Let’s Talk About Halloween Kills
Let's talk about Halloween Kills. Smarter folks than myself have spent a great deal of ink and airtime on the Halloween franchise. Decades of sequels, remakes and re-remakes have generated a bizarre tapestry of timelines, with equally varied intent. The original series of films run through Halloween (1978) to Halloween Resurrection, Rob Zombie had his shot, and the revival in 2018 picked up decades after Halloween II (1981), not to mention Halloween III: Season of the Witch, the controversial non-Michael Myers entry, has its own world. By that metric we have 4 iterations.
To preface my opinion on the most recent entry, I need to be clear that I genuinely liked Halloween (2018). There was a clear effort to imagine what Laurie Strode might be like decades after that one Halloween night that the franchise began with. It was mostly coherent, with a clear direction in which the narrative headed. I liked the maiden/mother/crone imagery in Laurie, her daughter, and granddaughter, and the suggestion that the divine feminine can defeat that faceless shape of the Patriarchal forces that would oppress them.
It was terribly disappointing, then, to watch Halloween Kills. The symbolic unification of feminine power in those characters coming together was completely discarded in the service of unwarranted melodrama. Our leads seem to forget the power they had together immediately, splitting up and lying to each other practically from the jump. This film happens in the same night as the last film. What did the journey of the previous entry matter if it's so easy to abandon the unity they paid for in literal blood?
Setting that aside, this film is three reasonably interesting films stitched together. Laurie and her family have their own story, which is the through-line from the previous entry. The story of the “evil dies tonight” mob is given too much time to be a subplot, and has potential to be a standalone film on its own merits. The couple living in the Myers house, Big John and Little John, have enough character that they could be the basis for a unique home invasion entry into the franchise. These all have very distinct moods that don't entirely gel together.
Now I have to address diversity in this film. There's a charitable read that sees Black characters and gay characters, and gives it a thumbs up on diversity. That is not my read. They're great characters, don't get me wrong, the performances are delightful. My problem is that they are killed without any them having any real plot value beyond adding to the body count. The couple in the Myers house are deeply endearing, and they're offed so unceremoniously that it's like a slap across the face...that can be a good thing in horror movies, but because these two are treated like a sideshow to the main narrative, it just feels cheap. The same is true of the Black couple who decide to join the group in hunting Michael, they're fun and feel real, but they just get killed without really connecting with anything. That's without mentioning the characterization then murder of callback characters like Lonnie and Tommy.
All that said, I'm sure it's earned enough at the box office to ensure it gets its third and 'final' entry. I don't know how they're going to bring it back from this, or if it's actually possible. It will take some decisive writing, a distinct tonal choice, and a good deal more respect given to the characters. I'm eternally optimistic about these classic franchises, they've had such wild ups and downs over the years. I'll almost certainly go to see it, for better or for worse.
Dan Sexton-Riley is a British transplant living on Cape Cod with their family and a menagerie of small monsters. Dan fills most days with writing, reading, and baking. Their work can be found at Divination Hollow Reviews and Bewildering Stories. Dan also runs a Patreon dedicated to baking tutorials.
Socials are all @dansextonriley
Website is dansextonriley.com
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