2018’s Halloween was overrated shite in my opinion, but for anyone who enjoyed that garbage (and apparently there were lots of you) director David Gordon Green and writers Danny McBride and Scott Teems today bring you their second movie in a planned trilogy of horror trash. If you recall, the last Halloween was created because the original sequels strayed away from the first (and best) film and in doing so, became improbable and over-the-top. But, given that Halloween Kills ends-up in a hospital with an impervious Michael Myers, this means we’re paying to watch what is essentially an inferior Halloween II. As I said in my review of the 2018 movie, Hollywood are merely making money by hoodwinking fans. Like the last flick, this isn’t a worthy follow-up to the John Carpenter classic. David Gordon Green has created another bad film; there’s uneven cuts between scenes, lots of unneeded flashbacks, no suspense, no jump scares, and no atmosphere whatsoever. Remember that Halloween Kills aside from playing at your local theater is also streaming on Peacock, and that’s not some post-Covid release strategy, it’s because this picture is utter crap and not worthy of a trip to the cinema.
If you haven’t watched the previous installment of Halloween, the flip-flopping plot of Halloween Kills which involves both the 2018 sequel and scenes set after the 1978 original won’t make much sense, but then again, even if you have seen it, the editing is a blooming mess. Like 2013’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre sequel which tried to add additional scenes to the original story, much of Halloween Kills‘ opening is Halloween II with a couple of new characters added. With a bunch of cops following Michael on Halloween night in 1978, you really begin to wonder what the point of this so-called “Retroactive Continuity” sequel was. Speaking of continuity, thankfully Myers still has his shot-off and bandaged fingers in Halloween Kills but given his newfound undying abilities, he might as well have miraculously grown a new set of digits.
Michael Myers is described in this film as a “6 year old boy with the strength of a man and the mind of an animal” but boys aren’t mad, men aren’t immortal, and animals only kill out of necessity, so no. Myers at one point lifts a fireman’s body up with a Halligan bar, which means he has the strength of at least two young men. I mean what’s the age of Michael Myers now? Well, even though it’s 2021, this sequel is set on the same night back in 2018 so he’s still 61. That being said, surely retirement is beckoning not a strongman contest?
SPOILERS AHEAD
So yeah, there’s lots of downright stupid writing here. Even though they turned Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode into a PTSD-suffering shut-in, she still somehow managed to procreate at least once although her daughter played by Judy Greer and her granddaughter played by Andi Matichak are hardly great additions to the narrative. All three give shitty performances along with the rest of the soap opera-looking cast. We have the return of characters Tommy and Lindsey (the kids that Laurie babysat in the first movie) and Dr. Loomis’ assistant nurse makes a reappearance, but for some reason Tommy isn’t played by original actor Brian Andrews. Whilst on the topic of Tommy, seeing Brian Johnson or Gary Wallace looking bloated and giving off racist vibes is very strange 😉. Seeing Anthony Michael Hall in his current state is like seeing Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys For Life; off-putting. But I digress.
The storyline also involves an unneeded side-plot about vigilantism that nobody asked for. I mean, what kind of vigilantes split up and don’t attack their target (or victim) as a mob (that’s kinda the whole point)? A pudgy bloke in a white suit with no face covering is somehow mistaken by the angry mob for the tall, dark boiler-suited killer who wears a very distinctive mask. After killing the wrong man a character asks “He always wore a mask, how do we know it’s not him?”. Well, there’s the fact that he spent four decades in a mental hospital which must have followed some kind of arrest and trial which would in turn mean everyone in the town of Haddonfield knows what Myers looks like?
That’s not all. There’s some comedic characters but they don’t work. Gay couple “Little John” (thankfully not that Daily Mail wanker) and “Big John” who constantly refer to each other as such and who whip-out big and little knives (“I got this knife… I got this knife”) isn’t at all funny. A killer entering their “back door” could be either humourous or offensive but when you have a pair of hacks writing and directing, it ends up being neither.
Michael Myers climbing on a car roof whilst nurse Marion Chambers from the first movie is inside, is an eye-rolling callback, Tommy’s affinity for an old baseball bat he hasn’t held until that night (“Old Huckleberry” I think it’s called – don’t ask) makes no flipping sense, and at one point Laurie Strode gets up minutes after having a laparotomy but she screams in agony at the insertion of a syringe! There’s also a tacky piano score for the wannabe emotional parts but given that these scenes don’t work (the music during the hospital patient’s “sorrowful” suicide is just laughable) we’re left watching some trashy music playing during some trash-arsed acting.
I have to stress how much appalling dialogue there is in this movie, and it either makes little to no sense or it’s so badly written that it makes you wince with embarrassment:
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“This was a safe place but it’s not any more!” says a “concerned resident” on the news during the first act. At the same time we see some guests of a talent competition who only have a vague recollection of what happened back in 1978, but later we have the contradictory line “Michael Myers has haunted this town for 40 years”. Has he? Someone please refresh these people’s memories! Indeed, when some trick or treaters are asked “Do you know who [he] is?” they reply “No”.
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Laurie says “We killed Michael” to which Deputy Hawkins responds “Well, it’s about time” but it’s still the night of his escape. Remember: Halloween II onward hasn’t happened. Sure there’s some daft backstory about Hawkins regretting moving Dr. Loomis’ hand when he was about to shoot Myers, but this cop doesn’t know Michael’s been shot multiple times, driven into, and set on fire because he’s been busy dying on the floor or recovering in a hospital bed for the entire night.
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Alison says to Michael “Come and get me motherfucker!” after we’ve established Myers couldn’t care less abut the Strodes or anyone else.
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What’s with people constantly asking Michael “Can you feel it?”. No he frigging-well can’t. He’s an escapee from a sanitarium, he doesn’t have a connection to a mask or have a sixth-sense about specific characters and locations.
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The corny-as-fuck and overused “he’s an apex predator” is uttered at one point.
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There’s the awful and cringe-inducing group chants of “evil dies tonight!” and of course, given the vigilante subplot, there’s abysmally hackneyed lines like “Now he’s turning us into monsters!” and “It’s the anger that divides us”. What the effing eff does this have to do with a slasher movie?
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Of course, this isn’t a slasher movie anymore. It’s about an ageing yet eternal killer – “The more he kills, the more he transcends” says Laurie – what the actual fuck?!!
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Halloween Kills also contains one of the worst and most meaningless lines in all of film: “You can’t close your eyes and pretend he isn’t there because he is!”. Who’s closing their eyes? He’s a six-foot madman clutching a carving knife!
Even if you’re curious to see what an overweight and bald Tommy and a botoxed Lindsey would look like, don’t bother buying a ticket. Film-makers David and Danny seem to have sucked the right dicks or lots of critics are in the pockets of film studios. There’s no fucking way a film this bad gets scores in the average range. As I’ve already said, 2018’s Halloween was supposedly made because the original set of sequels and remakes were either disappointing or unrealistic. So, err… these twats now give us a flame-retardant, gay-bashing, immortal, O.A.P. psycho killer, because that’s somehow more believable? What a convincing and plausible update… not! Gordon Green and McBride are the Little and Big John’s of the Halloween franchise; all up in someone else’s property ruining the bloody mood. Given how atrocious this sequel is, almost every follow-up from Halloween II to H20 are not only preferable but superior. Thankfully Halloween Ends in 2022 but which moron is going to spend money on that shit? This time next year please don’t be duped into watching yet another pointless movie which does nothing but line the pockets of rich but talentless filmmakers. Kinda like Americans dressing up as celebrities and cartoon characters on the day of the frigging dead, “Halloween” means nothing any more.
The Hollowest Een.
Writing: 0/10
Directing: 1/10
Acting: 1/10
Overall: 1/10
Categories: Film And Movies, Reviews
WHAT WENT WRONG WITH...? 
Agreed. What a load of bollocks!
10/10 Review.
It’s so fucking awful
I had high hopes for this one, can’t believe Jamie Lee Curtis put her name on this. such a bad story, terrible god awful acting, mob mentality plot its all just so horrible. Watching them chase that tiny, bald guy through the hospital when Michael Meyers is a six foot five monster was hilariously silly.
Halloween has been killed…
I just attempted to watch this movie but after yelling at the screen, numerous times and dealing with the horrible, horrible acting from everyone onscreen…I had to close the tab. Made it about half of the way through, begrudgingly. From the onset, I wish they would have just let Laurie die; just like I wish they would let this franchise, die.
They won’t let it die as long as the idiots keep buying tickets to see this crap.
Thank you! I was one of the seemingly intelligent few that considered the 2018 Halloween film an absolute piece of whale dung. They did what Rob Zombie did with his reboot but did it WORSE. They shot the movie as an “inspired remake” but also injected hearty helpings of feminism in it, such as Laurie swapping places with Michael in key scenes (Laurie standing outside the window instead of Michael, Laurie falling out of the 2nd story house and recovering instead of Michael, etc) and also made generally every male in the movie an idiot, morally compromised, or some combination of the two. And of course the females in general were either brilliant, virtuous or some combination of the two. The scene where the father is stupidly playing with a yo yo despite the gravity of the situation is an example of the 1st, the scene where the “empowered” Strode girls are planning their moves is an example of the 2nd.
H2018 ranks among the worst movies with “Halloween’ attached to the title (for al of the above including the stupid writing) and it’s no small surprise HK is set to be even worse considering the increased woke levels that the feminist hag Jamie Lee Curtis has been clucking about for months now.
My rank of all time best Halloween films, from best to not as great.
Halloween 1
Halloween 2
Halloween 4
Halloween 5
Halloween (RZ version)
Halloween 6
My list of worst Halloween films, from absolute garbage to simply bad.
Halloween 2018
Halloween Resurrection
Halloween H20
Halloween 2 (RZ version)
Halloween 3
Havent seen HK yet so that’s why it’s not in the 2nd list.
Whatever your opinion, this should have been left under the appropriate film review, given it was a comment about Halloween (2018).
And FYI: https://whatwentwrongwith.com/2021/10/25/what-went-wrong-with-the-word-woke/
What a great review and couldn’t agree more. More woke nonsense.
What was “woke” about this film?
I made it through the first 10 minutes of the movie. There was absolutely nothing in it to make me want to keep watching.
Thanks for the article. Now I know my instinct to kill it was right.
Fantastic review. What a lot of people miss about Halloween ‘78 is the focus on obsession or that Loomis character has a bigger impact on the plot then Gordon or Blum understood which is why the sequels worked so well. Loomis constantly felt responsible for Michael & guilt. 2 understood that Michael would not stop until either Laurie died or Michael died. Loomis consumed by that guilt kills himself and Michael as a last act of atonement. Michael and Loomis were doomed to fight each other like Holmes/Moriarty, Batman/Joker, Ahab/White Whale & was an idea often reflected upon as Loomis destroyed his own credibility & standing in the medical field, spending the later years of his life an almost recluse, waiting, listening for possibility that his greatest failure came back to haunt him.
From Halloween Kills Wikipedia page about Halloween Ends:
“The film has been announced as taking place at least four years later in 2022 and will address the COVID-19 pandemic. Green described Ends as a “coming of age story” and “a more intimate movie” where “some of the characters… have processed the insanity of the circus of the massacre of 2018. And not only that, but they’ve also processed the world as it’s spun so wildly in the last four years.”
PLEASE GOD NO!!!!!
What the fuck! Not content with ruining the franchise with a pointless plot about mob violence, they’re now going to drag the Coronavirus into the mix? Why? What has a pandemic got to do with a serial killer, immortal or not?
That quote/synopsis sounds awful, but, like Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends will most likely make money for a bunch of hacks if people keep buying into this nonsense.
Oh hell no! Why does Hollywood keep injecting COVID-19 into a lot of their shows and movies? Most of them do a bad job of incorporating it. That’s why some shows and movies either take place in a post-COVID world or don’t mention it at all! When did escapism somewhat become a pre-COVID thing? 😒
Absolutely spot on review!
The scariest thing about this movie was the amount of time i spent cringing at every line. So awful!
Quite possibly the worst film I’ve seen in years, well since the last halloween.
It reminded me of the original God awful Halloween 2 from ”’81 but ya know, 100 times worse. What’s more I hated the “Loomis” cameo. Gory yes, suspenseful and scary…nope ! Your review is spot on.
Yeah, I couldn’t work out if it was a lookalike actor or a stretched, face-captured, deep-fake. Either way it wasn’t Donald Pleasence.
It was a look alike actor with a voice actor dubbing the dialogue..I initially thought, oh how cool excised footage from the original, but learning the truth how lame. I saw the ”78 one with my family in the theater when I was 8. Out of all the film’s made, it’s still the best.
I agree… https://whatwentrightwith.com/2021/10/05/what-went-right-with-halloween-1978/
They really should have ended this franchise with H2O. This movie was so dumb, the real curse on this town is how dumb all the characters are that live there. Also, I hate how pointless this movie was since it was just filling time while Laurie and the Sheriff recuperated. And it wasn’t even fun, like some of the sequels were bad movies but they at least were fun slasher films. This just felt like a waste of time that I will never get back.
This is the first movie I’ve walked out of in years. About half the theatre left before I did.
Not scary. Not funny. Offensive for no reason (is having (multiple) caricatured black victims and caricatured gay victims some dig at diversity?). Completely incoherent.
I too am amazed at the high RT score.
I should’ve read this before I saw the damn film ha ha. Anyway top review and great comments.
I left the cinema tonight feeling letdown. Like a fool I fell for the hype. Everything in the film felt lost, forced and messy. They’re ruining a cinematic legacy with this s*** and should’ve ended this in 1995 with the appalling Halloween 6 but films make money and people (like me) keep contributing this crap…..well no longer. The original isn’t perfect but at least its iconic.
Halloween Ended, period.
I DUNNO…”EVIL DIES TONIGHT”…would make The Bard proud! I used to think THIS was the BEST Pre Battle Preamble:
“If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled for you are in Elysium, and you’re already dead! what we do in life echoes in eternity.. strength and honor!”
..till I heard “EVIL DIES TONIGHT”. I mean for those 3 words ALONE..All of 15 Letters ..Green and McBride deserve as n OSCAR nomination! In fact “EVIL DIES TONIGHT” I’m considering tattooing on my forehead .. cuz.. “EVIL DIES TONIGHT” is so.. powerful and … ..not cringe-worthy ..at.. (ahem)…
…ANOTHER perfect review btw!
“there’s the fact that he spent four decades in a mental hospital which must have followed some kind of arrest and trial which would in turn mean everyone in the town of Haddonfield knows what Myers looks like?”
This is exactly what came to my mind when Lindsey smacked Michael outside the SUV and then kinda removed his mask,. It was as though she didn’t know who he is or what he looked like. Major lols!