31 DAYS OF HORROR 20220 - Day 2: HALLOWEEN KILLS (2021)

A distraught Karen Nelson (Judy Greer), daughter of original HALLOWEEN survivor Laurie Strode, faces off against Michael Meyers.  I'll show myself out.

And now we get  HALLOWEEN KILLS, the twelfth in the slasher series that launched the boom over forty years ago. While not the worst of the many HALLOWEEN sequels and re-imaginings (not by a long shot), HALLOWEEN KILLS definitely ranks up there among the stupidest of the lot.

This one takes up right where the previous film ended, with the house of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) burning while boogeyman Michael Meyers was trapped within, presumed dead (YEAH, RIGHT), but of course the Shape strolls out of the conflagration and resumes his endless and reasonless murder spree, this time with a higher and gorier body count than usual. (At least it wasn't boring.) That's all well and good and exactly what this franchise's audience is there for, but this one, more so than usual, is marked by its characters doing incredibly stupid things. It's tailor-made for the vocal derision of an inner city audience, as people rush headlong into certain death while repetitively exclaiming "Evil dies tonight!" as the fervor of fed-up mob mentality overtakes the entire town of Haddonfield.

My favorite thing about it is the ending, wherein, after cutting a bloody swath through the town, Michael is surrounded by about two dozen members of the community, folks equipped with baseball bats, hockey sticks, assorted bladed implements, and guns, and they proceed to beat the motherfucking shit out of him, culminating in our boy taking several point blank rounds to the body and head. When the dust settles, Michael is finally vanquished...

Again, YEAH, RIGHT.

As Laurie notes that the more he kills the stronger her gets, as he "transcends" to a totally unkillable "essence of evil," Mike pops up off the ground and proceeds to mulch his triumphant slayers in a classic "Surprise, motherfucker!!!" moment, thus setting the stage for the upcoming HALLOWEEN ENDS, which will reportedly allow the 40+year war between Laurie and Michael to reach a long-overdue conclusion.

Again, YEAH, RIGHT.

Jamie Lee Curtis, love her though I do, is too long in the tooth to be regularly having it out with a superhuman boogeyman, plus to say nothing of the whole enterprise now being well past played-out, but as long as these keep putting asses in seats, HALLOWEEN will simply never end. Hell, I would not be at all surprised if in fifty years, avaricious filmmakers dug up Jamie Lee's moldering remains and propped them up in front of the camera for further tangles with Michael. And when they inevitably do, they will have to work extra-hard in order to top HALLOWEEN KILLS for sheer narrative idiocy.

The film's highlights for me:

• Copious bloodshed making up for the story's many deficiencies.
• Judy Greer as Laurie's daughter. I just enjoy Greer in anything.
• The creators not being afraid to have Michael, an implacable boogeyman, kill kids. No one should be safe in such a scenario, especially on a night that's all about masks and scary deviltry.
• Big John and Little John, a really cool gay couple. (It takes a real man to be able to pull off walking around at home in a pirate costume similar to the one sported by Judge Reinhold in FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and not look like an idiot.)
• Anthony Michael Hall as the grown-up Tommy Doyle. Judging by his face and acting histrionics, I am convinced that Hall is slowly morphing into Malcolm McDowell.
  

Poster from the theatrical release. It's crap like this that makes me lament the days of genuine artistry for movie posters, the days when actual illustrators crafted memorable and haunting imagery to garner audience interest. Now, any shithead with a computer and Photoshop can craft a poster practically overnight, and when it comes to Hollywood cheap and fast will nearly always win out over art.