Halloween Kills || The Tea

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Halloween movie and to be honest I'm not even sure I've seen them all. But Halloween Kills I thought was, overall, really well done.

Any new movie these days makes me a little nervous, especially if it’s part of an existing franchise, so I was a bit hesitant going into Halloween Kills. But for a horror movie, it met my expectations and then some. 

It was high intensity, I didn't get bored or lose interest. And for me, in the horror genre, that can easily happen. I thought the characters were well done. Michael was pure villain gold. Laurie’s daughter, Karen, was a freaking badass, even if she was pretty dumb towards the end of the film. And Tommy Doyle’s role really carried a lot of weight in this movie.

So. Some specific things I liked and thought were done well.

Michael. He had some really cool kills. Something that I like about Michael as a horror villain is when he kills, there’s no hesitation and no discrimination. He’s essentially a pure psychopath. And my experience with Michael Meyers has been he likes to kill with a knife and I don't recall as much as far as creative kills in past films but like I said it’s been awhile so maybe I just don't remember. I know he had creative posing of the bodies in the first film but as far as how he killed nothing really stood out. And from what I understand, some of Michael’s posed kills in this movie or rather the costumes he posed them in were a callback to a previous film, which is something I always enjoy. Callbacks to previous works in the franchise. 

With Michael specifically, I think this movie had a real advantage because they didn’t need to set up Michael as a villain. At this point in the franchise there’s really not much new to be learned from Michael as a killer. We know him. We know his pattern’s. We’ve seen him grow and evolve as a killer. Compared to say the original where the pacing was much slower because Michael wasn’t yet established. None of the characters were. In Kills you can move the plot a lot faster because our characters, not just Michael, are already well established and fleshed out. I love the original Halloween but it’s pacing is much slower for that very reason.  

Now, speaking of characters, Tommy Doyle was was great. A lot of the movie focused on the town of Haddonfield and the people being done with Michael’s reign of terror. It became a mob mentality situation and Tommy was at the center. He also is a character from the first film, a child at the time, so of course I thought he was a great edition because he is a callback. 

The mob mentality. This was such an interesting story element to explore. It was one hundred percent believable that a town would turn to a mob in a situation like that. And in the end, we see why a mob mentality just isn’t good and how bad it can actually be. At first the mob seems like a good idea, the town’s people are uniting, working together, but ultimately fails. They accuse the wrong guy of being Michael chasing him through a hospital and ultimately causing him to jump out a window to his death. And because revenge, justice, whatever, was more important than actually stopping Michael, the people participating in the mob end up dead by Michael’s hand. Had Karen just ended Michael when she had him on the stairs instead of luring him to the mob, problem solved. No extra deaths. Evil would have finally died that night. But no, the mob mentality won out and it cost Haddonfield dearly. 

But I did ultimately like the mob storyline. It’s a great cautionary tale, it had great drama, and gave Michael a superb ending. And even though I really didn’t like that Laurie was benched this whole film and stuck in a hospital, it added to the tension. I one hundred percent think that Laurie would have been the only one to have been able to quell the mob. Had it been Laurie instead of Karen, she would have not given in to the mob and shot Michael in the back of the head while he was down on the stairs. He can survive any other injury and Laurie would not take any chances at this point. Like a zombie, headshot or nothing. Yes, we would not have had the epic murder of the mob at the end but evil would have died. 

I also loved the surprise kill at the end where Michael gets Karen while she is staring out the window of Michael’s childhood home. Now she could be alive as we didn't see her corpse, and as a rule no body no death in horror, but for drama’s sake I hope it was a legitimate kill. 

My only real complaint with this film is Laurie’s hair. And that’s really a weak complaint at best. This might make my top ten for horror movies. Not to mention the soundtrack brought it’s A game, it was phenomenal. 

This film made me actually excited to see where the last movie of this set of Halloween films goes. Halloween Ends is set for October 2022 and it’s something I am, for the time being, looking forward to.  

I hope we get the conclusion to Michael and Laurie’s story. I’d love it to end with maybe both of them dying. To me, that’s a poetic end for both of them. 

If you like the Halloween franchise in any way, be it a causal watcher or die-hard fan, I’d give this one a watch. Even if you haven’t seen any of them I’d still recommend it, though some things may be confusing. But I myself am a causal Halloween franchise fan and thoroughly enjoyed this film.

9/10 Biscuits

And That’s The Tea