Main cast: Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode), Judy Greer (Karen Nelson), Andi Matichak (Allyson Nelson), Will Patton (Frank Hawkins), Anthony Michael Hall (Tommy Doyle), Robert Longstreet (Lonnie Elam), Dylan Arnold (Cameron Elam), Charles Cyphers (Leigh Brackett), Kyle Richards (Lindsey Wallace), Nancy Stephens (Marion Chambers), Omar Dorsey (Sheriff Barker), Ross Bacon (Lance Tovoli), and Nick Castle (Michael Myers)
Director: David Gordon Green
One problem that plagues series like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th is that the main villain is never allowed to die. The other characters can play by the supposed rules and jump through hoops to take down that guy in one movie, but by the end of the movie, the bug guy will show up anyway because, one, eff you, and two, these people need to make more movies for more shekels.
The problem with Halloween Kills goes a little deeper than that: it completely undoes the the interesting dynamics set up between the Strode women in the previous movie. Michael Myers still lives, after all the work done by Laurie in the previous movie, because eff you, and now he’s on the loose. Meanwhile, the new version of Tommy Doyle—poor Paul Rudd, his take on that character is completely erased in this new canon, not that this is a bad thing because Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers is diabolical—is back, now older and determined to rally the townsfolk of Haddonfield against Michael.
Seriously, this movie completely dismantles everything about the previous movie. If the previous movie was an interesting take of the reversal of the predator-hunted role (Laurie was certainly the hunter there), this one flips the dynamics back to a more disappointingly traditional one, as Laurie is out of commission for pretty much the entire movie and everyone else, male and female, is fodder for the slaughter.
Sure, in the end this one is definitely much better than any of the original sequels that came after the third movie, but there is nothing new here that adds to the franchise. It’s just by the book Michael Myers, with the additional insult of it undoing the sole good thing about the overrated previous movie. While the previous movie made a good brouhaha about it being representative of #MeToo, this one doesn’t even bother to pay lip service to anything other than wanting to make moolah. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but it also means that there’s nothing much here that is fresh or interesting. The whole thing is basically a stinger to get people to stay tuned and watch the next movie too.
