable spin to Laurie's innocent smile at them in the original.

The Myers house is currently owned by this gay couple, Big John (Scott MacArthur) and Little John (Michael McDonald), whom I actually like... initially. Even though Big John's introduction, where he's singing along and dancing to a record of It's Halloween, in just his boxers, tank-top, and open robe, is something I shouldn't like, as it's more of that humor from the previous movie that I find off-putting, I found myself smiling when I first saw it in the theater and still do today. I also like how, when both he and Little John (who spends the whole movie in a pirate costume) are tricked by a trio of asshole trick-or-treaters who steal all of their candy, they scare them by telling them about Michael, with Big John saying, "He stabbed his sister in the tits... Right upstairs," and Little John adding, "And sometimes, when the wind blows just right, we can still hear her ghost... calling out his name." They both then move in towards the kids, saying, "Michael," in an eerie manner a couple of times, before suddenly yelling, with Big John screaming, "Get out of our yard, you little perverts!", and sending them running off, screaming. The next time you see them, they're watching TV, with Big John smoking some weed, when they hear someone knocking at their back door. Little John goes out there, yelling at whoever it is to quit it, only for someone to then start knocking at the front door. Big John, not being in the mood, grabs a golf club from the closet and goes out on the front porch, this time yelling, "Don't you know whose house this was?! Huh?!" Little John tries to talk him down, saying they don't want to get sued, while Big John, after nudging a hedge with a club, threatens to next come at whoever it is with a pitchfork that's part of their decorations. Where I start to lose my affection for them, though, is when Michael breaks into their house, as they not only make dumb decisions that get them killed, but fall prey to awkward dialogue.

A good number of actors reprise their roles from the previous movie, some very obviously, while others have bigger roles after appearing in that movie very briefly. Outside of the main cast, our most obvious returning actor is Omar Dorsey as Sheriff Barker, but while he has a little more screentime here, and tries to retain order when things start getting out of control, he's ultimately quite ineffective in his job. Also, Tivoli (Ross Bacon), the other escaped mental patient who gets mistaken for Michael and is chased through

the hospital, was introduced in the previous movie, in the courtyard scene at the beginning. It's really sad, as this guy, who never hurt anybody and, according to Dr. Sartain, has an obsession with shoe laces, actually gets mistaken for Michael twice: early on, when he sneaks into the backseat of a car, and when he shows up at the hospital, asking for help, and is chased, cornered, and leaps to his death out of fear. Vanessa (Carmela McNeal) and Marcus (Michael Smallwood), the couple at the bar who are dressed up as a nurse

and doctor, respectively (the opposite of their individual professions, it turns out), are the ones who nearly fell prey to Michael during his initial killing spree in the previous movie. Upon hearing the news report about the murders in their neighborhood, they attempt to head home to see what's going on, only for Tivoli to sneak into their car and get mistaken for Michael. They also join Lindsey and Marion's group, and get brutally murdered along with the latter when they come across Michael. Similarly, Sondra Dickerson (Diva Tyler), who's introduced here, along

with her husband, Phil (Lenny Clarke), as Laurie's closest neighbors, was actually the cemetery caretaker who led Aaron and Dana to Judith Myers' grave. The two of them fall prey to Michael after he massacres the firemen, both suffering nasty, painful attacks at his hands. But while Phil does die, Sondra, like Hawkins, would be revealed to have survived in Halloween Ends. During the newsflash on TV at the bar, Julian (Jibrail Nantambu), the boy whom Vicky was babysitting, is interviewed about her being murdered. And just as Nancy Loomis did for Halloween II,

Drew Scheid appears briefly as Oscar's corpse, both when he's still impaled on the gate and when his mother (Holli Saperstein) sees him in the morgue. Speaking of his mother, as brief as her role is, her concern over her son and reaction upon seeing his body is infinitely more affecting than Karen and Allyson's grieving over Ray.

Despite what I may personally think of any of these three movies, one thing I cannot deny is that they're all very well-made from a technical standpoint. Visually, Halloween Kills has always seemed to me to be a lot harsher than its predecessor, with more contrasting blacks and shadows due to its all taking place at night, as well as richer colors in general, like the deep amber for the burning house at the beginning, the multi-colored interiors and exteriors of the bar (most notably the red and yellow lights up on the stage, and the greenish ones on the outside), the

lime-green sort of look to the interiors of Phil and Sondra's home, the warm comfortable look to the inside of the refurbished Myers house, and, naturally, the deep red of the many bloody death scenes, as well as their horrific aftermaths. The interiors of the hospital are the only scenes that are rather devoid of color, going for that familiar white, clinical look. And while the film does take place entirely at night, and there are many exterior scenes, they're well lit to where they're dark enough, but not so much that you can't see anything. The same goes for the editing of

the action and fight sequences, many of which do happen either outside or in very dark interiors; while the editing does get quick at points, it never gets so kinetic that you can't tell what's going on. The editing is also used in other ways, like in Big John's introductory scene, which is cut in a manner to make it look kind of like a music video, with the cuts reacting to his dancing and singing along to It's Halloween, and during the ending, where it almost becomes non-linear, as we see Michael slaughtering

the lynch mob, while at the same time, Karen and Allyson are sitting on the steps of the Myers house, leading into her death at the very end, and, at the hospital, Laurie talks to Hawkins about what Michael has become by this point. Speaking of Michael massacring the mob, that sequence was shot on a massive turntable in a studio, with big, bright lights in the background, and in slow motion, making it come off as surreal and dream-like. Cinematography-wise, DP Michael Simmonds said in the making of book

that the biggest challenge in shooting Halloween Kills was the enormous amount of big, ensemble scenes, especially at the hospital, when the mob is formed and they crowd through the place's narrow corridors in order to chase down Tivoli. Again, speaking for myself, I find those sequences to be shot really well, and I never feel like I don't know what's going on. And there's one really effecting bit of camerawork that starts on Sondra's bloody face, as she lies on the floor after being stabbed in the throat, and it then slowly pans around to show Michael stabbing Phil with one knife after the other.

Other well-done, stylistic choices include the use of certain POV shots. For instance, when Michael kills the firefighters, there's a shot from one's point-of-view when Michael stabs a pick through his oxygen mask's visor, and we some shots of Michael killing the others through this POV as well. Also, since he gets mistaken for Michael when he shows up at the hospital, it's kind of fitting that Tivoli's arrival there and his entrance is done through his own POV, as is his harrowing jump to his death (as somebody who's scared of heights and falling, that shot does kind of

mess with me). As much as I don't buy into the emotion it's trying to convey, the scene where Karen begins to process Ray's death is well shot, with an overhead of her washing her blood-covered hands, leading to her seeing her wedding ring, followed by an exterior one of that room where she closes its window's blinds so she can cry in private, and a muffled shot of her crying through another, blurred window. In fact, the filmmakers often make use of little-to-no sound in favor of score and/or slow

motion to make some scenes more dramatic, like Michael emerging from the burning house and confronting the firemen, the truly heartbreaking moment when Oscar's mom sees his cadaver in the morgue, and the build-up to Tivoli's suicide when he's cornered by the mob, as well as Tommy slowly but surely learning that they're after the wrong person.

Stylistically, however, my personal favorite parts of the movie are the flashbacks to 1978, as they sincerely look and feel like you're seeing what happened after the original John Carpenter movie ended. The look of the film itself has that vibe in spades, especially the trademark blue lighting (once again, Simmonds wisely consulted with Dean Cundey), and the same goes for the locations within the neighborhood itself, which were shot almost entirely on a soundstage and look remarkably like those same dark, tree-lined streets and back-alleys

you saw in both the original and at the beginning of Halloween II. The recreation of the old, abandoned version of the Myers house, though, is definitely the art department's greatest accomplishment. As close as the recreation was in Halloween: Resurrection, this really looks and feels exactly like the same barren, weathered, spooky place from the original, both on the outside and inside. I've read that the filmmakers not only studied every frame of the house from that movie but also took measurements and other specs on

the actual house as it still stands today, and it shows. There are some new additions, like a closet beneath the staircase and a stained glass window at the top of the stairs, but otherwise, it's virtually exact, right down to the creepy way in which it's lit with that blue, moonlight vibe. And the cherry on top of these flashbacks is not just Dr. Loomis but how Michael himself looks here, which I'll go into later. 

This same fake neighborhood and house on the soundstage were reused for the scenes at the Myers house in present day, where it's been turned into a nicely-furnished, upscale home by Big John and Little John. We see most of what they've done with the place late in the film, when Michael manages to break into their house and they search for him. The living room (which I think was actually the dining room before) is not only really comfortable, with some nice furniture, but also has a big, flat screen TV up on the wall near the ceiling. The kitchen looks good as well,

while the foyer has been given a new paint job and floor polishing, and a room on the other side of the house has been made into a big dining room with a lovely green color scheme, a fairly large table, and fancy plates and cups on display. Upstairs is a big study, which is where Big John is introduced, and across the hall is Judith's old bedroom which, despite naturally being refurnished and redone, looks very similar to how it was before, with the dresser and vanity mirror still sitting where it was when Michael stabbed her to death as a kid.

The filmmakers had initially planned to return to Charleston, South Carolina, but instead relocated up to Wilmington, North Carolina when the former state's tax incentives no longer became available, as well as because Wilmington was much less stringent in the hours they would allow for shooting (they'd also planned to shoot Halloween Ends there, but it didn't work out). Another big incentive for moving there was Screen Gems Studios, wherein they shot not only all the scenes with the Myers house but also the interiors of the hospital, which had previously been

built for the canned Swamp Thing television series (the exterior of the hospital was actually that of a high school). While it's not used quite as extensively as in Halloween II, we see quite a lot of the inside of Haddonfield Memorial, like the front desk and main waiting room (where Tommy gets everyone riled up), the operating room (the people performing surgery on Laurie in this scene were real surgeons), the morgue (which contains not only Oscar's body but Dr. Sartain's, which you learn from a close-up of his toe-tag), a lonely stairway where Karen and Allyson

mourn Ray's death, and Laurie's recovery room, as well as the corridors and hallways, and the empty, upper floors when the mob chases after Tivoli. The interiors of Laurie's burning house, which make for a really cool and well-shot sequence, were on the studio lot, while the exterior was shot at a spot in Wilmington that, coincidentally, was being used to train firefighters. After that, everything else was shot at real places, like on the Wilmington streets, the bar where Tommy and his group of friends are introduced

(the radio tower you see in the background of some shots here and elsewhere would prove significant in Ends), the park where Michael attacks those hunting him, and the small bridge and creek where Lindsey hides from him (said creek was said to be full of alligators and snakes, which horrified Kyle Richards, but she proved to be a trooper and still did it).

Like the previous film, I think that Halloween Kills really has that feeling of the holiday, thanks in large part to its taking place completely at night and also its being filmed in the autumn, again allowing me to buy that it's October in the Midwest. Moreover, I like the feeling that it's now really late at night, with the streets being mainly empty, due to both the trick-or-treating dying down as well as the growing realization of what's happening. The shots of just a few decorations still hanging up, like those balloons in the very first shot, and those on the porch at the Myers

house and others, combined with some occasional people in costume, the big expanses of blackness all around, and the mostly dead silence of the streets, help get across that feeling that Halloween is slowly but surely winding down, at least officially.

However, now it's time to get into the movie's failings and, for me, they all have to do with the screenwriting in one way or another. I used to say that it has virtually no plot aside from Michael slaughtering people for nearly two hours, but upon watching it again, I've realized that it does have a plot, but it's broken up into numerous, scattered scenarios going on at once. The main story is Michael escaping from the burning house and continuing his rampage, while Laurie, Karen, and Allyson are taken to the hospital, but you also have the subplots with the citizens of

Haddonfield learning of and reacting to the killings thanks to news reports, Tommy attempting to organize everyone into a unit to hunt Michael down, the various search parties who go out looking for him, the mob riot at the hospital that leads to an innocent man's death and what this says about the effect Michael is having on them, Michael eventually returning to his old house and killing Big John and Little John, and the flashbacks to the aftermath of the original movie and Hawkins' guilt over stopping Dr. Loomis from killing Michael. It feels like way too

much for one movie to hold, and this structure results in the characters being spread far apart for much of it, with Allyson joining Cameron and Lonnie as part of the search parties, and Laurie and Karen remaining at the hospital for the most part, with the former never leaving. It also makes the returning legacy characters feel totally wasted, with Lindsey and Marion going out to hunt for Michael only for the former to get killed and the latter never being seen again after she's taken to the hospital; and Brackett never having any

scenes with them, or Laurie and her family, for that matter. And finally, the movie has so much to get to that it hurts the effectiveness of the characters' own personal stories and inner conflicts (save for Hawkins). In addition to Karen and Allyson's brief mourning for Ray, Allyson and Cameron reconcile quite easily (I'm glad that Cameron redeems himself but there could've been more of Allyson initially being reluctant to accept his help or even talk to him), and the movie could've delved a little deeper into how

Tommy, Lonnie, Lindsey, and Marion bonded over the years, when they started having this annual get-together at the bar, and what kind of a relationship each of them currently have with Laurie  Tommy seems to be somewhat close to Laurie, given how readily accepting she is of him at the hospital, but it would've been nice to hear how often the others see and talk to her (if at all, given her reclusive nature up to this point).

As I've already alluded to, another major issue is that so many of the characters who get killed do so because they are insultingly stupid. For instance, when Sondra and Phil realize that somebody has broken into their house and is in their bathroom, instead of immediately calling the cops, Phil walks to the bathroom to check it out. Granted, when he gets a glimpse of Michael, he tells Sondra to call the police, but by that point, it's too late for either of them. At the bar, when Vanessa and Marcus are leaving upon learning about the murders that have occurred in their

neighborhood, Marcus, like when we briefly met them in the previous movie, goes back inside because he forgot the damn stethoscope that's part of his costume, leaving his wife to go out to their car alone. This doesn't result in her getting killed (not yet, anyway), as Tivoli turns out to be the one hiding in the backseat, but in the previous movie, when she was left out there as potentially easy prey for Michael, it was suspenseful, whereas here, it comes off as a slasher movie cliche. Things really get stupid when Michael attacks Marion, Marcus, and Vanessa in the

car at the park by climbing onto its roof. Marion shoots wildly at anything that moves, blowing out two of the windows, and locks them in the car, so they can't easily escape if they need to. When Michael jumps down and faces them, Marion points her gun at him and says, "Hey, Michael. This is for Dr. Loomis," only for it to click empty because she wasted all of her bullets shooting at nothing. She doesn't even try to climb out the shattered window behind her or unlock the dor, but just backs up, as Michael looms in and

stabs her to death. And even though Marion is clearly dead by this point, Marcus attacks Michael instead of getting out of the car, and doesn't even bother trying to disarm him, which leads to him dying. And while Vanessa made it out of the car and has a gun, she runs at the car, shooting wildly despite not having a clear shot at Michael, and he causes her to shoot herself by slamming the door into her. Later, when Big John and Little John realize that someone is in their house, they decide to search for him... by splitting up, with the

latter searching downstairs, while the former takes the upstairs. Even worse, Big John takes this little dinky knife they were using to carve up cheese as a weapon. And after he's killed and Little John finds him, he sees Michael standing at the window, his back to him. Instead of making an effort to jump him, Little John instead says his name, drawing attention to himself, and then says, "You've come home." He doesn't even seem to try to defend himself when Michael heads towards him. As I said before, when the three of them

arrive at the Myers house near the end, Lonnie tells Allyson and Cameron to stay in the car, as he doesn't want to endanger them. He immediately gets killed and the two of them come in after him, eventually leading to Cameron dying, so big load of good that did. At least when they're searching the house, Allyson and Cameron don't get too far away from each other. Then, Tommy's mob, who surround Michael at the end, don't whale on him nearly as

much as they should. They do beat on him for a little bit, but let their guard down after he falls to the pavement and they hit him until he stops moving, leaving themselves open to get brutalized just a few minutes later. And then, at the end of the movie, Karen randomly sees a vision of young Michael standing in the window of Judith's room, which prompts her to go up there and stand in that spot, resulting in her getting killed. Not only was that stupid of her, but that moment was completely random and made no sense.

The dialogue is sometimes either badly overwritten and melodramatic, or just odd in its delivery and intention. The best example of the latter is, again, Big John and Little John when they realize that someone other than a mischievous kid has broken into their house. Upon seeing the backdoor broken open and Michael's bloody hand-print on the wall next to it, Little John calls in Big John and dramatically turns and tells him, "Someone's in our house, and it's not a child." When the two of them then grab their respective weapons, with Big John removing his rings

and double watches beforehand, they look at each other and say, "I've got this knife," and proceed to search the house separately, continually calling to each other using their nicknames in a "Marco," "Polo," manner. Speaking of which, it's already odd that they would refer to each other as "Big John" and "Little John," as they do for the entire movie, as those sound like monikers made up by other people to differentiate them, and it hurts a lot of that sequence's tension because of how odd their speaking to each other is. As for overwritten dialogue, you could argue

that Tommy's speeches to everybody about uniting against Michael are an example but, while some of what he says is definitely overdone, I think Anthony Michael Hall delivers it with enough passion to where they do kind of work for what they're going for. I also think that Will Patton does really well in delivering Hawkins' speech about his regret over letting Michael live forty years before. But then, they give Laurie these philosophical, Loomis-like speeches about what Michael has done to Haddonfield, her own

relationship to him, and how he's become more than just a man by this point, and as great of an actor as Jamie Lee Curtis is, she can't deliver this stuff the way that Donald Pleasence could. When she learns that Michael is still alive and believes he'll come after her, she tells Karen, "Let him come for me. Let him take my head as I take his... Maybe the only way he can die is if I die too. Karen, you and Allyson shouldn't have to keep running because of the darkness that I created. So, you just have to let me

go." During the riot scene, Laurie calls it, "Michael's masterpiece," adding, "He created this chaos. I'm the one who brought it all onto Haddonfield," prompting Hawkins to tell her about how he feels this is all his fault. Afterward, she tells him, "Now it needs to die. Because every time somebody is afraid, the Boogeyman wins." 

But the piece de resistance is the speech that the movie ends on: "I always thought Michael Myers was flesh and blood, just like you and me. But a mortal man could not have survived what he's lived through. The more he kills, the more he transcends into something else impossible to defeat: fear. People are afraid. That is the true curse of Michael... You can't defeat it with brute force... It is the essence of evil. The anger that divides us. It is the terror that grows stronger when we try to hide. If they don't stop him tonight, maybe we'll find him tomorrow, or next

Halloween, when the sun sets and someone is alone. You can't close your eyes and pretend he isn't there. Because he is." As I'll get into presently, while I do like that in this movie, they're starting to embrace the idea that Michael is much more than just your average serial killer, and the montage of him absolutely slaughtering people while she talks does help to get across what she's saying, it feels so melodramatic, pseudo-philosophic, and pretentious, and kind of unfitting to describe someone who, up until this movie, had only killed five people, decades before.

And finally, there's the movie's political statement about mob mentality. Now, I will say that the riot scene at the hospital is itself very well done, showing just how easily miscommunication can whip people up into a frenzy and how terrifying such a situation can be, especially if you're the one being targeted by the mob (I know from personal experience, as I was once in a situation that could've easily turned into a destructive, deadly riot). What's more, even though the film was shot and mostly edited before COVID-19 had even become a full-on pandemic,

those shots of people going nuts in the hospital's parking lot, threatening to tip over an ambulance, and chanting, "Evil dies tonight!", are eerily reminiscent of the January 6th Capitol Building riot, which happened just nine months before Halloween Kills was released. But, there are a number of reasons why I myself don't particularly like this section. The biggest is because it's so heavy-handed in its approach, with all those scenes of Tommy holding court and talking people into taking the law in their own hands, that aforementioned "Evil dies tonight!"

chant (according to the IMDB trivia section, you hear that phrase 29 times in the movie, but I figured it was far more than that), and the throngs of people running after Tivoli through the hospital's claustrophobic corridors, ending with him jumping to his death and Brackett, while inspecting the body, needlessly laying the whole thing out by saying, "Now he's turning us into monsters," when it doesn't take much thought to realize what the message is. What's more, the notion of the townspeople going after Michael themselves

has been before. The first time was in Halloween II, where you see the angry crowd throwing stones at the Myers house, Dr. Loomis commenting, "The tribe! One of their number was butchered! This is a wake!", and Deputy Hunt talking about how the events of that night have already changed Haddonfield. The second was in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, where a lynch mob does form and goes after Michael, and they kill an innocent person too. However, both of those films got the point across without having to go all into it the way that Halloween Kills does, and while its depiction here may have made it more politically relevant for the time, I still don't like how in your face it is.

Something else that hurts it for me is that everyone mistakes Tivoli for Michael. I know it's due to a misunderstanding and everyone being on edge, and that a lot of these people are too young to remember Michael's original killing spree and, by extension, the outfit and mask he wore, but given his reputation and the memories of those who were there, I don't know how anybody could think this short, bald, pudgy, and jittery guy is the one who's been brutally murdering everybody. And yeah, by this point, Laurie is the only one alive who's seen Michael's face, but they showed

both his and Tivoli's mugshots on the news earlier, and even if they didn't name them, I don't think it would be hard to guess which one of these escaped crazies is Michael fucking Myers. If it was someone who more physically resembled him and wasn't as vocal, I could buy it more, but as it is, not really. 

Finally, as the movie goes on and the panic spreads, there's all this talk about how this is what Michael's crimes have brought Haddonfield to, ending on Laurie's speech about him, and Allyson, as she's being hugged by Karen, asking, "He'll always be here, won't he? Even when we can't see him," a sentiment that was earlier said about Ray. But for me, it kind of rings hollow. Like with Laurie's level of paranoia and PTSD in the previous movie, the idea that Haddonfield would crumble like this during only Michael's second massacre, and forty years after he

first killed very few people, in pretty tame ways, feels overblown. I'm not trying to downplay the events of 1978, as I don't doubt that something like that would seriously impact a little town, but it doesn't feel like just that alone, coupled with his being captured afterward, would have enough of a legacy to warrant Allyson's comment about Michael having "haunted" Haddonfield for forty years. And while news of his possible return would definitely be frightening, I don't know if it would send everyone into this kind of panic

and hysteria, especially since we're talking about someone who's 61-years old, and most would likely underestimate just how dangerous he still is, despite the murders that have already taken place. I know I keep harping on this but, again, all of this would feel much more appropriate if the events of Halloween II, minus the brother/sister revelation, were canon, and that Michael simply disappeared without a trace, only to suddenly reappear here with a vengeance. Case in point, Halloween Ends, where I understand perfectly his frightening mythic status amongst the town, given how he just disappeared after murdering more than thirty people in less than 24 hours in both of these first two movies. 

I will say that I feel this film pares down the humor that I wasn't that fond of in the previous one. The filmmakers get it mostly out of their system in the early scenes at the bar, with Vanessa and Marcus having a conversation where the former tells her husband that he needs to stand up to his sleazy boss, adding that she means to punch him right in the face; Marcus being kind of awkward and ordering a drink at the bar he calls "the voodoo skeleton thing," and the bartender telling him that Tommy and his friends are close to Laurie, with Marcus mistakenly calling

her "Laura Stokes,"; Lonnie introducing Tommy onstage as a "bird whistler,"; and an act involving a guy singing with his ventriloquist dummy. While a lot of the stuff with Big John and Little John could definitely qualify, as I've said, I kind of like them, for the most part, and I also don't mind the banter between Sondra and Phil right before Michael attacks them. Sondra is playing around with a little drone, while Phil comes downstairs, griping, "Goddamn sleep apnea mask smells like Lucky Strikes from

when your mother borrowed it," and Sondra says, "I smell it, too. But that stink ain't cigarettes. That's Laurie Strode's house on fire." Phil adds, "That nutbag lives a highly flammable lifestyle," and Sondra tells him, "Better talk no shit about that woman. She will fuck you up." And after Phil first sees Michael, he yells in a funny way and tells Sondra, "There's a big mother in our bathroom, and he's wearin' a monster mark." Sondra asks, "Well, what the fuck does he want?!", and he retorts, "Who gives a shit?!

Call the cops!" The way they yell made it not just funny but kind of endearing, and makes me feel bad when Michael brutalizes them. And the slow transition from the end of that scene back to the bar, with the sound of applause as Michael walks out before the cut, makes for a nice moment of dark humor.

Like before, there are a number of references and allusions to past Halloween movies here, although I don't find them to be quite as blatant or distracting. Not only do the credits again emulate the color and font of those in the original, but the captions identifying the different time periods look like those seen there, as well as in Halloween 4 and H20. In the first flashback to 1978, when Hawkins is chasing Michael, only to lose sight of him, he bends down, touches a footprint he left behind, and sees blood on his fingertips, akin to the beginning of Halloween II

when Dr. Loomis does the same. Also, in that same scene, Pete McCabe tells the two other officers with them to search, "Chestnut South to the bypass," an order that Deputy Hunt gives in that movie. When the two of them investigate the Myers house, you not only see the smashed window from when the gutter hit it while Loomis and Sheriff Brackett were there, as well as a brief glimpse of the dead dog they found, but Michael attacks McCabe with the rope that Brackett said he stole from the hardware store. Also, the way Michael charges at him from the next room is

akin to when he attacked Bob, and it's repeated late in the movie, when Michael charges out of a closet at Cameron. And when Michael walks outside and is surrounded by the police, the camera pulls back to a high angle, emulating the shot of young Michael standing there after murdering Judith. In addition to the plot-points that are similar to Halloween II, you have more of the kids wearing the Silver Shamrock masks from Halloween III (which David Gordon Green is said to be a big fan of); the prank they play

on the Johns about one of their friends biting into a razor in the candy, which is a callback to the kid with the bloody mouth in Halloween II; Vanessa walking to her and Marcus' car, with the windows all fogged up, like with Annie in the original; and Michael sending Allyson falling over the stair railing and hurting her leg, alluding to him doing the same to Laurie in the original. Probably the most blatant allusion to a past movie is when Michael attacks Marion, Marcus, and Vicky by climbing on top of

their car's roof, smashing one of the windows with his hand, and grabbing Marion by the hair at one point, all of which hearken back to the scene with her outside Smith's Grove in the original. However, I don't find this to be as overdone as Laurie copying Michael's signature scenes in the previous movie.

Even though David Gordon Green continues to personally skirt around the idea of whether Michael Myers is a normal human or something else in this timeline, I feel that Halloween Kills confirms that he is most definitely something more. For one, in the first flashback to 1978, the cops mention Dr. Loomis shooting him six times, which was glossed over in the last movie, and we get two examples of his ability to seemingly appear and disappear at will. For another, even though we're given a fairly sensible explanation as to how he survives the fire, the left side of Michael's mask still gets burned and melted enough to where, when his mask is removed near the end of the movie, that side of his face is badly seared and yet, it doesn't seem to faze him. While not completely impervious to pain or invincible, as his first order of business after killing the firefighters is to go to Sondra and Phil's house in order to bandage up where Laurie blew his fingers off in the last movie, and he still grunts when he suffers a severe injury, by the end, despite having been stabbed repeatedly in the stomach, beaten on and shot by the mob, and getting a knife almost in-between his shoulder blades, he still gets back up and slaughters everyone with just his butcher knife. And again, even Laurie herself says that no mortal man could survive what he's gone through. That said, I still find his reputation here as the "Boogeyman of Haddonfield" to be rather hollow for reasons I've already gone into, and I feel like Laurie gives him a little too much credit for why so many of the townspeople are an unreasonable, rabid mob, calling it his "masterpiece" like he's some brilliant criminal/terrorist akin to the Joker. She probably doesn't mean that it's something he planned to happen all along but still, I think it's too much significant weight to put onto somebody who's just going around, randomly killing for some reason that, possibly, makes sense only to him. Speaking of which, I do like how they address the misconception from the previous movie that Michael is targeting Laurie and everybody expects him to come to the hospital for her, with Hawkins telling her that the only reason why he even ended up at her house before was because of Dr. Sartain. It comes too late in the movie to make much of a difference, but at least it is talked about.

Like the last movie, Michael himself is one of, if not the, best thing about Halloween Kills, as it takes that unspoken notion from Halloween II that, after everything he's already gone through this night, he's now enraged and more brutal in his killings, and cranks it up to eleven. James Jude Courtney portrays Michael as an absolute beast in this film. The minute he emerges from Laurie's burning house and faces the firemen, wielding the pick he got from one of them who he killed inside, and breathing in a manner that sounds like growling, you know these guys are

completely screwed. And sure enough, he easily slaughters the entire group of around four or five of them with hardly any effort. Then, he goes to Sondra and Phil's house, brutally attacks both of them, kills one of the kids wearing the Silver Shamrock masks (decapitating him with his head still in the mask), kills Marion, Marcus, and Vanessa, comes very close to killing Lindsey, and makes his way back to his old house, kills both of the Johns, and contends with Lonnie, Cameron, and Allyson when they show up. Like Lindsey, Michael comes very close to killing

Allyson, only for Karen to distract him by attacking from behind, taking his mask, and using it to lure him out to where Tommy and the mob are waiting. But even after getting beaten and stabbed in the back, Michael revives, slaughters every single one of them, and returns to his house, where he kills Karen. Given how critical I am of not only when they've made Michael feel a little too much like Jason Voorhees in the past but also of Tyler Mane's extremely brutish portrayal in the Rob Zombie films, you'd probably

expect me to hate how hyper-violent and out for blood he is here. However, as much as I will always prefer the classic subtle, hiding in the shadows portrayal, since Michael does still have moments of stalking his victims from the darkness here (most creepily when he's said to have been watching the kids on the playground after having, unbeknownst to them, beheaded their friend offscreen), and because I already enjoyed his portrayal in the last movie, I see this as a natural extension of that and thus, don't mind seeing Michael more amped up. That said, this portrayal would hurt them a bit when we get to Halloween Ends, but we'll get to that tomorrow.

Like in the previous movie, we get a few insights into how Michael thinks, such as how he prioritizes his mask above all else. When Lindsey struggles with him, she grabs his mask and twists it around, prompting him to fling her to the ground and straighten it. Also, at the end, Karen removes it and uses it to lure him out to where Tommy and the mob are waiting for him, likely having learned from both Laurie and Allyson how attached he is to it (if you listen carefully when he stands up and faces her once she's removed it, it sounds like he whispers, "Give it

back,"). Even when Michael finds himself surrounded on all sides, he puts the mask back on before attempting to confront them, as if he really isn't truly the monster without it. Karen also uses the memory of Judith to try to lure him, and sure enough, after she says, "It was Halloween night. She was in her bedroom. It was right here. Can you feel it?", he walks after her, showing that the memory of his first murder does have some sway over him. And though we never get a clear answer as to why, in the first flashback to 1978, Pete McCabe tells the young

Hawkins that he knew Michael when they were kids and that, when he would go over there to play, Michael would spend the whole time looking out Judith's bedroom window (the same spot where Michael would kill him before Halloween 1978 was over). Throughout all the different timelines within the classic series, this is one of the few insights we get into what Michael was like before he killed Judith, suggesting that he was already kind of strange and off-putting. McCabe adds that he often wondered

what Michael was seeing out there, and Hawkins later tells Laurie, "Maybe he wasn't lookin' out. Maybe he was lookin' in, at his reflection, at himself." That is a chilling idea, that he was watching and feeling this evil force growing within him, which he couldn't stop or likely didn't even totally understand. It could also be akin to how Dr. Loomis said that, for the fifteen years he was at Smith's Grove, he just stared at the wall, looking ahead to when he would break out to kill again; maybe when he looked out the window as

a kid, he was looking to when he would kill Judith. He's seen doing this right before he kills Little John, and the movie also ends with him standing in that same spot, seeing whatever it is that he sees, which could be his next killing spree, or something else we can't comprehend. Again, we don't get a definitive answer about it, and while he does, as Hawkins says, seem drawn to return to his old house, as he did back in 1978, that motivation also remains a mystery, as it should.

However, I don't like the idea of Karen seeing that literal vision of young Michael staring out the window, seemingly wearing the clown suit from when he killed Judith. Initially, I thought that might have been something that Karen just saw in her head, remembering what Hawkins said about how Michael would look out that window, but given how she goes up there seemingly to investigate, I guess it must've actually been there. I'm sure they meant for it to be something deep and metaphorical, but as it is, it pushes the movie much farther into the supernatural than I would ever want, and only seems like an excuse for Karen to be alone so Michael can kill her.

One thing's definitely for sure: Michael's sadistically playful side is cranked up to the same level as the brutality of his murders. During his attack on the car, he smashes the windshield with the one kid's masked, severed head, and after he kills Marion, Marcus, and Vanessa, Tommy and Lonnie later find the latter two's bodies sitting on a little merry-go-round in that playground, with the Silver Shamrock masks placed on their heads (the use of the skull mask here means he removed it from that one kid's decapitated head), while Marion is found hanging from the swing-set,

with the witch mask on her head. Near the end of the movie, when Allyson and Cameron are searching the Myers house, they find a jack-o-lantern placed inside the closet below the stairs, and they're then drawn upstairs when they hear the song Could I Have This Dance suddenly play on a record upstairs. When they get up there, they find Big John and Little John's corpses in Judith's old bedroom, arranged in a manner similar to a photo of the two of them (the difference is that their individual poses in the photo are swapped),

which is really sick. And when Michael attacks Cameron, Allyson, after getting thrown over the railing to the bottom of the stairs, tries to draw his attention away by yelling at him to come for her. Michael seems to take the bait, only to get halfway down the stairs and finish Cameron off in front of Allyson by breaking his neck, seemingly just to rub it in her face before going in for the kill on her.

Like before, Michael looks awesome in this movie, with his mask now being melted and singed on its left side, and his coveralls becoming more and more scuffed and ripped as the movie goes on. He's also filmed really well, often in near total darkness, and there are numerous great images of him, with the shot of him emerging from Laurie's burning house becoming iconic almost instantly. And while he's not unmasked nearly as much as he was before, when Karen takes his mask near the end, they, again, film him in a way to where you can't really make out his

face, as it's either blurry and in the distance, obscured by camera angles and darkness, or he has his back to the camera. That said, you do see enough of his face when he's confronted by the mob to see that the left side is badly burned, like the mask. But where Michael looks absolutely incredible is in the flashbacks to 1978, where he's played by the film's stunt coordinator, Airon Armstrong, and looks virtually identical to how he did in the original movie.

Not only do the coveralls and his build look exact, but so does the mask, which is, by far, the closest the series has come to virtually recreating the original. And there are some shots of Michael walking the back-alleys here that almost look like they literally came from the original or even the opening of Halloween II.

One thing you can't deny about Halloween Kills is that it delivers on its title. Make no mistake, if you want some, as Cody Leach calls it, "carnage candy," you'll get plenty here, as Christopher Nelson and his crew provide numerous gory makeup effects, making this one of the bloodiest films in the series, for sure (I'd still say the Rob Zombie movies, especially his second one, are the absolute goriest, but this one isn't far behind). Within the first few minutes, you get a shot of Oscar's impaled corpse on that gate and Hawkins' bleeding neck wound from when Dr.

Sartain stabbed him, and before the opening credits, we see young Hawkins' accidental shoot McCabe in the neck, causing him to bleed to death. But the carnage really starts after we see how badly Laurie is bleeding on her way to the hospital, when Michael kills the firemen, smashing several of them in the face with that pick, impaling and lifting another with it, and using one's own circular saw against him. When the police arrive on the scene later, they find both the aftermath of the slaughter, as well as the corpses of those two cops from the last movie. By this point,

Michael has already attacked Sondra and Phil, smashing the latter's head against the wall, impaling his neck through shards of glass, and stabbing one knife into him after another, while stabbing poor Sondra in the throat with a smashed halogen light tube. He decapitates the kid wearing the Silver Shamrock skull mask offscreen, apparently by sawing his head off with his butcher knife, brutally stabs Marion to death, stabs Marcus right through his left eye, and slams the car door into Vicky, causing her to

shoot herself in the throat. Big John definitely gets the movie's nastiest death, as Michael stabs him in the armpit, which is painful enough, and then gouges his damn eyeballs out! And while Little John dies offscreen, he's later found with Big John's small knife sticking in his neck and Michael's butcher knife in his torso. Lonnie's actual death is also not seen, but Cameron finds him stuffed up in the panel leading to the attic. Cameron himself gets brutally stabbed in the gut, with the knife left sticking in him, then gets his head smashed through the stair-railing, before his neck is broken. And at the end, Michael slices and dices everybody in the mob all sorts of horrific ways, before doing the same to Karen.

And that's just the gore that Michael himself directly causes. When Laurie receives surgery for the wounds Michael inflicted on her before, the makeup effects are uncomfortably real, and are likely made even better by those actually being real surgeons treating them the way they would an actual serious knife wound. Also, when Tivoli jumps to his death, you see his skull and brains splattered all over the sidewalk, and his arm and leg painfully broken. Finally, Michael himself takes a lot of abuse, receiving stabs in the stomach from Allyson, a pitchfork to the back and a knife in the back from Karen, and various brutal beatings and point-blank shots from the mob.

After Cameron finds Hawkins badly injured at the beginning, the first major scene is the first flashback to Halloween night, 1978, when the young Hawkins chases Michael Myers down a back-alley. He points his gun and yells for Michael to halt, but after stopping and merely glancing at him, Michael continues on to the left. Hawkins fires a couple of shots at him, but he doesn't react at all. And when he runs after him, Hawkins finds only an empty lot of junked cars, with no sign of Michael, save for a

footprint right outside the gate. He's then met up with Pete McCabe and the other officers, who split up into pairs to search for Michael. Elsewhere, young Lonnie Elam is getting picked on by a group of kids, who smack and fling him to the ground for apparently stealing some of their Halloween candy. They're about to pound on him some more, when a cop car pulls up beside them and asks if they've seen Michael, before warning them to get home and lock their doors. Once the car drives away, the kids, who were

acting like they were Lonnie's friends, leave him behind, taunting him about not getting murdered. Scared out of his mind, and hearing their taunts in his head, Lonnie runs down the sidewalk, at one point tripping and falling. When he goes to get up, he sees Michael shambling down the sidewalk towards him. He stops right in front of him and Lonnie curls up into a ball, crying and begging for his life, as well as apologizing for picking on Tommy Doyle. He freaks out when he feels a hand touch his shoulder, but it turns out to just be Hawkins and McCabe, whereas

Michael has disappeared. The cops try to calm him down but Lonnie, looking around in a panic and asking where Michael went, refers to him as the Boogeyman before running off, saying he's going to kill them. McCabe then sees that they're right across the street from the Myers house and walk over towards it. Entering, they search the bottom floor, McCabe finding the dead dog that Michael munched on. They check the closet under the staircase but find it empty, only to then hear a thud upstairs. 

They make their way up there, each checking a room on either side of the landing, when McCabe finds his way into Judith's old bedroom. He approaches the window where he told Hawkins that Michael would stand and stare, and finds some wet, slightly muddy footprints at that very spot. Looking out the window himself, McCabe comments, "Haddonfield, where nothing exciting every happens..." But he no sooner finishes his sentence than Michael lunges at him from a doorway to his right. He grabs McCabe, choking

him with a rope and slamming him against the wall. McCabe tries to fight back, punching Michael in his midsection, but Michael simply gets around behind him and attempts to strangle him. Hearing the commotion, Hawkins runs in and, pointing his gun, orders Michael to let him go. Michael ignores both that and his threat to shoot him, and Hawkins ultimately has no choice but to take the shot. Unfortunately, he ends up getting McCabe in the throat, and Michael quickly drops him to the floor and

walks out of the room. Hawkins fires again but misses, and runs after Michael as he walks down the stairs, firing and missing twice more. He's about to run after him, but when he hears McCabe gasping, he runs back to help him. Hawkins does what he can, telling McCabe that they're going to help him and pleading with him not to die. Outside, the police can be heard pulling up, and Dr. Loomis is heard yelling, as well as ordering Michael to stay where he is. McCabe asks Hawkins if he got Michael and he lies and says that he did, before McCabe slowly dies,

leaving Hawkins devastated. Outside, Michael is surrounded by the police, while Loomis walks through the front door and sees Hawkins atop the stairs. He demands to know if Michael has killed someone else, but Hawkins is so shell-shocked that he's unable to give him an answer. Meanwhile, outside, Michael stands in the middle of the yard, surrounded by the cops, who have their guns trained on him.

Yet again, we have a new take on the original's jack-o-lantern opening credits sequence, this time starting with one who has a candle light up within it, before panning past it and traveling by a big group of jack-o-lanterns (twelve in all, to correspond with this being the franchise's twelfth film), that light up on the inside, then begin to burn, with the final one being completely engulfed in flames. I've read they're meant to represent the brutality of the mob, but I just found this to be another cool take on the classic opening credits.

As I said earlier, things really kick into high gear when the firemen arrive at the burning house. Entering, they attempt to battle the flames as best as they can, when one of them falls through the weakened floor and into the basement. He turns on his distress beacon and radios for help, when the gun closet opens and Michael emerges. The fireman has just enough time to radio that there's someone else down there before Michael kicks him back, then grabs his discarded pick and beats him to death with it,

smashing in his gas mask's goggles. Up above, another fireman comes upon the large hole and yells down for his partner to take his hand, only for Michael to grab him instead. We don't see what he did to the guy, as it cuts to the others outside, when Michael emerges, brandishing the pick and ready to use it on them. The other firemen ready their own tools, as Michael walks down the steps and crosses the yard towards them. One fireman sprays him with the hose, trying to force him down with the pressure, but Michael stabs him through his goggles with the

pick. Another swings an axe at him but he dodges it and gets him in the face with the pick as well, then stabs another in the neck when he comes at him. Michael impales another fireman and lifts him up with the pick, then tosses the pick away and turns the last fireman's circular saw back on him. 

Not long afterward, while Laurie receives surgery at the hospital, the film cuts to Sondra and Phil Dickerson's home, where the former is playing around with a small drone. When she flies it towards the doorway to their bathroom, it suddenly stops in midair and falls to the floor. Sondra calls it a "cheap piece of shit," and Phil takes the controller to see if he can do better. Suddenly, the drone is flung through the doorway and lands on a reclining chair. Realizing that somebody's in there, Phil carefully approaches the

door, while Sondra grabs a champagne bottle as a weapon. Peeking his head around a corner and stepping in front of the bathroom, he reaches in and turns the light on, only for Michael to smash the light, which is right above the mirror. Yelling, Phil closes and locks the door, but when he tries to walk back to Sondra, Michael smashes his hand through a window, grabs his head, slams it repeatedly against the wall, then pulls his head through the smashed window and impales his throat on the shards of glass, before

yanking him all the way through. Screaming, Sondra runs to the kitchen and tries to escape through its backdoor, then turns to see Michael standing in the doorway leading into the kitchen. She grabs a nearby knife for protection, to which Michael responds by walking over to and ripping loose a long, halogen light-bulb. He then smashes it and jams it right into her throat, with Sondra gurgling and futilely attempting to grab at him. Keeping it there for several agonizing seconds, he yanks it out, as she collapses to the floor, gasping and choking. He drops the bulb and

heads back inside, pulling Phil from where he's lying, bleeding out and gagging. The scene ends with Sondra watching Michael slam Phil down onto the kitchen table and stab one knife into him after another, before talking the last butcher knife and walking out with it.

After Cameron calls his father from the spot where he founds Hawkins, who's loaded up into an ambulance, and Lonnie rushes out to pick him up, and Sheriff Barker and his men find the massacre at Laurie's burnt house, everyone at Mick's Bar & Carry-Out learns of the murders that happened earlier. Marcus and Vanessa prepare to leave, when the former goes back inside to find his missing stethoscope. Vanessa goes out to their car and gets in, not noticing that the windshield and windows are fogged up. Just as she

puts the key in, a dark figure rises up in the backseat, scaring the crap out of her. She gets out and runs back to Marcus when he comes out of the building, telling him that Michael Myers is in their backseat (she also tells him to go look, something he's, naturally, reluctant to do). She then runs back inside the bar and tells those sitting there about it. The minute he hears it, Tommy Doyle takes Old Huckleberry, the bartender's baseball bat, putting some money in the charity tip jar in exchange, and goes outside, wielding

it. Marcus points him to the car, saying that "Michael" got out and got in front of it, and Tommy slowly approaches it, as a crowd of onlookers gathers behind him. The engine suddenly turns over, followed by the headlights and the sound of the radio, which is playing Largo Al Factotum (possibly a reference to the patient in the previous movie's opening who randomly sang, "Figaro!"). By this point, everybody who was in the bar has come out to see what's happening, and as Tommy reaches the car, the radio suddenly changes stations. He swings the bat, hitting

the car just as it pops into gear and speeds forward. It drives through the parking lot, scattering the group of people, and crosses the street to the opposite lane, nearly hitting a passing truck. It crashes around the corner of a building, but by the time everybody, led by Tommy, runs after and reaches it, they find that whoever was in it is long gone. From nearby, the real perpetrator, Tivoli, slinks off into the darkness.

After a false scare at the Myers house where the kids trick the Johns into thinking one of them ate candy with a razor-blade in it, the next major scene comes when Lindsey, Marion, Marcus, and Vanessa come upon two of them on a playground. Lindsey gets out of the car and goes to warn the kids that it's not safe, when one of them mentions they've been seeing "a creepy man in a white mask" hiding behind trees. They then spot him when he steps out from behind a nearby treeline, wielding his bloody butcher knife and

holding their other friend's skull mask. Seeing that makes them drop their nonchalant attitude about it, and they take off when Lindsey tells them to run. Over at the car, Marion sees Michael in the rear-view mirror, and he climbs up onto the roof. He slams the kid's decapitated, masked head onto the windshield, and Marion immediately shoots it off. Marcus tries to get up front and start the car, while Lindsey grabs the kids' abandoned candy bag, dumps it out, and starts filling it with bricks. Michael smashes the passenger

side window with his hand, causing Marion to swing around and fire again, shattering it. In a panic, she locks the doors and listens to the sound of Michael rummaging around above them. She shoots again, blowing out the left rear window, when Michael reaches in behind her and grabs her hair. While Marion shoots up through the roof and struggles to free herself, Marcus makes Vanessa climb out through the shattered back window. He then manages to free Marion from Michael's grasp, only for him to jump down in front of the side of the car when they try to

get out. When he approaches, Marion goes to shoot him at point-blank range, only to then learn that she's out of bullets. Michael promptly leans into the car's front and stabs Marion repeatedly. Marcus grabs his stethoscope and ties it around Michael's neck, attempting to strangle him, only for Michael to stab him up through his left eye. Michael watches as he falls back, convulsing, when he hears a gunshot. That's when Vanessa stupidly runs at the car, wasting her bullets by firing randomly, only for him to kick the door into her, causing her to shoot herself through the neck (and where the hell was she when her husband was fighting for his life?). He then gets out of the car and stands over her body, doing his quizzical head tilt.

Lindsey comes at him and whacks him across the face with the bricks a couple of times, only for Michael to grab her by the throat and slam her against the side of the car. As she's being choked, Lindsey grabs his mask and twists it around, prompting him to throw her to the ground and give her the chance to run off through the park. Stopping at a tree, she turns and sees him coming after her, and continues running into the nearby woods. Coming to a small bridge crossing a creek, she hides down by the bank, halfway in the

water. Having lost sight of her, Michael steps up to the bridge's first step and scans the area, then takes a few steps forward and stops and looks again. Down below, Lindsey tries to be quiet, as he stands there, breathing heavily. He heads on across the bridge, with Lindsey seeing via the reflection in the water that he's moved off (that's the sequence I mentioned that I feel is genuinely suspenseful). Not long afterward, Allyson, Cameron, and Lonnie arrive at the park, seeing Tommy parked there. They also see Lindsey's car, which Tommy says is covered in blood, and they

search the area. Tommy and Lonnie find Marcus, Vanessa, and Marion's bodies displayed among the playground equipment, while Allyson finds Lindsey by the creek, traumatized but alive. After Tommy takes her to the hospital, he starts whipping the crowd up into the mob, and also tells Laurie that Michael escaped the burning house and is on the loose again. And at the Myers house, the Johns discover after an apparent prank on both of their doorbells that someone has broken in. Hearing some thumping upstairs, Big John locks the front door, as they prepare to investigate.

At the hospital, Tivoli wanders through the main entrance, his cries for help muffled by the commotion of everyone gathered in the waiting room. Slowly but surely, everyone there notices him, and the miscommunication that he's Michael quickly spreads. Tommy rushes through the crowd, trying to get to him, as Tivoli panics and knocks an old man with a cane to the floor as heads into the depths of the building. On Tommy's prompting, the crowd starts chanting, "Evil dies tonight!" Back at the Myers

house, Big John cautiously makes his way upstairs, while Little John checks downstairs. Reaching the landing up top, Big John flings open the door to the study but finds it empty. He tells Little John this, then carefully makes his way over to the room across from the study, i.e. Judith's old bedroom; meanwhile, downstairs, Little John spooks himself while checking the dining room, as he glimpses his reflection in a mirror. He then pokes at the drapes in front of a window. Upstairs, Big John opens the door to the bedroom, then scans it from the doorway,

finding no one inside. That's when Michael comes up behind him, stabs him in the armpit, then turns him around and hideously gouges his eyes out, before dropping him to the floor. Hearing him screaming, Little John comes running upstairs and enters the bedroom. He immediately starts crying in anguish upon seeing his partner's brutalized body, then looks up and sees Michael, once again standing and staring out the window. That's when he calls attention to himself and Michael turns around and heads towards him, killing him offscreen.

Things really get out of hand at the hospital, with people running crazily through the hallways after Tivoli. At one point, Laurie sees enough of him to realize that he's not Michael and tells Karen this. They try to tell the crowd this, but they're too wound up to listen. At one point, a doctor runs at and grabs Laurie, yelling at her to get out of the way. In response, she slams him against the wall and knees him, which reopens the stitched up knife wound in her stomach. She collapses to the floor amid the chaos and Karen yells for someone to help. Some

bystanders help her get Laurie to her feet, and Deputy Graham then helps escort her back to her room; as they do, Karen tells Graham that the mob is after the wrong person. And amid the chaos, Oscar's mother is devastated to see her son's corpse in the morgue. Once Karen and Graham get Laurie back into her bed, the latter gets a report that Tivoli has been seen on the second floor. The two of them run up the stairs, again trying to make the crowd understand that they're after the wrong person, only for Karen to get knocked down by a panicking doctor running the other way,

causing two other people to trip over her and tumble down the stairs. Graham helps Karen up and she continues on up the stairs, while he and another deputy try to stop the mob when they burst through the door and head up there. This leads to one officer getting punched by Tommy and Graham, as well as Sheriff Barker, who ran in after the mob, getting caught up in the smothering masses on the stairs as they all try to head up there. Down below, both Laurie and Hawkins lament what's happening, the latter

telling Laurie about how and why he stopped Dr. Loomis from killing Michael forty years ago. Up on the second floor, Karen finds Tivoli hiding around the corner in an empty hallway. Walking through the door, she approaches the corner, telling him that she's not going to hurt him, and that she's going to help him. Tivoli slowly inches his hand around the corner and Karen is able to calmly talk him into taking her hand. As the mob makes its way up there, Karen moves Tivoli into a small corridor, locking the doors

on either end, then stands outside the one door in order to face the mob. When they reach the floor, most of them run past her and try to tear the door open, as Karen futilely tries to talk them down. Another section of the mob runs to the other door, and Tivoli finds himself surrounded.

When they actually start breaking through the doors' windows, using everything they can, from wheelchairs to even their own heads, Tivoli is unable to take it anymore. He grabs a fire extinguisher, initially as protection, then uses it to smash through the window. This immediately gets the attention of a rioting crowd down in the parking lot, who look up and see him climb out onto the ledge. When the mob inside finally manages to break through the door, Tivoli jumps and crashes onto the ground below, in front of the horrified crowd. Upstairs, Tommy, who

had made out that Karen was yelling to him that it wasn't Michael, looks out the window, at the splattered corpse down below, as the crowd gathers around. The chanting of, "Evil dies tonight!" slowly quiets down, and Tommy runs downstairs and out into the parking lot, meeting up with Leigh Brackett, who breaks it to him that it's not Michael. With that, everyone tries to grapple with what's just happened, as Hawkins remembers how one of the other officers that night helped cover up his accidentally shooting McCabe.

Elsewhere Lonnie tells Allyson and Cameron that he's figured Michael is likely heading for his old house. They drive over there, parking across the street from the house, which is completely dark. That's when Lonnie tells them to wait while he goes inside by himself, telling Cameron, "I will see you at the finish line, buddy." He walks up to the front door, knocks (yeah, let him know that you're there), then finds it unlocked and, giving the kids a thumbs up, goes inside, closing it behind him. Within seconds, they hear a gunshot, and quickly arm themselves and

disembark. Heading through the door, Allyson goes off to the right, while Cameron approaches the closet beneath the stairs, as he sees a light glowing behind the slightly ajar door. Bringing it to Allyson's attention, they approach it, with Cameron nudging it open from the side with his foot. Allyson immediately shoots with her shotgun, only to blast a jack-o-lantern set up inside the closet. After they breathe a sigh of relief, they hear a thud upstairs, followed by the sound of music playing. Going up there, they find both of the Johns' bodies arranged in the study, with

the music coming from a record player. While Cameron checks the bedroom across from the study, Allyson removes the butcher knife that Michael left sticking in Little John's midsection. Finding the bedroom empty, Cameron walks back out into the corridor and heads towards a closet at the end of it. Brandishing his cocked handgun, he's suddenly distracted when blood drips onto his hand from above. Looking up, he sees his dad's body crammed into an attic entrance, and whimpers in horror.

Michael then comes charging out of the closet at Cameron, who backs away, terrified. He grabs him by the throat, as Cameron fires but misses, and then slams him against the wall and stabs him repeatedly. Hearing all of this, Allyson comes out with her shotgun, but Michael grabs the barrel and aims it away, causing her to misfire. He tosses the gun to the floor, and Allyson retaliates by stabbing him several times. Shrugging it off, he grabs her by the throat, bashes her head against the banister, and sends her

tumbling down the stairs, landing in a manner that badly injures her leg. He proceeds to brutalize Cameron, who removes the knife from his gut and goes to shoot him. Michael stomps on his hand, grabs him and flings him across the landing, then slams his head through the railing, smashing a hole in it, and slams his head up and down, and then side to side. In an attempt to save Cameron, Allyson tries to distract Michael by yelling, "Come and get me, motherfucker!", while brandishing the knife she stabbed him with.

After leaving Cameron lying there, unable to move or speak, Michael seems to take the bait. He heads down the stairs, as Allyson manages to get to her feet, holding the knife. He stops halfway and glances at Cameron, then finishes him off by snapping his neck. Michael continues down the stairs and corners Allyson, who's unable to run. She tries to stab him but he grabs her hand and turns it around, forcing the knife-blade towards her, as well as twisting her wrist hard enough to make her fall to her knees. She yells at him to do it, when she looks behind him and screams,

"Do it!" Karen comes running through the door, brandishing the pitchfork that was part of one of the Halloween decorations on the porch, and stabs him right in the back with it. She forces him to release Allyson and then down to the floor, with his head lying on the bottom step. She stomps him when he turns his head towards her, and then removes his mask. She walks out the door, as he gets to his feet, grabbing the discarded butcher knife, and turns to face her. That's when she baits him into following after her to get it back, and he chases her across the

street and behind the houses on the opposite side. At one point, he loses sight of her, and sees his mask lying in the street. He walks out there and stands over it, when he's suddenly illuminated by vehicle headlights. He looks to see a number of people parked up the street, waiting for him, as Karen, like before, says, "Gotcha." More pickup trucks park behind him, and he finds himself surrounded by numerous townspeople wielding various weapons, from guns to different types of clubs. Unfazed, he grabs his mask,

puts it back on, and prepares to face the mob as they move in towards him. One guy clobbers him in the face with a bat, with another promptly following that up. He swings his knife at them, only for Tommy to score a hit from behind with Old Huckleberry. One guy wearing a tiger costume goes to shoot him, but Michael manages to slash the back of his hand. However, he gets whacked in the gut by another man, and the tiger guy gets his revenge by unloading all of his bullets into Micharl, sending him to the ground.

He rolls over onto his front, but before he can get up, everybody whales on him, with one person even kicking him in the face. He finally stops moving after Tommy clobbers him, and seems spent. Karen approaches him, and Tommy tells her, "We got this, Karen. Go be with your daughter." But Karen, seeing Michael reaching for his knife on the ground, picks it up and sticks it right in the center of his back, near the top.

The movie slowly wraps up with Allyson and Karen sitting on the steps of the Myers house, surrounded by good Samaritans and the authorities. At the same time, back with the mob, Brackett walks in to shoot Michael, only for him to suddenly reach around, pull out the knife sticking in him, and slash his throat open, spraying Tommy with his blood. He's then faced with the tiger guy, who tries to shoot him, only to find he's out of bullets; Michael stabs him up through his bottom jaw. Another man comes at him but Michael grabs his leg in midair and slices open

his Achilles tendon, then breaks the arm of someone who comes at him with a tire iron, and slices another's throat open. While EMTs see to Allyson, Michael slaughters more of the mob, slashing throats, stabbing into their torsos, and putting his blade up through one man's arm, until it's just him and Tommy. Tommy swings Old Huckleberry, but Michael stabs him right in the chest, stopping him dead. The two of them look at each other in the face, when Michael removes his knife and Tommy collapses. As he lies there dying,

Michael takes the bat himself and finishes him off. As Allyson is about to be taken to the hospital, Karen goes upstairs to where she, just seconds ago, saw that vision of young Michael looking out the window in Judith's old bedroom. She walks into the room, stands there, and looks out herself, only for Michael to suddenly appear behind her and stab her to death. She collapses out of view and the movie ends with Michael looking out the window like he did before.

When the movie was released on home media, it came with two different versions: the theatrical and an alternate one simply called the "Extended Cut." Aside from a new version of the ending, a couple of new scenes here and there, and a bit more blood, there's not much different, with the Extended Cut running only four minutes longer. In the first flashback to 1978 at the beginning, after Lonnie is left by himself on the dark street, he's walking home, when he sees Michael, in another reference to the original, watching him while partially standing behind

a large hedge. When Lonnie approaches, he walks completely behind the bush, and when Lonnie makes his way around its backside, he finds no one standing there. This leads into him running off into the dark and falling, only to come face-to-face with Michael. Another alternate scene happens in the present time, during Laurie's surgery. Karen enters the morgue, looking for Ray's body, but the elderly man there yells at her that she's not supposed to be in there. Before she can protest, a doctor comes in and tells her that Laurie is out of surgery and is going to be fine. And

when Tivoli arrives at the hospital, there's an additional bit from his POV as he walks through the parking lot and the main entrance. In terms of violence, the death of the firefighter who falls into the basement is bloodier; Big John's death is even more gruesome, with a longer, more detailed look of Michael gouging his eyeballs out; and there are more deaths and additional instances of gore during Michael's slaughter of the mob at the end. Here, he doesn't just beat Tommy with Old Huckleberry; he

breaks the bat and uses its splintered end to impale him. Finally, there's the ending. First, Karen's murder is more kinetic and brutal, with blood splattering on the window. Second, as Michael looks out the window after killing her, Karen's dropped cellphone buzzes. It's Laurie, calling from a hospital phone, and she gets an answer, only to hear Michael's breathing on the other end. Realizing what it means, she says, "I'm coming for you, Michael,", drops the phone, and heads down the hallway, wielding the knife that

Allyson left with her, the movie freezing on that shot of it, as the sound of Michael's breathing continues. According to David Gordon Green, they changed this ending when they realized it wasn't going to fit with where they were planning to take the story in Halloween Ends. In short, that ending makes it seem as though Ends would also continue the story of this same night, whereas it's actually set four years later.

Like its predecessor, Halloween Kills benefits immensely from a badass music score from John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, one which, this time, really emphasizes what an unstoppable force of evil Michael Myers is. While the last movie opened with some soft, eerie music, this one begins with a rumbling, menacing piece that acts as an indicator to how brutal and violent this flick is going to be. That feeling is emphasized all the more with the first real scene with Michael, when he emerges from the burning house, ready to do battle with the firemen. The music builds and builds, then hits with an exciting, driving beat as he absolutely massacres them. In fact, all of the music for Michael's attacks here are scored just as relentlessly as the actual scenes, with special mention going to when he attacks those in the car at the park. Fittingly called "Rampage," that piece has one of those digital synthesizer beats you expect from Carpenter, backed by continual loud, monstrous, brassy sounds that get across the idea that Michael is fueled purely by rage in this scene. The buildup to the Johns' deaths is done in a very tense manner, with Big John's death scored to sound just as horrific as it is to watch, while Michael's attack on Allyson and Cameron in the house comes off as just absolute madness. The scenes of the mob storming throughout the hospital are scored to be just as chaotic and relentless, making them come off as unstoppable a force as Michael himself, including when they beat on him near the end. But the score isn't all hard-hitting horror, as there are some more emotional sections, like a soft, solemn theme for when Hawkins laments saving Michael's life back in 1978, and a sad piano for when Tivoli commits suicide, transitioning into a more contemplative and tragic sound for the aftermath. Even during the chaos of the earlier mob scene, there's a moment of emotion in the music when Oscar's mom sees his body in the morgue. And during the final montage of Michael slaughtering the mob, the music is much softer that you might expect, yet is very hopeless-sounding, making it feel like he really will never be stopped.

As for the classic themes, the Halloween theme, which is used quite sparingly here, is first heard in a more haunting version during the opening credits, played on a simple piano and backed by eerie vocalizations. There are also some new, eerie additions to the theme's latter half thanks to the electronics, and this version ends earlier than you would expect it to. It's heard again when Karen lures Michael through the streets by taking his mask, while the first part of the ending credits is played to a version similar to the one created for the previous movie, before transitioning into a more up-tempo version of the Kills arrangement, building to a major crescendo. What's really cool is that, when the film cuts back to 1978, the score often becomes a bit more simplistic, akin to Carpenter's original work there, using classic-sounding versions of The Shape Stalks, The Myers House, and Michael Kills Judith, the latter of which also plays when Little John sees that Michael has returned home before he's murdered. Also, a different version of the Myers House theme is used for when Lonnie and Tommy find their friends' bodies among the playground equipment. And as Michael prepares to face off with the mob, they play that really awesome, epic piece of music they introduced in the last movie. Finally, when it comes to actual songs, the film not only uses tunes like It's Halloween and Could I Have This Dance at various points, but when it cuts to the bar after the opening credits, the women onstage are singing She Doesn't Want You Anymore, a song that Carpenter wrote back when he and his friends were in a band. And the last half of the ending credits is set to a song called Hunter's Moon performed by Ghost, which is a real banger, and has lyrics that do fit with the notion of Michael's killing spree.

After I first saw Halloween Kills, I told a friend of mine that the movie is mainly just an excuse to watch Michael Myers slaughter people for nearly two hours and he said he was perfectly fine with that (he changed his tune when he saw it, though). If that really is all you're looking for, you will get a fair amount of entertainment out of it, as Michael himself is not only still awesome but so are the deaths and makeup effects. Also, it's, again, well-shot and edited, with the action and chase sequences often being genuinely thrilling, and at least one scene coming off as truly suspenseful; the flashbacks to Halloween of 1978 are absolutely incredible in how much they look and feel like the original film; and the music score, again, just rips. However, the movie still has more than its fair share of issues, with the story being made up of multiple subplots that are scattered all over the place, leading to the large cast being spread very thin and some not getting much to do; some of the cast are also unlikable when they shouldn't be; a lot of the characters do things that are frustratingly stupid, despite it being a slasher film; the dialogue is often very clunky, sometimes coming off as overdone and pretentious, and other times just awkward; and its attempt at a political statement, while depicted effectively enough, ultimately comes off as much more heavy-handed than you would want. All in all, while I didn't think of it as among the absolute worst of the franchise, this is definitely the weakest chapter of this trilogy.