Three years after Writer/Director David Gordon Green's excellent HALLOWEEN, we got the second installment in his trilogy, HALLOWEEN KILLS.
It starts off well, picking up right where the excellent last film left off. Laurie Strode (the always great Jamie Lee Curtis), her daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak) had trapped the very elusive Michael Myers in Laurie's elaborately constructed, inescapable basement and then lit the house on fire.
But studio sequel demands and those pesky Haddonfield firemen come to the rescue, with Michael escaping to unleash more murderous havoc.
There is a palpable, fun horror buff thrill to watching a Halloween film in October. When John Carpenter's legendary music score kicks in and the unstoppable man in the burned William Shatner mask lumbers toward you, it's a nostalgic blast of October thrills.
For at least the first half of this second installment in Green's trilogy, the feel of those moments carry you forward. Jamie Lee Curtis is a badass Laurie, she elevates the film, but you start to realize she's not in this one enough after the first half hour.
I loved the way the film plays with your memories of the original 1978 film and that very first confrontation between deputies, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) and "The Shape", as Michael was originally known.
Horror legend Charles Cyphers (The Fog, Escape from New York) is back as Brackett, the policeman from "Halloween" and "Halloween II", providing a nice continuity & callback to those films. Kyle Richards returns from the original film as Lindsey, as does Nancy Stephens as Marion and Nick Castle, one of the original Michaels!
Anthony Michael Hall (National Lampoon's Vacation) appears as the grown up version of Tommy, a young near-victim from the original attacks. He has serious fun in the role.
Robert Longstreet, the excellent actor from "Midnight Mass","The Haunting of Hill House" and "Fall of the House of Usher" nearly saves the whole film as Lonnie, a terrified Dad taking the hunt into his own hands. Longstreet is excellent in everything he's in, especially in his projects as part of Mike Flanagan's acting ensemble.
But about halfway into the film, Green shifts the tone of the film from an 80's slasher/escape flick to a meditation on evil, the evil in all of us, blah blah, it goes off the rails quickly.
He's a creative director and when he gets down to Michael doing what Michael does, the gore is brutal and the pace is relentless. Alongside a new electronic score from Carpenter, there are some fast paced thrills.
But as a vigilante mob brews and citizens start chanting about getting Michael, the entire thing slips downward into eye rolling territory.
Loved the main titles with 12 pumpkins over that classic main title theme, with the final one representing this as the TWELFTH Halloween film!
I also really liked that Green even took time to reference those killer masks in the mostly hated, bonkers sequel "Halloween III: Season of the Witch" that remains a guilty pleasure. That's doing your homework.
I didn't care for the bogged down formation of the mob at the nearly 30 chants of "Evil Dies Tonight!". A bit much folks. Just go kill that thing, more action, less talk!
The ending drops rapidly toward dumb in order to set up the third film in the trilogy, "HALLOWEEN ENDS" which hit theaters in 2022.
There's half a good film here, some great casting and wickedly brutal slayings, but Michael has fallen quite a bit from the standard of Green's first installment. I'll give it a disappointing C.
Let's see what happens in the final chapter.......meanwhile, here's the trailer for this one.
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