An absurdly fun time at the cinemas despite its many flaws, Halloween Kills is the latest installment of the over 40-year-old horror franchise. The film features an amusingly mediocre cast, a barebones story, corny dialogue, and gratuitously gory violence. Despite all that, Halloween Kills is such a delight due to the sheer ridiculousness on display. Because of that alone, I have to recommend it.

Halloween Kills begins immediately after the events of Halloween (2018), with Laurie Strode and her family believing they have finally killed Michael Myers. Unfortunately, Myers survives their attempt and begins his rampage once again. As the Strode family recovers, Haddonfield enters a state of fear and confusion as Myers’ killing spree takes over the town in more ways than one.

Acting is hardly the focus of slasher films, so Halloween Kills follows in that similar design with an array of passable performances. Of the ensemble, franchise newcomer Anthony Michael Hall stands out the most. He gets to chew on scenery as a survivor of Michael’s original 1978 killing spree, leading the citizens of Haddonfield to get their revenge on Michael.

Jamie Lee Curtis, who has always been the star performer, is unfortunately sidelined during Halloween Kills. She is pretty much forced to deliver the occasional cheesy monologue or one-liner. Judy Greer has always been a reliable supporting character actress, but she’s taken the closest to a lead role that fails her, while Andi Matichak is similarly let down by poor material.

Halloween Kills‘ screenplay is unsurprisingly thin, offering little in the way of story or character. There is an attempt to be interesting, with the skeleton of themes about mob mentality and generational fear. However, those elements are surface level at their deepest before going back to the kills. The ridiculous dialogue doesn’t help, with characters either spouting exposition or stating what is about to happen at every moment.

David Gordon Green replaces his subtle horror direction with brutal gore in Halloween Kills, significantly increasing the violence at the cost of atmosphere and even fear. Michael Myers and slasher films have always been violent, but Halloween Kills tiptoes the line far more than expected. Many kills wind up drug out too long or are poorly edited together by Tim Alverson.

There are aspects of Halloween Kills worth praising, or at least enjoying. The film’s score, composed by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, is an interesting fusion of the classic Halloween score with some modern techno and electronic sounds. It’s a bit much to say it’s experimental, but it possesses a flair and artistic audacity that much of the rest of the film lacks.

Admittedly, the most enjoyable aspect of Halloween Kills is how ridiculously fun it is. Listening to a crowd shout the film’s tagline “Evil dies tonight!” or watching Michael Myers tear through a crowd of firefighters gets the adrenaline pumping. Even if the film itself didn’t grip me, many of the events did as I found myself drawn into Halloween Kills‘ sillier moments.

It’s regrettable when a film like Halloween Kills exists in a critical lens, where it fails by every objective metric of film criticism. Despite that, there’s something to be said for the sheer enjoyment, which Halloween Kills offers in spades. Often leaning into “so bad it’s good” territory, Halloween Kills comes with a looser recommendation than usual, but a recommendation nonetheless.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUwVHX3242M

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Halloween Kills

2.5

Score

2.5/10

Pros

• An interesting score
• A good bad time of gory kills and goofy characters

Cons

• A wasted cast
• A thin, dull story
• Flat directing
• Gratuitous violence