Halloween Kills (2021)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

Here it is. Perhaps my most-anticipated movie of the year, and it's killer. Literally. Halloween Kills takes its title and runs with it in graphic, gory glory. The original 1978 film scared the shit out of us (and still does), and in the years since, Michael Myers has become something of a joke. The closer he got to the camera, the less scary he seemed; the more people tried to explain him -- in the movies, as Laurie's brother, or about the movies, almost always psychosexually -- the less mysterious and potent his terror. When David Gordon Green rescued the franchise from Rob Zombie's flaccid grip, retconning all the other films but the first, we were all a little nervous. But Halloween (2018) allayed my anxieties in that respect, even as it tied my constitution into knots. And now, in the continuation of Green's planned trilogy, we get the bloodbath that is the middle installment.

Much like the previous film, this one features Green's amazing ability to at once channel John Carpenter and make his own, new product. While he felt a little shackled in the first, like he was working to re-introduce old fans to his new vision through homage after homage, here Green is breaking free and playing his own twisted game. The story picks up immediately after the first one ended, with Laurie's house in flames and Michael trapped in its basement. A group of firefighters hurries to the house -- ignoring Laurie's screams to "Let it burn!" -- and are subsequently slaughtered. It's an interesting pseudo-homage to My Bloody Valentine, much as the previous film did with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which suggests to me that Green is making consummate works of horror art with these flicks. One can only imagine with gleeful anticipation what he'll do with his upcoming Exorcist reboot.

But so begins this chapter, which sees the diabolic Michael yet again stalking the streets of Haddonfield on Halloween night (actually, the clocks show that it is after midnight for most of this movie, but November First would be a terrible new title). Once Karen (Judy Greer) and Allyson (Andi Matichak), Laurie's daughter and granddaughter, learn that he survived, they alert the hospital and go into lockdown, certain that he's coming for his original Final Girl (Jamie Lee Curtis, of course). I wondered how much of this movie would feel like a reboot of Halloween II, in which Michael indeed follows her and butchers all the night staff at the local medical center. Not so much here, but the lockdown sequence begins easily the most surprising and shocking -- and realistic -- turn of events in this movie. Panic. Utter chaos as people get up in arms, angry about the bloodshed and renewed horrors of their past. The pot proverbially boils over, and many people are hurt and even die without Michael so much as coming anywhere near the building.

That's because he's far too busy. Much will be made, critically, of Michael's titular kills, but I couldn't help feeling awe at his prowess. Other Halloween entries have been criticized for having lower body counts than other contemporary slasher films. Not so here, which I expect may very well have the highest body count of any slasher. I lost count around 17, and that was at least half an hour before the end of the film, which features yet another bloodbath. A few nasty shocks took place in the previous movie -- especially one scene in which Michael enters two or three houses in a row to stab away -- but this one really showcases his murderous creativity. This movie reminds us, much as Rogue One did with Darth Vader, that Michael isn't a joke; this movie makes him utterly terrifying as the most prolific (hmmm... anti-lific?) serial killer we've ever seen. Perhaps most disturbingly, this film takes its time with most of its deaths, showing the suffering victims as they gargle on pooling blood and struggle to take their last breaths; one scene in particular, involving an older interracial couple and a fluorescent light tube, forced me to look away from the screen for the first time in this franchise.

In a third focal point for this wide-ranging but remarkably coherent film, we get a fabulous re-introduction to legacy characters played by their original actors. A 48-ish-year-old Tommy Doyle (Anthony Michael Hall), drinking at a bar in observance of 40 years of Michael's lockup, cheers with other survivors of that fateful night in 1978. We've got Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Lindsay Wallace (Kyle Richards), and even Lonnie Elam (Robert Longstreet, who was not in the original film although the bullying character was) whose son is dating Allyson. Even Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), the former sheriff whose daughter Annie was murdered by Michael, returns to wearily and warily oversee the events of this Halloween anniversary. Once they hear about the firefighter massacre, they drunkenly get up in arms and rally together a mob to hunt down Michael Myers once and for all. In their journey across town, they stop at the hospital and police station where Tommy whips them into a furious frenzy. Monsters beget monsters, you might say, and Tommy is pretty terrifying in these scenes as he begins the (admittedly campy) "Evil dies tonight" chants.

Surprisingly, Deputy Hawkins (Will Patton) survived his attack by the evil psychiatrist in the previous movie, but that's about the only good news here. We're finally given some much-needed backstory on him in a brilliant and beautiful flashback scene right away in this movie: transporting us visually and stylistically to Carpenter's masterpiece, Green shows us a young Hawkins chasing Michael after he disappeared from the Doyle lawn at the end of the '78 film. His own trauma stems from this scene, which puts him in bed thematically with Laurie and the others; their present-day scenes together in the hospital suggest their romantic past as well, which may have blessed them with a daughter, Karen, whose badassery almost steals this movie as well as the previous one.

Green's endgame here is still unknown, and frankly its mystery has compounded exponentially. Very few questions are answered in this film, and it deliberately sets up a lot more. Without spoiling the finale of Halloween Kills, after which very few characters seem to be still alive, we have to wonder what will happen in next year's Halloween Ends. Moreover, the mythos of Michael Myers himself is now under the most scrutiny I think it's ever endured. Those answers will come -- or not -- in time, but what remains is easily one of the most nihilistic and downright cruel slashers I've ever seen. Much as Green knows the franchise has survived off audience cheering each new murder, here he dares us to do so; in fact, he seems intent on forcing us to eat the cake we so often demand from this genre. "You want more blood?" he seems to ask; "here it is, and all the pain that comes with it." Much as the mob created to kill Michael has trouble facing its own violence, Green seems to turn the camera on us in the final sequence, asking what exactly we want in the final chapter of this franchise, and if we have the courage to stomach it.