--Allyson Nelson, Halloween Kills
"Michael Myers will be executed tonight and it will not go without witness."
--Tommy Doyle, Halloween Kills
The mostly excellent 2018 reboot-sequel to the original Halloween made the most of its slasher premise, but it did not have any prominent philosophical themes that the deepest works of horror like the Saw series or The Witch have. What it did have was a very fitting portrayal of Michael Myers and a great performance by Jamie Lee Curtis. Halloween Kills flips the emphasis by sidelining Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode to focus on the town of Haddonfield as its citizens desperately try to stop Michael--and there is far greater effort put making the film tackle issues that are both of high moral significance and universal relevance. It also starts to hint at this incarnation of Michael having a superhuman nature similar to the version of him seen in some of the original sequels to the initial 1978 movie.
Production Values
A handful of shots, like one where Michael stabs a man with different knives as his wife watches, evoke a higher level of cinematography than the rest of the movie showcases. Thankfully, the camerawork is capable enough to help carry the film from scene to scene, and the very large cast helps with that. Jamie Lee Curtis is not even a primary cast member of this film in the sense that she gets the same amount of screentime or less than some other characters because of where the plot takes her. There is more of a main cast than a main character, with various townspeople serving as the "primary" characters, some of them dying and others living until the finale. The wide range of actors and actresses do perform their roles very competently, particularly Andi Matichak and Anthony Michael Hall, albeit without having extended character development because the plot is more event-based than character-based--except for Michael. In his case, Halloween Kills spends the sufficient amount of time to expand the lore of the reboot series in order to set up the third movie and to provide several revelations about the events of the two canonical movies before it.
Story
Some spoilers are below.
Before Laurie Strode can even be taken to a hospital after her fight with Michael in the 2018 film, firefighters arrive to the blazing house where Michael is trapped in the basement. Michael survives the fire and kills the nearby first responders, and resumes his rampage in Haddonfield. The people of the town, frightened and enraged, form groups to hunt him down, but lack of coordination and irrationality lead them to do things they might otherwise never think are permissible. "The Shape" terrorizes Laurie's neighbors until many citizens are ready to accuse innocent, unrelated people of being Michael just to bring a sense of peace.
Intellectual Content
Humans can be far more terrifying than fictional creatures or even entities that are logically possible but whose existences are unverifiable or falsifiable. Halloween Kills embraces this truth more than the original and the 2018 reboot. Even in trying to stop or punish monsters, people can become monsters themselves in the process if they lapse into the stupidity of assumptions or hypocrisy. The desperate people of Haddonfield succumb to this tendency, allowing sheer panic to override whatever likely minimal alignment with reason they already had (almost no one is truly rationalistic no matter how gently or forcefully they are pressured by others, and most people do not think deeply or soundly on their own). The mad craze of the townspeople to kill a mental patient who is mistaken for Michael because of their own pathetic assumptions highlights how far they are willing to go to simply make themselves feel better instead of actually fulfilling their goal of killing Michael.
Conclusion
Halloween Kills is definitely executed as the middle step towards the end of the reboot trilogy. As such, it is a sort of "filler" movie that, while not bad, is more of a necessity to get the story to its eventual conclusion. This makes it very different from both the 1978 and 2018 entries in the series. A different style of storytelling does not always amount to a lack of quality, though there is never likely to be a shortage of people who will think otherwise. Yes, there are some drawbacks to the way Halloween Kills unfolds, with its minimal chances for character development or exploration thanks to its enormous cast. Halloween Ends will be the movie to reveal if Halloween Kills is a necessary or even thoroughly relevant part of the trilogy.
Content:
1. Violence: Michael slaughters firefighters, police officers, and ordinary citizens by impaling them in the face or torso onscreen. Heads are twisted backwards or stabbed in the eye socket with blades.
2. Profanity: "Shit" and "fuck" are used regularly.
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