A lot of the Friday films keep the notion that Jason still has the mentality of a child. Halloween Kills kinda does the same thing with how in the flashback Michael basically repeats the same thing he did in the original Halloween after he killed his sister where he just stands in front of his house after he killed the cop in the flashback.
There is also the fact Hawkins is telling Laurie Michael has the "mind of a child, the strength of a man and the savagery of an animal".
I think the first movie (2018) went in on the idea Michael was pure evil, like how he only stepped out to try and attack Karen when she pretended she didn't have it in her to shoot him, the very clinical murders he did in 18 and how he beat that child to death.
I feel with Kills, they kinda make it seem like Michael is an overgrown child with the inclusion of the "he has to go back to his sisters window" bit since it's trying to show he is basically working in a cycle.
I really don't care about "characters making stupid decisions". That kind of thing doesn't bother since I go into every film ready to suspend disbelief.
The issue here is the dialogue and performers from most of the cast is just rough.
Then having three whole MadTv skit with the two Johns was just awful. Did no one think to cut out the dance scene? Why was that even filmed?
I have enjoyed many of DGD and McBride's work, but they really were the wrong choice to work on the script.
H18 had this issues too with Aly's friends, especially the McBride self-insert kid, but here the humor is dialed up to a much more annoying degree.
I really don't care about "characters making stupid decisions". That kind of thing doesn't bother since I go into every film ready to suspend disbelief.
The issue here is the dialogue and performers from most of the cast is just rough.
Then having three whole MadTv skit with the two Johns was just awful. Did no one think to cut out the dance scene? Why was that even filmed?
I have enjoyed many of DGD and McBride's work, but they really were the wrong choice to work on the script.
H18 had this issues too with Aly's friends, especially the McBride self-insert kid, but here the humor is dialed up to a much more annoying degree.
Talk about terrible hot takes. Nah, that was great. The kid is the only smart character in the franchise and even his cameo in this one was perfection. Cops added nothing but their attempt at a Pulp Fiction reference, it could go.
What would have been one of the genuine scares of H2018 (Vicky trying to close the closet door and Myers stepping out) was completely undercut and ruined by Julien's immediate "oh shit!" and "don't go up there Dave, you're gonna die!'
I really want to see this, but my small town cinema is prioritising No Time To Die and Venom: Let There Be Carnage instead because they only have 3 screens.
I really want to see this, but my small town cinema is prioritising No Time To Die and Venom: Let There Be Carnage instead because they only have 3 screens.
I let this simmer for a bit but now I'm going spoiler tag all my feelings on Halloween Kills and why I enjoyed it so much
I really like Halloween (2018). I honestly think it's the second best film in the franchise behind the original. I enjoy re-watching even most of the bad Halloween movies like 4-5-6 and H20. The Michael Myers saga and the lore behind it always intrigues the hell out of me, whether its poorly executed or not.
I was originally hoping that 2018 would be the finale in the Strode saga. When I first heard about Kills, I was disappointed that it was existing in the first place. Jamie Lee Curtis is getting older and I'd really like to finish this off and anticipate a reboot at some point. However, when the Kills details and trailers came out, I got right back on the hype train.
I went in with legitimate excitement and curiosity and came away super hyped. Now let me say this, the acting from almost the entire cast could have been much improved on. I didn't buy into Tommy's character at all because the acting was so over the top bad. There's an element of camp to this that I enjoyed but I think they toed the line too much. The music is excellent like usual.
I'm going to now get into why I loved this movie. This movie's job, to me, was to point out how fatally flawed everyone was from the jump. Everybody in the town thought Michael was this type or that type of character. They all came up with plans and treated him like a normal threat. Everything they did was status quo, even the beat downs, and they paid dearly for that. They had all this time to plan and all they came up with some bullshit. They didn't take the head off. I loved all of this because it paints a picture of the true menace of Michael. I also really loved that the movie asks more questions than it answers, setting itself up well for Ends.
Does Michael even care about the Strodes? Is Michael only killing because people are just in his way and he wants to just go the heck home and chill for a bit? Does he still have a bit of humanity in him, in a twisted sense (him freaking out when the mask is off, him needing to stare at his reflection through the window, him specializing his kills more than ever), etc? I like that potentially, everyone in the town, including us, the audience were led down a path we thought we believe in but were wrong all along.
I think the ending kind of beat you over the head with those themes but I'm glad they ripped the band aid off. Laurie Strode vs Michael, one last time. It really does feel that Michael's evil essence gets stronger and smarter as he kills more people. Regardless if Laurie survives in Ends, I'm hoping to see this chess match play out. Kills to me, was meant to be the magnum opus of the original Michael Myers. He was the star.
I'm willing to talk about this in more details if folks want but these are my general thoughts on the movie.
It also just occurred to me that during the press for H2018, one of DGG's talking points was that he wanted to pick up directly after H1978, and that Carpenter talked them out of that in his notes, telling them he didn't think it was necessary, so they scrapped it
Folks getting really crazy with the hyperbole, even if you didn't like it this is not touching bottom of the barrel of Halloween films.
It's uneven but I still enjoyed lot of it. I think they took risks and tried to make a different movie from the typical stalk and slash type of slasher film, trying to make a big action carnage film. Lot of this I think still will depend on how things go with Halloween Ends and if it helps bookend the trilogy
Yeah this the only thing that bothers me too. I have no issue with people thinking Kills is terrible. That's perfectly fine.
But "worst in the series" is some utterly insane combination of recency bias and rosetinted glasses. Go watch H5 or Resurrection and come back and say that with a straight face. Objectively I don't think you could rank Kills any lower than middle of the pack at worst.
I say this as a huge fan of the franchise but I actually disagree. It's very hard for me to rank it because while it's definitely one of the best-made movies in the franchise, leagues beyond something like Halloween 5, there was no one in Kills that I liked, whereas Jamie was really likable and Tina was very endearing by the end.
Also, Halloween 5 didn't piss me off, but Kills really did. The movie is just mean-spirited,
it seems to take pleasure in bringing back characters from the original only to show them as incompetent idiots that are quickly dispatched without Michael breaking a sweat. People have been wanting Charles Cyphers to come back for decades, his character was taken seriously in the first two films and his daughter's death felt really tragic. Here, they bring him back to bust a shitty one-liner/quote from the original and immediately get killed like a chump. Marion is stupid and gets everybody in her group killed. Lonnie is killed off-screen about 10 seconds after getting inside the house. Tommy gives off a huge MAGA vibe, drives an innocent man to suicide, spends the whole film rallying people only to wait until everybody else is dead to take his shot and he can't even get one hit before being stabbed and apparently killed with one hit of a baseball bat.
The returning characters from 2018 don't fare much better as Cameron comes off as a massive dick for casually motivating his girlfriend to risk her life even though she just survived an attack, and doing so right in front of her mom. Allyson is both irresponsible and dumb. Karen risks her life as well as her daughter's just to act as bait, for no discernible reason, but then leaves Michael behind after a single stab and decides to wander off alone in the dark.
And this is just one aspect of the film that bothers me, but there's plenty more that is wrong with it. It may be well-made, but the only movies in this franchise I've enjoyed less are Halloween III, the Zombie H1 director's cut and both cuts of Zombie's H2. So I don't know where I'd rank it, honestly, but all I know is I had a much better time watching lesser entries like Halloween 5, 6 and Resurrection. Those movies had competent, resourceful, likable characters.
It doesn't fit the new 4 year time skip. There is actually a shot in one of the trailers of Laurie storming out of the hospital obviously after that call/version, and that makes sense if they are again continuing the exact same night.
I don't think that works so well with a 4 year skip though, which is the direction they've decided on.
No. With the original plan to pick up immediately afterwards in Ends then it works fine but the new time skip that ending wouldn't have worked at all. Plus, as much as I loved the movie it's so nihilstic and cruel that I really don't need Laurie hearing the death of her daughter added to the misery pile.
I just hope DGG isn't planning to make Ends too COVID adjacent. We've lived through this hell for 2 years, I don't really need to see allegories for it on the big screen.
I just hope DGG isn't planning to make Ends too COVID adjacent. We've lived through this hell for 2 years, I don't really need to see allegories for it on the big screen.
It doesn't fit the new 4 year time skip. There is actually a shot in one of the trailers of Laurie storming out of the hospital obviously after that call/version, and that makes sense if they are again continuing the exact same night.
I don't think that works so well with a 4 year skip though, which is the direction they've decided on.
It also would have been really weird considering just how physically hurt they portrayed Laurie in this one. Like she's totally outta commission right now.
That explains the bit about Allyson putting the knife next to Laurie in the hospital room that leads to nothing in the finished film.
Other than that, I don't really think it's better,
unless Laurie started breaking down on the phone or something for some powerful Jamie Lee Curtis acting, but knowing how cynical this film is, I doubt it, it's probably just a reference to the first film and Laurie looking like a badass, and the finished film has enough of the former and the current ending already does the latter. The ending is fine as is, even if there was no time skip planned.
I say this as a huge fan of the franchise but I actually disagree. It's very hard for me to rank it because while it's definitely one of the best-made movies in the franchise, leagues beyond something like Halloween 5, there was no one in Kills that I liked, whereas Jamie was really likable and Tina was very endearing by the end.
Also, Halloween 5 didn't piss me off, but Kills really did. The movie is just mean-spirited,
it seems to take pleasure in bringing back characters from the original only to show them as incompetent idiots that are quickly dispatched without Michael breaking a sweat. People have been wanting Charles Cyphers to come back for decades, his character was taken seriously in the first two films and his daughter's death felt really tragic. Here, they bring him back to bust a shitty one-liner/quote from the original and immediately get killed like a chump. Marion is stupid and gets everybody in her group killed. Lonnie is killed off-screen about 10 seconds after getting inside the house. Tommy gives off a huge MAGA vibe, drives an innocent man to suicide, spends the whole film rallying people only to wait until everybody else is dead to take his shot and he can't even get one hit before being stabbed and apparently killed with one hit of a baseball bat.
The returning characters from 2018 don't fare much better as Cameron comes off as a massive dick for casually motivating his girlfriend to risk her life even though she just survived an attack, and doing so right in front of her mom. Allyson is both irresponsible and dumb. Karen risks her life as well as her daughter's just to act as bait, for no discernible reason, but then leaves Michael behind after a single stab and decides to wander off alone in the dark.
And this is just one aspect of the film that bothers me, but there's plenty more that is wrong with it. It may be well-made, but the only movies in this franchise I've enjoyed less are Halloween III, the Zombie H1 director's cut and both cuts of Zombie's H2. So I don't know where I'd rank it, honestly, but all I know is I had a much better time watching lesser entries like Halloween 5, 6 and Resurrection. Those movies had competent, resourceful, likable characters.
I think the sheer mean-spiritedness is going to be one of the many divisive things about this flick. It's just a cruel-ass movie.
That said, I think this movie's reputation over the next few years is going to depend on its follow up. If Ends wraps up things well, I can see this being viewed as a good, if extreme, example of a very dark middle chapter. But I don't think that's a given.
It's just a weird, weird film. Weird pacing, weird narrative choices. And I say this as someone who enjoyed it a fair bit.
Complete aside, can I say that I loved that the majority of this cast was older than most slasher casts? Slashers so often rely on the teenage/college age casts and this one really averted that.
So I don't know where I'd rank it, honestly, but all I know is I had a much better time watching lesser entries like Halloween 5, 6 and Resurrection. Those movies had competent, resourceful, likable characters.
Yea I have a hard time with competent with most of those entries and much of the characters in those films. I do think Kills has issue where it is kind of a lost film star wise, as we don't really have a central protag or group we are supposed to be following, it's just a bunch of random people doing things. I kinda get what they were trying to do, but it felt sloppy and they needed if anything to have just continued to focus on the Strode family as the main focus, and trimmed down some of the rest of Haddonfield stuff seeing the events of the film.
I haven't seen this movie yet saving it to watch it on Halloween itself which should be fun. From what I'm hearing though it probably would have been better if there had just been a time skip after 2018 since Michael only killed like 4 people in the OG film. After 2018 you better believe the town would freak out if he came back again after that when Laurie supposedly burned him to death in her house.
Honestly, I also think these films really needed another Loomis type character while in 2018 that was Laurie and she was pretty sidelined in this film, so that just leaves you with Michael, and a cast of trope filled horror movie fodder. Halloween 4 or 5 aren't or great anything, but Pleasance was there to elevate them and sell Michael better than the movies themselves did as he gradually got more obsessed with him. That's one thing I always thought the Halloween series had over something like Friday the 13th franchise till Jarvis showed up in Jason Lives.
I think revisiting the town a couple of years later is interesting. I don't know if I have ever seen a horror sequel do that before, especially not a slasher movie.
I think revisiting the town a couple of years later is interesting. I don't know if I have ever seen a horror sequel do that before, especially not a slasher movie.
I haven't seen this movie yet saving it to watch it on Halloween itself which should be fun. From what I'm hearing though it probably would have been better if there had just been a time skip after 2018 since Michael only killed like 4 people in the OG film. After 2018 you better believe the town would freak out if he came back again after that when Laurie supposedly burned him to death in her house.
Honestly, I also think these films really needed another Loomis type character while in 2018 that was Laurie and she was pretty sidelined in this film, so that just leaves you with Michael, and a cast of trope filled horror movie fodder. Halloween 4 or 5 aren't great anything, but Pleasance was there to elevate them and sell Michael better than the movies themselves did as he gradually got more obsessed with him. That's one thing I always thought the Halloween series had over something like Friday the 13th franchise till Jarvis showed up in Jason Lives.
I think this is kind of an issue as in 2018 the folks of Haddonfield kind of got over it and it wasn't a big deal, they even bring up how the killing spree of Myers wasn't a big deal with how recent events are more shocking than his little 4 kill streak. Suddenly in Kills everyone in town is taking notice?
i like the idea that she picks up the phone and hears michael but i'd probably end the movie right there, with laurie's sudden realization that her daughter is dead.
I don't like the 'i'm gonna get you michael' and walking out of the hospital like a badass imho.
I think this is kind of an issue as in 2018 the folks of Haddonfield kind of got over it and it wasn't a big deal, they even bring up how the killing spree of Myers wasn't a big deal with how recent events are more shocking than his little 4 kill streak. Suddenly in Kills everyone in town is taking notice?
