Michael Myers lives, but the mob is ready for him in Halloween Kills.
Minutes after Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) left masked monster Michael Myers caged and burning in Laurie’s basement, Laurie is rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, believing she finally killed her lifelong tormentor. But when Michael manages to free himself from Laurie’s trap, his ritual bloodbath resumes. As Laurie fights her pain and prepares to defend herself against him, she inspires all of Haddonfield to rise up against their unstoppable monster. The Strode women join a group of other survivors of Michael’s first rampage who decide to take matters into their own hands, forming a vigilante mob that sets out to hunt Michael down, once and for all. Evil dies tonight. (via Gizmodo)
When the Halloween reboot continuity/spin-off/whatever came out, I loved it a lot. I ended up watching it in theaters twice and deeply enjoyed watching Jamie Lee Curtis be a total badass as OG scream queen Laurie Strode. However, once it became clear that, rather than being a one-and-done, but the start of a new trilogy, I became concerned.
Halloween is one of my favorite slasher franchises and, in comparison to a lot of others, has some good installments as it goes forward—better than most slasher franchises. It has another alternate continuity timeline with the Rob Zombie films, and even within the “main canon,” there is a lot of film-by-film retconning. With Halloween Kills, we see a lot of beautiful imagery, but a lot of the same.
Directed by David Gordon Green and written by Green, Danny McBride, and Scott Teems, Kills takes place directly after the events of the 2018 film. Even though Laurie set a fire that was meant to kill her long-time tormenter, Michael survived.
“A man couldn’t have survived that fire,” Laurie Strode says when she is given the news. Sorry, Laurie, Fire cannot kill a slasher. We see Michael slaughter a bunch of firefighters, who probably thought they were helping to contain a house fire but just end up letting the villain go.
We also see other survivors of the original ’70s attack, like Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy Doyle and Kyle Richards reprising her role as Lindsey Wallace. It’s a great callback to the long history of this franchise. Laurie and her family are determined to kill Michael, but it is not just them now. It is all of Haddonfield.
Early reviews coming out from Venice have been mixed, but this is a slasher movie; it comes with the territory.
Halloween Kills is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on October 15, 2021 by Universal Pictures, and stream on Peacock for 60 days. The final installment, Halloween Ends, is scheduled to be released October 14, 2022.
(image: Ryan Green/ Universal Pictures)
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