Forty years after that fateful Halloween night that killed Laurie’s friends, Michael comes home again. This time, the people of Haddonfield are ready to fight back.
The movie picks up just at the end of Halloween (2018) and skims over what happened there. Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) has a daughter, Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) now. It seems their family home became a trap for Michael earlier that night when he finally hunted Laurie down, complete with bars that sealed him into the basement. Shown through some messy flashbacks, the family set fire to the house, believing that they finally killed him. After all, there was no way anyone could survive that, right?
The poor firefighters called to the scene soon become Michael’s next victims, their corpses sprawled out in front of the burning house. Visually, it’s pretty cool and we enjoy how gruesome it is. But I guess people are not happy that firefighters are being so brutally murdered in movies. Decades of innocent teenage girls can die, but it’s fictional firefighters we can’t allow, right?
Meanwhile, at the local bar, survivors of Michael’s initial attack reminisce and relax until the local TV starts reporting about the house fire and the slain firefighters. Now middle aged Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall) and his friends realize Michael is back and prepare to fight back. Fueled with vengeance and Halloween booze, they take to the streets. In an attempt to protect kids at the playground, one group gets picked off one by one. Their deaths bring horror fans joy.
We catch up with Laurie and her family at the hospital, where Laurie undergoes surgery for wounds we assume Michael inflicted. As Michael’s attacks add up, it fills the emergency room. The hospital becomes overrun with victims, people searching for loved ones and the vengeful mob led by Tommy Doyle. And soon Micheal isn’t the only one taking innocent lives.
Two characters I really enjoyed and was almost sad to see die were the gay couple who reside in the old Myers’ house, Big John (Scott MacArthur) and Little John (Michael McDonald). We see they’re good, quirky, sweet people, even running out to help kids they thought were in trouble. But sadly, they aren’t good at locking doors. I could watch a whole series about how they decided to live in that house and then renovated it themselves (or with some helpful lesbian friends who knew to be out of town on Halloween). But seriously, who would live in an infamous murderer’s childhood home?
Honestly, Halloween Kills is not a good, well thought out, or at all suspenseful horror film, but I still enjoyed it. What can I say? I love the gore, the horror and Michael’s almost random killings as he makes his way back home.
“Evil dies tonight!”
The Best Picture Project 