Halloween Kills Movie Review

Story posted October 25, 2021 in Arts & Entertainment by Caelan Chevrier.

Michael Meyers is on another killing spree in the David Gordon Green directed film, “Halloween Kills.”

He is responsible for directing the entire new trilogy, as next year audiences are supposed to get the series finale in “Halloween Ends.”

Starring familiar faces such as Jamie Lee Curtis and Anthony Michael Hall, they attempt to kill all evil and finally bring peace to the small fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

The newest Halloween film in the franchise will keep longtime fans invested, but lacks several elements of what made the original so good in the first place.

The film picks up directly after where the 2018 reboot left off. After a failed house fire attempt to burn Michael to the ground, he emerges from the flames seeking revenge on all of the townies.Once people are aware that he survived, chaos emerges, leaving everyone panicking.

The movie introduces plenty of new irrelevant characters and brings back some from the original film as well. One of these characters is Kyle Richards from the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who is awful.

Jamie Lee Curtis is stuck in the hospital for the entirety of the movie after receiving a stab wound from the last movie. It is disappointing that she seemed very irrelevant to the plot, and had zero interaction with Michael.

Michael Hall’s character Tommy Doyle gets most of the action as he has a personal vendetta against Meyers, vowing to end him that night. They both have believable performances but this is expected considering they’re both veteran actors.

“Halloween Kills” lives up to its name in which all of the kills are incredible. Meyers is ruthless when dealing with his victims by stabbing, slashing, choking, and using sheer brute force to end them.

There was no holding back when it came to on-screen deaths, all of the blood and gore were displayed brutally. One may be surprised seeing how many ways people’s heads can become dismembered.

Blumhouse Studios made the most out of their $20 million budget with plenty of action, explosions, and violence. The pace of the film is decent, there are only a few parts where it's boring.

Where “Halloween Kills” fails is being scary. The dialogue, deaths, and even the story as a whole are quite comedic. The townspeople are beyond stupid, and never quite seem to learn their lesson when dealing with the psychopath.

For whatever reason, many think that they can take Meyers solo with just a kitchen knife, they would sadly be mistaken. Every time Kyle Richards is on screen it is laughable with some of the worst acting seen in a major release in a long time.

The ending is very questionable. People believe that Meyers is in the hospital even though he is another escaped inmate. The inmate has a completely different stature and personality compared to Michael, so it is confusing as to why they thought it was him.

Civilians claim that they don’t know because “he has never been seen without his mask,” but he has several times throughout the franchise.

A mob finally takes Meyers down after beating him with handheld weapons but for whatever reason, they just stop after he is seemingly unconscious/dead.

It is unfathomable why no one would put him down completely. There are so many head-scratching moments like this throughout the entire film.

Overall, “Halloween Kills” is entertaining but by no means is it the best in the franchise or comparable to any scary movie in general. The movie excels in its action but fails nearly everywhere else leaving a lot to be desired. 

Rating: 2/5 

Caelan Chevrier is a second-year majoring in journalism. To contact him, email cjc6789@psu.edu.

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Caelan Chevrier

Third Year / Marketing & Journalism

Caelan Chevrier is a third-year student in the Smeal College of Business at Penn State University studying marketing and broadcast journalism with the goal of graduating with a bachelor’s degree in four years. His career goal is to spread informative, meaningful, and entertaining content across various platforms and to be a positive impact on the community. He has also spent time working at WWE in the communications department and writing for The Westport Local Press in his hometown of Westport, CT. If you’d like to contact him, email him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).