Halloween Kills (2021)

This post is going to be all over the place. As my tag line says, "Stuff falls out of my brain and lands here. Watch your step." No spoilers, I don't think there are...

Before I start, I love that this film got made. I love that JLC is over sixty and still making horror films.I love that this film beat that weird Medival flick with a blonde Ben Affleck(?!) at the box office. I love seeing that orange font accompany a burning pumpkin in the opening credit. Yeah, there's a but.

As I write this, I'm watching Saw The Final Chapter aka Saw 7. On purpose. They did something in this film that irked me a whole lot. I get irked easily. I'm highly irkable. They rewrote the first film. It felt like a cheap trick, like 'it was this other guy all along..... bet you didn't work that out haha lol'

This will be confusing, but I need to write it down to process it. 

A large portion of the Halloween Kills is revisiting events from 1978 while expanding on these events and spending time with new characters. We see the kids running around the street on Halloween night in 1978; we see them as adults in 2018 talking about what happened to them in 1978 and there's another flashback. There is so much reflecting in this film, it's practically a disco ball. 

In the ending of the 1978 film, we see Doctor Loomis shoot at Myers, he falls out the second storey building, lands on the ground. Loomis chats to Laurie, then looks out the window to the ground below. Myers has disappeared. I know that because I just watched the ending on Youtube. Maybe they were referring to Halloween II? No, that ends in a hospital. Halloween III? That was a totally different story.

Somehow, Halloween Kills flashes back to 1978 with Michael Myers outside Laurie's house (or is it his?) surrounded by cops. We see a young Officer Hawkins, who wasn't in the first film but has been retrospectively planted in the flashback because his older self is in 2018 remembering what happened in 1978. Old Hawkins is telling Laurie how his younger self stopped Loomis from shooting Myers when Myers was standing outside the house back in 1978 when this scene didn't even happen. There's a lot of that.

Spoilers here: This is a very handy guide to all the new bits that were added in and where they fit and I wish I read this a few hours ago.

Halloween was released in 1978. We, as consumers of horror, have had well over forty years of watching horror movies--slashers in particular. Even without watching Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's 1996 flick Scream, we know what happens to characters in horror movies when you split up, when you go upstairs and not outside, when you don't make sure the killer is dead. We know this, and yet characters still don't.

When I was in the cinema taking notes, most of them started with "don't." So many of the people in this film did not have to die.

Here are my don'ts:

Don't point a hose at Michael Myers. A firefighter did this, he died.

Don't stop trying to escape. If you're in the process of unlocking the door, keep doing that until you unlock it, go through it, and run away. Don't stop unlocking the door, don't turn around, don't wait to be killed. 

Don't say 'I'll be right back,' I thought we had cleared that up already.

If you work in a hospital, don't leave the blinds open in the morgue; add to this, don't have the morgue on a level that is easily-accessible to the public.

Don't tell someone to go inside where it's safe, when people are being murdered in their homes. It's also not safe outside because people are getting murdered there as well. Safe is not an achievable status. 

Do put bricks in a pillow case and use as a weapon. Top marks here.

Don't inject yourself with an unknown substance. 

Don't stay in your house and look for an intruder if you think someone broke in, call the police. 

Don't stand in the killers childhood bedroom and say "Michael, you've come home" which is like the tag line of the original film and so naff. Don't stand in the same room as the killer, period.

Don't encourage a rowdy mob to go after a guy who obviously is not the killer. Killer is tall and buff. This other guy is short and stout. Yuh, but how can we know he's not the killer?

Don't spend ages looking a dead guy when the killer is in the next room. 

Don't pull the knife out of a wound.

Don't tell Michael Myers to stop. He ain't gonna stop. Not even if you ask nicely.

Don't stand in a circle and fire a gun at someone in the middle of that circle because if you miss him, you're probably gonna hit someone else.

Don't stop trying to kill Michael Myers, he will get up and somehow kill everyone, one by one, even though there were at least twenty people with guns and baseball bats just a moment ago beating the crap out of him...

Don't watch the film without taking a drink every time someone says 'evil dies tonight.'

Some things did make me happy: there were people in hospital beds post-op and NO ONE RIPPED OUT THE CANNULA!!

Boomers playing with a drone camera.

Re-jiggered footage of Donald Pleasence.

Seeing Jennifer Trudrung on screen as a HYSTERICAL WOMAN. Best hysterical woman ever!

I don't now how to end this, and I don't know how to rate this. Maybe don't watch the original before you watch this one?

Here's a meme instead