Halloween Kills

Dir David Gordon Green, US 2021 On general release

Nostalgia has long since cemented itself as a profitable segment of the entertainment industry, and when Jamie Lee Curtis reprised her career-making role of Laurie Strode in 2018’s Halloween, the franchise became the latest fan favourite of yesteryear to return to the big screen.

Wiping the slate clean of the numerous lacklustre sequels that followed 1981’s Halloween II, the new Halloween turned out to be one of the better attempts at revitalising a franchise. Seeing a mature Laurie return, ready for battle while also examining the impact past horrors had on her life, her family and their interpersonal relationships, lent a certain gravitas to the re-tread of the 1978 original.

Picking up directly where the last movie left off, Halloween Kills

unfortunately fails to follow up on what its predecessor established. In spite of what the previous film (and the trailers for the new one) chose to emphasise, the narrative of three generations of women dealing with how Michael Myers’s evil deeds affected their lives in various ways is largely sidelined this time around. Instead, Halloween Kills puts too much emphasis on nods to the previous films, revisiting a myriad of images and characters from the original movie. While the roster of returning characters – many portrayed by the original actors – is impressive, this level of fan service becomes more of a distraction than an enrichment. And as a result, Halloween Kills

takes the focus off what gave the 2018 film an advantage in the nostalgia market and falls short of what it could have been.

Leyla Mikkelsen

★★ ★★★