Halloween Kills (2021)

(On Cable TV, April 2022) I’m done with slashers, done with Halloween movies, done with endless meaningless remakes of the same garbage that was repellent in the first place. Middle instalment of what’s threatened to be a three-film final trilogy, Halloween Kills picks up moments after 2018’s Halloween reboot (the third, sixth or tenth such reboot, depending on how you count – and I’m not even including the incomparable Season of the Witch in that higher number) to show what else happened on that Halloween night. This time, the focus thankfully shifts a bit from the psycho killer to the citizens of the town he’s terrorizing, leading to the film’s best bits (I use the term loosely) as vigilante justice ends up being almost as frightening as the nut with a knife. Alas, writer-director David Gordon Green flirts but does not commit to a more grounded and ironic take – boogeyman Michael Myers is just as supernaturally immortal here, and any attempt at social commentary on mob justice is immediately undone by the film’s gleeful slaughter of its victims in so-called inventive and gory ways. I thought I would have been disturbed by the death of a returning character played by an actress I quite like, but that would presume that I had any attachment whatsoever. The truth is that any character in any Halloween movie is mere meat to be butchered in the quest for cheap thrills. Jamie Lee Curtis once again plays a survivor and gamely commits to the role, but at this point – who cares? The next instalment is supposed to be a conclusion of sorts but we all know what that means: Impervious to bullets, guns and nuclear explosions, Myers can only be killed by poor box-office returns.