‘HALLOWEEN KILLS’
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O Haddonfield! My Haddonfield! Why, in the name of fictitious Illinois towns, have you resorted to hapless mob violence, like the pitchfork crowd in “Frankenstein” or the January Sixers that came along after “Halloween Kills” was filmed?
And why is “Halloween Kills” such a drag, as well as a clear step down from director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s 2018 “Halloween” reboot?
Three years ago, that reboot made for a pretty good, hugely profitable reminder that Jamie Lee Curtis can open a movie, and serial killer Michael Meyers can still clog up 1.5 stars (out of 4)
Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Anthony Michael Hall, Andi Matichak, William Patton
David Gordon Green
R (for strong bloody violence throughout, grisly images, language and some drug use)
1 hours 46 minutes.
In theaters and streaming on Peacock
today. a small town’s drainage system with the blood of his victims. The new movie picks up right after teenage babysitter-turned-crazed-survivalist grandmother Laurie Strode (Curtis); her daughter Karen ( Judy Greer); and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) stabbed, burned and dispatched
Haddonfield’s masked nemesis for good/whoops/not dead yet. The movie served as a solid showcase for Curtis, and it delivered in its climax, even if wobbled some en route.
The new film’s a comparative mess — jaded, structurally awkward and overpacked. Myers lives, of course, being the very quintessence of evil. The “Halloween Kills” script from Green, Danny Mcbride and Scott Teems stops dead periodically for gabby, mistimed speeches about how Myers has transformed Haddonfield’s residents into a frightened, roving pack of animals. Anthony Michael Hall plays Tommy Doyle, a survivor of the Myers Class of ’78, all grown up, glowering (his closeups are the scariest thing in the picture) and ready for vengeance.
“Halloween Kills” links back to flashbacks (newly created) to the events of Halloween, 1963, as well as the 1978 events of the John Carpenter original, in addition to somewhat awkward “previously in Haddonfield” snippets from the 2018 outing.
This thing has more characters than “Nashville” and “Short Cuts” put together; by design, it’s a fresco of splatter, with various couples and characters barely sketched just before they’re stabbed, gouged, necksnapped, throat-rammed with fluorescent tubes and so on. Those who came out of the “Candyman” reboot frustrated by all the middle-distance, methodically composed camerawork and the absence of splurch will get their gristle’s worth here.
Much of the film takes place in the world’s most poorly supervised hospital, where seriously injured Laurie and Officer Hawkins (Will Patton) share some old, bad memories of what happened that night in ’78.