Halloween Kills (2021)

[Eric Atreides]

Discuss

[ddddeeee]

Pros:

Robert Longstreet is far better than he had any right to be and acts rings around everyone.

 

This feels like the first 'big budget slasher' since Scream 3? It feels big.

 

The idea that a big angry mob can't stop evil is very on the nose, but the idea works for me.

 

I like that the movie sympathises with Laurie but still holds her to account. Alyson's and Laurie's rage inadvertently led to Karen's death, and I want to see the fallout of that.

 

Loved seeing Michael all playful and curious. The deaths of the Cameron and the elderly couple are genuinely harrowing.

 

I liked the mix between how utterly vicious MM is with how empathetic the movie is towards pretty much every other character.

 

The synth choir with the theme works way better than it should. It seems like it should be incongruous with nasty tone of the movie, but it works. Loved the retro sounds for the flashbacks.

 

I know people will hate it, but I was howling at the 'Big John/Little John' scene.

 

The mob confrontation at the end is really intense.

 

Given that it's a movie about violence, the abrupt ending worked for me.

 

Cons:

Dialogue is atrocious. Everyone from teenage boys to elderly men and women spur monologues like they're Loomis. Really quite painful. I felt embarrassed a lot of the time.

 

The Lonnie flashback is the wrong kind of camp.

 

The constant flashbacking is awful. This movie trusts the audience to do absolutely nothing.

 

Laurie prompting the mob then saying 'Maybe we're the monsters' like five minutes later broke my neck from whiplash.

 

Carpenter's score sometimes makes already melodramatic scenes even more overwrought.

 

Brackett had no business being in this and every single line is dire.

 

Very much a mixed bag. I appreciate the loud-and-proud B-movieness of it all, and I'm predisposed to like any of these, but it's too camp to be appreciated in any serious way, and it's too serious to become a camp classic.

Edited October 16, 2021 by ddddeeee

[4815162342]

Movie deserves a 0 for giving Judy Greer actual time in the spotlight and then killing her off abruptly in a ludicrous series of events

[CoolioD1]

What an odd film.

[WrathOfHan]

It's a B-movie that wants to be taken seriously but fails miserably. Giving JLC like 10 minutes of screentime was a choice.

[Eastwood47]

If a Halloween movie could just be rated on its ability to be nothing but derivative then this film would win hands down for borrowing from every component of the franchises long 40 plus years of existence. Hell it even has to go back and create exposition from the '78 classic and dig up all its old characters to remind you it has nothing to offer for its own legacy. 

David Gordon Green might think he's being slick by retconning all the sequels, then using all of their signature plot points to rearrange and offer fan service moments to exploit the fact he actually has nothing to add to the mythology. But I think after Kills, he might have alerted the public that he is just a poor man's version of JJ Abrams playing hack director to sell old memories to fans wrapped up in the façade of a "new movie". 

There's nothing here. Everything is to feed nostalgia, but there is not a lick of common sense or rationale to any of the character motivations in this film. It feels like a fan made film. All the characters (even secondary ones) have hilarious and cringe worthy proclamations that come from nothing. 

In the last movie the murders of '78 were viewed as a generations removed crime that no one thinks about or even rates as a high crime. In this film, its as if Myers has always been there for all 40 years and the town is fed up. I haven't seen such an utter disregard for a coherent plot since Halloween 5. Not that any of the others have been much better since. But this has that same feeling that if the director wants to bank left and take you to whatever he dreams up, there's no explanation needed. You just go there. The only thing missing from this film is that mask used in Halloween 5. If they had used that, you would think the same director was brought back. 

The only thing I'm thankful about is I did not sit in a theater to watch it. 

 

[filmlover]

This was disappointing and a definite step down from the 2018 movie. Sidelining JLC most of the time feels like a mistake to begin with, and the movie doesn't compensate for it by filling the runtime with repetitive scenes of angry people chanting "evil dies tonight" and a lack of truly memorable kill scenes. And the decision to kill off Judy Greer feels especially boneheaded after the previous flick set up this trilogy to be a "three generations" sort of deal. I'll certainly see the last movie but I can't say I'm excited for it after the going-through-the-motions vibe of this one. C+

[FilmFincher]

Maybe my expectations were in check because I've been catching up on some of the lesser entries in the franchise recently. This film is miles ahead of those. 

 

The characters were pretty dumb throughout and the logistics of the last 5 mins have not been thought out. I'm on board with Michael being an unstoppable beast with no explanation but I just felt they could have laid out that specific scenario a little better. 

 

I think I screamed at the screen the 10th time someone said "Remember that night 40 years ago...".

I waved my hands in despair when someone missed a shot for the 20th time.

I rolled my eyes when anyone said "Evil dies tonight"

 

Plot definitely feels like wheel-spinning before the conclusion, but that's understandable. 

It felt like Green's direction took a bit of step back as well, lighting was more atmospheric but coverage was a bit more standard. 

 

But Michael was a badass, I love how he's portrayed in this film. There's some discussion around how he's not actually after Laurie which is great, and the childhood home stuff is interestingly ambiguous. I wonder if they'll dive into it more with the finale. 

 

The kills were awesome and brutal (glorious gore), returning characters were solid, I think JLC taking a back seat meant we were losing a little something since it's her wrath against Michael we empathise with most. The newer characters are more of a mixed bag. It felt like a proper continuation of the same night. Some unexpected surprises like the flashbacks which were executed so well. 

 

It's a step down from 2018 but the fun outweighed the frustrations. 

 

6/10

Edited October 18, 2021 by FilmFincher

[Krissykins]

On 10/16/2021 at 10:46 AM, ddddeeee said:

This feels like the first 'big budget slasher' since Scream 3? It feels big.

 

It does feel big. I remember thinking with the sold out crowd when the film was playing “Halloween is a blockbuster now”. 

[filmlover]

The main problem this movie has is that it often comes across as an attempt at social commentary that was crammed inside a gory slasher flick (one of the influences Get Out has had on the genre no doubt). Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to aim higher than usual for a horror movie, but the way the movie tries to address the dangers of mob mentality is just so...forced and on-the-nose. You can tell that this was originally supposed to be timed with the presidential election last year.

[titanic2187]

The issue that i have with this film is there are way way too many deaths to the point that they hardly carry any weigh anymore that the movie even almost giving up to build any suspense around every kill.

 

The attempt to build social commentary around Michael and his masks was kind of cool but horribly executed.

 

Also possibly the worst part is , while I understand that Michael himself represent the evil which can't be killed, but since you are presenting him as a human form with actual tangible human body, you got to at least "justify" how he is unkilledable, instead of just saying "It is a metaphor! " kind of lame excuse and certainly blued the line between the world we are imagining it to be and for worse, failing the world-building of Halloween universe. 

[pepsa]

This movie was beyond frustrating, every character acts dumb, is dumb, does dumb things. Guns don't work, everyone shoots everywere but the person. The character knock Micheal down a few times none of those times they decapetate his head or really destroy it/him. Than the methapore came, doesn't explain why he's a killing machine in human like body but totaly unkillable. Also the fact that 20+ people die and the army isn't there doesn't make any sense. The problem with this genre for me is that their is no way it's realistic and it doesn't even try to be, still it acts as if it's not a parrody.

 

I would say 3/10 or D

[Avatree]

I enjoyed it as a b movie. Kept me somewhat tense and nervous. I enjoyed the level of violence. I haven't seen the other films though (except the original and the new reboot) so I can imagine it's treading a lot of the same water as before. I would have liked them to do something a bit more with the mob mentality stuff.

[Noctis]

How was Kyle Richards?

[CJohn]

Why was Jamie Lee Curtis in a hospital room the entire time?

 

The gory kills were fun but everything else was atrocious. The writing is shocking.

[baumer]

There were three things I liked about this movie.

 

When Sherriff Brackett says to Myers at the end; It's Halloween, everyone's entitled to one good scare, that made me smile because that is what he says to Laurie in the original.

 

I liked the Little and Big John's.  They were well written and I empathized with their deaths.

 

Lyndsey grew up to be super hot.

 

That's it.

 

The rest of what I hated has probably been mentioned by everybody else in this thread but I still have to make a few comments.

 

One of the things that is really bothered me about this new timeline of Halloween is that Laurie and the entire town of Haddonfield act as if Michael Myers has been haunting them by coming back year after year after year. The guy's been a mental institution for 40 years. Okay I get it the town has scars because he killed 3 people on Halloween night but without Halloween's 2 and 4 being cannon it just doesn't make any sense. You shouldn't feel that much betrayal and anger towards him. It just doesn't work with Halloween 2 and four being ignored.

 

Some of the psychobabble mumble-jumble bullshit in this film is just infuriatingly bad. Out of the blue every 15 minutes or so somebody starts trying to analyze why Michael Myers is the way he is or why he's evil or how they've become evil or it just keeps going and going and it's just ridiculous. Some of the dialogue in the film is just horrific.

 

There is just way too much Halloween nods in this film that it just feels over stuffed.  Okay Danny and David, we get it, you know the history of Halloween.  But you don't have to try to shove all of it into one movie.  So much of it just didn't feel right.

 

The mob scene in the hospital was just so so so so so so bad.  They see a guy in a white hospital gown who is about 5'7 and fat and they chase him and want to torture and kill him because they believe  he is Myers without the mask.  LMFAO!  Michael is tall and big.  You would never ever ever confuse the two.  It's such piss poor writing that it does the opposite of what they were trying to do.

 

And I think they secretly got Rob zombie to direct and write the Lonnie flashback scene to 1978 on Halloween night. Those kids who make fun of him are straight out of Rob zombie's Halloween. The filthy mouth the stupid hairstyles the dumb Halloween costumes it just it didn't fit. It looked like and sounded like a completely different movie.

 

And then you bring back Marion Chambers only to kill her. You bring back Tommy Doyle only to kill him. Lindsay survives but once she's taken out of the park you never really see her again.

 

But most egregiously this film is not scary. It's gory and his violent and I couldn't even enjoy that because the violence is in every scene that you become desensitized to it. The greatest thing about Halloween(78) and the sequel was that they were scary as fuck. There was amazing lighting there was a fantastic soundtrack you didn't know where Michael Myers was going to come from and if you think about the scene in Halloween part 2 where Michael just seems to float out of a room to kill the nurse, that was done with innovation by both the director, and the director of photography. There's nothing innovative or inventive in this movie at all. It's just Michael stabs and kills people and there's Gore and blood.

 

This wasn't as bad as Rob zombie's Halloween part 2 but it was certainly as bad if not worse than Rob zombie's Halloween. I kind of hated this movie.

 

2/10

[Flopped]

Cons: it's unwatchable 

Pros: nothing 

 

Hang it up, flatscreen 

I was actually embarrassed at some point for Jamie Lee, the studio, the myth of Michael Meyers