Review: Halloween Kills

Picking up right where the last film left off, Laurie, (Jamie Lee Curtis) Karen (Judy Greer) and Addyson (Andi Matichek) are being rushed to the hospital to tend to Laurie's injuries. Meanwhile, Michael is still alive, slaughters what appears to be the entire Haddonfield fire department, and he's on his merry way to do more murders. But while Laurie is recovering, the now grown Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) is ready to lead a mob to kill him for good.

While I've been a fan of this franchise I didn't think it needed another movie so when the last one came out, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked it and how well I thought it handled Laurie's PTSD. Now after watching this, it really made me realize just how much this franchise depends on Laurie. You watch it for gory kills by Michael Myers, sure. But Laurie is the glue that holds this together and despite what the trailers make you believe, she's not the main focus of this movie. In a way, Tommy is and the film suffers greatly for it.

Michael Myers clearly keeps terrorizing Haddonfield because there's an astonishing amount of stupidity among its residents. Whenever they are in his presence, they automatically freeze and forget how to run and/or use a gun. I would normally chalk this up to fun in a horror film but because we're stuck with Tommy and his mob for the majority of the film, it stopped being fun. I'm just so incredibly disappointed with this. Sure, there's some cool kills but it's such a huge drop in quality from the film that came before it.

Thankfully, this movie is available to stream on Peacock, so I didn't have to waste theater money on it. The music as always was perfect and Judy Greer got a bit more to do, but this was ultimately a bit of a dud and I'm back to having zero excitement for the next film.

Recommended: No

Grade: C-

Memorable Quote: "Gotcha." - Karen (Judy Greer)