Halloween Kills

"To die, to be *really* dead, that must be glorious!" - Count Dracula in Dracula (1931) 

I'm more than half way through my annual October Horror Marathon and will give a full writeup on that at the end of the month but thought I'd do an early post about the recently released Halloween Kills, which I saw in cinemas today - Thursday 21st October, 2021. I have seen every film in the Halloween franchise to date as I am a completionist with these sort of things but recent developments have caused me to possibly reconsider this tendency of mine. 

David Gordon Green's 2018 Halloween reboot, pitched and marketed as the "true sequel" to John Carpenter's original 1978 classic by discarding and disparaging the earlier sequels that followed over the next two decades or so (although they are clearly not above lifting numerous ideas and plot points from those films) was an abomination. It reminded me of both The Force Awakens and Jurassic World, with a creatlively bankrupt Hollywood system trying to refashion old properties for contemporary viewers and through a combination of shrewd marketing and a contrived reverence for a classic film's legacy it connected with audiences. I found it disheartening that the film was so well received. Its stated aims for "legitimate" sequel status and its constant reminders of moments from the original film obviously worked for some. The 2018 reboot seems to have achieved a respectability with the critics and viewers that had eluded the series ever since the original followup in 1981*. 

For obvious reasons I like to watch a film from the Halloween franchise every October if I can. My original hope was to finally see the legendary "Producer's Cut" of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. This was the original cut of the sixth film in the franchise, much bootlegged over the years, and radically different from the version that was released by Miramax in 1995 after numerous rewrites, reshoots and re-edits. The earlier version has about 45 minutes of footage not included in the release version, which altered various character and plot details as well as giving it a new ending. Frustratingly after all these years I'm still unable to track down a full version that I can watch. The alternate version did get a US Blu-ray release in 2015 but is still unavailable in the UK unfortunately. 

With this new film on general release I thought I'd give it a shot, despite the unpleasant memories of the 2018 film. Halloween (the 2018 version) was quite accurately dubbed 'The Shape Awakens' in some quarters. Did anyone suggest 'H20 Part II' or 'H40' for a title? Simply reusing the basic 'Halloween' title was honest in some ways. It was so keen to regurgitate details from the original film and was so bereft of ideas that it was an acknowledgement of sorts of its own inept mimicry. They couldn't even be bothered to think of a new title and that basic lack of creativity and effort showed in the resulting film. Taking the Disney Star Wars analogy a step further, Halloween Kills could be referred to as 'The Last Myers' and next installment 'The Rise of Strode'.

I can tolerate bad sequels and remakes but I also know when a classic is being horribly desecrated**. Whether the series is being deconstructed, subjected to revisionist attitudes or revamped to suit current mainstream media views, it's rather painful to watch. Halloween Kills very much continues in the vein of its predecessor. Perhaps it could be christened 'Halloween: Genisys' or 'Halloween: Dark Fate' as all the retconning, fan service, old characters shoehorned in purely for their recognition factor and bringing back ageing cast members for the sake of nostalgia is starting to resemble the woeful Terminator franchise. 

Like many people I wondered why anyone besides Laurie Strode would care so much about the events from the first film 40 years earlier and turning her character into a paranoid, Sarah Connor-like survivalist was unconvincing and a complete betrayal of the grounded, resilient character who survived the events of the 1978 original. It's kinda funny how the 2018 film chose to erase the infamous "twist" of 1981's Halloween II and the entire sequel timeline only to come up with the kind of convoluted nonsense that they are trotting out in these films. In its own way the plot contrivances are as far fetched and laughable as anything in previous entries, which included delving in to the Myers family bloodline, reality TV broadcasts and druids. 

Again, it is directed by David Gordon Green from a script that he co-wrote with Danny McBride among others, which perhaps explains why certain characters look as though they have wandered on from the set of 'Eastbound and Down'. Jamie Lee Curtis has gone to great lengths to state the new film's topicality and contemporary relevance in interviews and promotion for the film, which is off-putting in itself. Season of the Witch (the outlier of the franchise) aside, I don't really associate the Halloween series with social or political commentary and I think whatever the series has had to say about any issue until this recent reboot has been more incidental than overtly thematic. I didn't think it would be possible for me to dislike a film that features Judy Greer (by far the best thing in this film) and Jim Cummings*** in the cast but no screen performer (dead or alive) could make this thing worthwhile. One of the few pleasures I got from the film was the score, which like the 2018 film was composed by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.****

One of the trailers that preceded Halloween Kills was for a sequel/reboot of Wes Craven's Scream, imaginatively titled - you guessed it - Scream. The prospect of another Scream film is far more terrifying than anything in David Gordon Green's hideous recent efforts. The Halloween franchise isn't exactly sacred to me at this stage (I'm more of a devotee of the Chucky and Friday the 13th series) but Halloween Kills marks a new lowpoint. While watching it I couldn't help thinking about the scorn that greeted Halloween III: Season of the Witch in 1982 for telling an ingenious and compelling story of its own and daring to take the series in a bold new direction. The passing of time has been very kind to that film and had it been more successful we may have been spared these recent travesties. If nothing else Halloween 2018 and Halloween Kills have helped me to see the much maligned Halloween Resurrection from 2002 in a far more favourable light and may even prompt a wider reassessment of Rob Zombie's 2007 remake and its 2009 sequel. Next up is Halloween Ends in October 2022.  Given how disposable it all feels, when the series gets its next inevitable reboot I hope they will erase any trace of Green's trilogy of films. 

Notes

*1998's Halloween: H20 was a partial exception to this trend as it was also wildly overpraised for its tiresome callbacks to the original and for bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back to her starmaking role after a lengthy break. 

**Case in point, the truly dismal 2007 "adaptation" of Richard Matheson's brilliant 1954 vampire novel 'I Am Legend', starring Will Smith.

***SPOILER ALERT: Cummings has little screen time as he is killed off in the opening prologue set in 1978 so he is at least spared the embarrassment of being in the rest of the film.

****Besides a new John Carpenter film score, probably the best thing to come from the film was the red carpet event which featured Jamie Lee Curtis dressed as Marion Crane and Judy Greer as Annie Hall.