Review of Halloween Kills (2021) by Moviemitch96 — 16 Oct 2021

This next installment in the recently rebooted 'Halloween' franchise picks up immediately where the first film ended. Michael Meyers still isn't dead and is continuing his killing spree on Halloween night, so Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) her daughter and granddaughter (Judy Greer and Andi Matichak respectively), and the rest of their town and several past survivors band together to try and stop him.

I really enjoyed the first installment of this rebooted franchise that was released a few years ago, so I was eager to see how it would continue here. And while it's heavy on gore and kills, as is to be expected, it didn't quite have the same draw as the first film had for me.

This one felt a lot more soulless and hollow with not as much of a rooting factor for me this time around. In the first film, seeing three generations of Strodes band together at the end to kick Michael Meyers' ass was one of the most satisfying and awesome things I'd seen in a horror flick in years, and there really wasn't a whole lot of that going here with this one.

Instead we get a lot of angry mob scenes and our protagonists aren't as near as effective or as strong in this one. It almost feels like this film decided to just go back to what the retconned sequels were all like: soulless and bloody, which is all fine and dandy, considering this is a 'Halloween' film after all, but it's still a little disappointing to see it fall back on old tricks after how refreshing of a turn the previous film took.

But on the flipside, Curtis, Greer, and Matichak are in top form here once again and all three give fierce performances. But overall, aside from the solid three lead actresses, this happened to still be fun and certainly had plenty of creative and gory kills, but it does happen to fall back and rely on old habits a little too heavily for my liking.