Where to watch Halloween Kills
3 1/2 Stars
After successfully relaunching the dormant Halloween franchise in 2018, director David Gordon Green is back with a middle chapter in a proposed trilogy featuring the fates of Michael Myers and his perennial victim Laurie Strode. This follow-up is filled with the expected brutal slayings and is tethered to the expectations of genre conventions and tropes. But it is also full of anger and fury. The film has a racing pulse that adds to the frenzied forward momentum of the narrative.
Halloween Kills picks up exactly after the ending of the last movie. If you remember Myers was burned alive inside Laurie’s (Jaime Lee Curtis) home. Or so we naively assumed. Turns out Mikey was taking refuge in a cement panic room deep inside the structure. This leads to his entrance into the film in which he takes on a half dozen firefighters in an ax battle.
Michael begins his ascent on the traumatized town of Haddonfield for more bloodletting in his singular pursuit of Laurie and her offspring. Meanwhile, the residents of that town have had enough of Myer’s shit and form a lynch mob to take the fight to the killer.
Jaime Lee Curtis retains top billing and this will always be her signature role, but this is Anthony Michael Hall’s movie to carry and he absolutely nails his role as the grown-up Tommy Dole. Hall’s appearance has changed over the decades. His physique is bulkier than you would remember and his face is deep with lines, but this makes him so much more interesting to look at on-screen. He is totally convincing and this second chapter is his story as much as anyones.
I had lost interest in the franchise after suffering through eleven sequels of vastly varying quality and craftsmanship. However, 43years after the original John Carpenter classic premiered Halloween Kills delivers the best entry since 1978.
Director: David Gordon Green
Stars: Jaime Lee Curtis, Anthony Michael Hall, Will Patton