An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at the sequel to Halloween (2018), 2021’s Halloween Kills
After surviving Laurie Strode’s plan at the end of Halloween, Michael Myers continues his rampage across Haddonfield while a mob forms with the goal of putting the nightmare to an end.
Related Article: Halloween (1978) Explained
Related Article: Halloween (2018) Explained
Related Article: Halloween Ends (2022) Explained
Is it Scary?
Nah, there are a few jump scares in the movie but as opposed to Halloween (1978) and 2018’s sequel, Halloween Kills focuses mainly on… the kills. This entry felt solidly like a slasher and because of that, was pretty gory.
Overall you won’t leave Halloween Kills scared unless you don’t like the sight of blood and you have a 40 year old vendetta with a serial killer.
Detailed Plot:
You can read our detailed plot for the previous Halloween films in this timeline using the links above but in case you don’t, here’s a Quick Summary of Halloween (2018):
Michael escapes the mental asylum with the help of an obsessed Doctor Sartain who wants to see what happens when Michael sees Laurie Strode again. We learn in the last 40 years Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) had a daughter, Karen, and a granddaughter, Allyson (played by Judy Greer and Andi Matichak respectively).
Laurie is also pretty traumatized by the events of Halloween (78) and has been preparing like a doomsday prepper for Michael’s return.
Michael kills a bunch of people on his way to his house including a bunch of Allyson’s friends. Allison breaks up with her boyfriend Cameron because he’s a drunk douche and leaves a party without a phone with their mutual friend Oscar. Oscar is eventually killed by Michael.
As the bodies pile up, Deputy Frank Hawkins, an old friend of Laurie, wants to shut down Halloween but the Sheriff refuses. Eventually, Doctor Sartain, Frank, and Allyson capture Michael but Sartain stabs Frank in the neck and attempts to drive the unconscious Michael to Laurie’s home. Before they can get there, Allyson escapes as Michael wakes up and kills Sartain.
Michael ends up at Laurie’s home anyway, kills Karen’s husband, Ray, and has a showdown with Laurie. With the help of Karen and Allyson, Laurie (who gets stabbed) is able to trap Michael in her basement and set the house on fire. The movie ends with Michael presumably dying in the fire.
So how is there a sequel? Because Halloween (2018) made a good chunk of money and it was also pretty good.
Onto to Halloween Kills!
The film opens immediately following the end of Halloween (2018) in Haddonfield, Illinois and we see Cameron (played by Dylan Arnold) attempting to call Oscar to find out where he is. Walking through the streets, he spots an unconscious Deputy Frank (played by Will Patton) and in a jump scare, Frank wakes up shouting.
Frank tells Cameron Michael needs to die and he’s going to be the one to kill him which is pretty confident for a man who is currently bleeding out from a stab wound to the neck. We flashback to 1978 immediately after the end of the first film and we see a young officer Frank (played by Thomas Mann) spotting Michael walking the streets.
Frank has horrible aim and misses two shots as Michael escapes through an alleyway. Backup arrives and we get confirmation this is immediately after Loomis has shot Michael multiple times.
Deputies Frank and McCabe (played by Jim Cummings) decide to head to the Myers house to see if Michael went there. McCabe also mentions he knew Michael as a kid and his mom used to bring him to play with him but all Michael ever did was stare out the window.
We cut to Lonnie (who bullied Tommy in the first movie) being bullied himself by group of kids. A cop drives up and pretty bluntly tells them to go home as a murderer has just killed multiple people up the street.
Running home, Lonnie trips and Michael appears behind him. Cowering into the fetal position, Michael stops but continues walking. Frank and McCabe arrive shortly after and Lonnie tells him the boogeyman was just there. Frank and McCabe enter the Myers house where they continue the search for Michael.
For some reason, they split up and McCabe enters Judith’s room and stares out the window like there isn’t a serial killer possibly in that house. In a jump scare, Michael appears and attacks McCabe. Frank runs in and threatens to shoot Michael if he doesn’t let McCabe go.
Frank accidentally shoots McCabe in the neck. Michael decides this shit is crazy and leaves the house but not before Frank misses THREE MORE shots. As Frank fails to save McCabe inside, outside Loomis and multiple police surround Michael.
Cut to the opening credits!
Back in present (in this case 2018) we see a bunch of Haddonfield residents at a bar celebrating Halloween by watching a talent show. A grown-up Lonnie (played by Robert Longstreet) invites a grown-up Tommy (played by Anthony Michael Hall) to the stage. Since Tommy was the child that Laurie babysat in the first movie, he recounts the events of the first movie to other patrons.
We also learn that he, Lonnie, Marion (played by Nancy Stephens), and Lindsey (played by Kyle Richards), all from the original movie, have remained friends and go to the bar every year on Halloween to commemorate the victims and survivors.
We cut to Laurie, Allyson, and Karen where we left them at the end of the previous film, in the back of a truck as Laurie bleeds out from her stab wound. The trio spot firefighters heading in the direction of Laurie’s home and Laurie freaks out because she doesn’t want to give Michael any chance to live.
Firefighters enter the home and one falls through the floor into the basement where Michael appears and uses a pickaxe to kill him. Several firefighters outside hear the screams of others from inside and ready their axes and buzz saws as they see Michael emerging from the burning home.
Despite there being at least a half dozen trained firefighters with axes and a BUZZSAW, Michael kills them all easily. Meanwhile, Laurie, Karen, and Allyson arrive at the hospital where Laurie is taken into surgery and is expected to be fine.
At a home nearby Laurie’s, Michael breaks into middle-aged couple, Phil and Sondra’s, home. Grabbing Phil, Michael bashes his head into a wall and through a window. He then impales his back into glass shards in the window. Sondra runs to the kitchen and arms herself with a knife but Michael grabs a tube light, breaks it in half, and jams it into her neck.
As Sondra lies dying in the kitchen, Michael brings Phil into the kitchen and stabs him with multiple knives in front of Sondra.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Barker (played by Omar Dorsey) arrives at Laurie’s house and makes the understatement of the year by saying he’s got a massacre on his hands.
Back at the bar, Lonnie gets a call from his son, Cameron, I don’t remember if this was established in the first movie, but it probably was. Cameron tells him about Deputy Frank and Lonnie rushes over. After he leaves, multiple people get alerts on their phones telling them a killer is on the loose.
Conveniently the tv is interrupted by the news telling the captivated patrons about the murders that happened earlier in the day. The news also mentions that 2 patients from the mental asylum are still at large including Michael Myers, and they show a picture of him. So everyone now knows what Michael looks like, except us watching the movie because it gets blurred out so we can’t see it.
As many rush to go home, Tommy believes the murders and Michael being on the loose are connected… DUH. Outside, couple Marcus and Vanessa leave the bar but Marcus runs back in as he left behind a piece of his costume, his stethoscope.
Vanessa decides to go alone to the car like they didn’t just learn a killer is on the loose and screams when she sees someone in the backseat. Running out she tells Marcus that Michael is in the car despite not actually seeing him and then runs into the bar to make the same accusation. Tommy grabs a baseball bat and Marion yells out that ‘evil dies tonight’.
Marcus says Michael looked right at him before getting in the front seat of the car but no one questions what he looked like or if Marcus even knows what Michael looks like. As Tommy approaches the car, it speeds off and crashes across the street.
The group runs over but find the car empty and we see that the person who drove the car wasn’t Michael. It was actually a different escaped mental patient who looks nothing like Michael, including being significantly shorter and importantly, not wearing a mask.
At the hospital, the Sheriff arrives and informs Karen and Allyson that Michael is still alive causing them both to freak out. Cameron arrives and tells Allyson that he, his dad, and Tommy are going to go hunt Michael down. Allyson wants to join them but Karen refuses to let her go.
While Karen goes to check security, Allyson leaves an unconscious Laurie with a knife wrapped in clothing and runs outside to meet up with Tommy’s crew. Literally right outside the hospital, the group choose weapons and Allyson chooses a shotgun while declaring out loud to nobody, “Michael Myers has haunted this town for 40 years, tonight we hunt him down”.
We see a montage of Tommy and the rest gathering up several residents, setting up several checkpoints looking for Michael, and warning people outside that the streets are dangerous. Marion, Lindsey, Vanessa, and Marcus spot some children at a playground, and Lindsey elects to walk over and tell them to go home.
The kids taunt Lindsey and reveal that one of their friends went to go investigate a man in a white mask who was watching them from the bushes. They point him out to Lindsey and it’s Michael holding a bloody knife and the mask of the kids’ friend.
Lindsey tells them to run and when she turns back around Michael is gone. At the car, Michael appears and climbs on top causing Marion, Marcus, and Vanessa to freak out. Marion tries to shoot at Michael as he reaches down from the roof but she ends up shooting out most of the windows and locking the doors.
Vanessa jumps out of one of the windows as Michael grabs Marion’s hair in a scene reminiscent to Marion’s scene in the original film. Marcus helps Marion break free and the two try to escape the car but Michael jumps down from the roof. Marion takes aim but she’s run out of bullets so Michael climbs into the car and stabs her multiple times.
Marcus uses his stethoscope to try to choke Michael but he’s quickly overpowered and stabbed in the face. Vanessa shoots toward Michael from outside the car but apparently, she learned to shoot from young Frank because she misses every shot.
Approaching the car she continues shooting and Michael kicks the car door open slamming it into her arm and causing her to shoot herself in the face.
Lindsey appears and attacks Michael with a bag full of bricks, getting some pretty good shots in. Michael is able to grab her and slam her against the car but as he chokes her, she reaches for his mask almost pulling it off. Michael throws her on the ground as he fixes his mask and Lindsey runs off able to hide from him by hiding near a small creek.
At the hospital Laurie regains consciousness and Karen realizes that Allyson is gone. She also doesn’t reveal to Laurie that Michael is still alive. Fresh out of surgery, an unconscious Frank is brought into the same room for recovery.
Tommy, Lonnie, Cameron, and Allyson arrive at the playground, and seeing Lindsey’s truck empty they search for the group. They quickly stumble upon Michael’s art project involving some dead bodies. The group then spot Marion hanging from the swings and a still alive Lindsey.
At the hospital, Frank wakes up and Laurie tells him they killed Michael. Meanwhile, residents are overcrowding the hospital looking for their lost loved ones. Tommy arrives and has Lindsey taken away for help but takes the opportunity to rally the people for some vigilantism including yelling out the phrase ‘evil dies tonight’.
The Sheriff tries to put the hospital on lockdown and quell the call to violence but Tommy yells that the sheriff has failed Haddonfield. Hospital security guard Brackett, who was the sheriff in the original film, yells in agreement with Tommy and cries out ‘evil dies tonight.”
Tommy runs into Laurie’s room and tells her Michael is still on the loose but promises to protect her like she did for him 40 years ago. Laurie tells Tommy to find Michael as they have to fight.
Karen tries to calm Laurie down but it’s to no avail as Laurie states that she’s willing to die as long as Michael dies with her. Laurie then grabs Frank’s pain meds and injects herself despite not knowing what it is.
We cut to the Myer’s House now owned by couple Big John and Little John. We saw them earlier in the movie getting pranked by kids but it didn’t affect the movie in any way so I saved some finger strength. As they watch a movie, someone bangs on their back door. Believing it’s just kids again, Little John goes out but they then hear bangs from the front door.
Big John goes outside and finds no one but tries to intimidate the children he believes are banging on his door by screaming about how the house is haunted. He then asks Little John if he locked the back door and although he doesn’t remember and goes to check, we, the audience, know he definitely didn’t.
He learns this the hard way when he sees the backdoor open and a bloody handprint on the wall. Calling out to Big John, the two grab knives, separate, and search the home for their intruder.
In the bedroom, Big John is stabbed in the armpit by Michael and has his eyes gouged out. Little John rushes to the room and sees Michael staring out the window. We don’t see how he dies but we hear him crying out as we pan away from the house.
Meanwhile, at the hospital, the other escaped mental patient, who is clearly not Michael, has arrived asking for help but the mob believes he is Michael and start chasing him. Running through the halls, Karen and Laurie get a good look at him and realize it’s not Michael.
Though they try to tell the mob, they are completely ignored and pushed aside. One altercation causes Laurie’s stitches to rip open. A deputy and Karen bring Laurie back to her room where they inform the other deputies and the Sheriff that the man the mob is chasing is not Michael.
Hospital staff announce they spotted the man on the second floor and the mob heads up. The deputies and Karen try to tell them it’s not Michael but the mob is out of control with several people falling downstairs, Tommy punching a deputy trying to stop him, and people getting trampled.
In her hospital room, Laurie tells Frank that the chaos is exactly what Michael wanted and it’s all her fault. Frank then reveals that it’s his fault and we flashback to 1978. After McCabe’s death, young Frank heads outside where Loomis and the police have Michael surrounded.
The cops beat Michael to the ground, remove his mask, and Loomis raises his gun to execute Michael but Frank stops him. In the present Laurie tells Frank he is a good man and was only doing his job but now Michael needs to die.
Glad we got that sorted out, wasn’t sure if killing the unstoppable, supernatural, force of evil was a good idea until now.
On one of the floors, Karen finds the mental patient and tells him she’s going to help him. Hearing the mob approaching, Karen puts the patient in a passageway and locks him inside.
The mob arrives and, unable to open the locked doors, they start bashing the glass on the doors with fire extinguishers. Karen tries to control the group but we see that even outside a large mob has formed chanting ‘evil dies tonight’.
With the mob almost breaking through, the patient resigned to his fate; grabs a fire extinguisher, breaks a nearby window, and jumps down to his death. Running outside, Brackett confirms to Tommy that it is not Michael and states to nobody that they are now turning into monsters.
Karen informs Laurie about the events and Laurie demands that Karen let her find Michael stating that Michael is after her. Frank jumps in and says that it was never about her since it was Doctor Sartain that brought Michael to her (Halloween 2018) and it wasn’t Michael’s intention. He adds that Michael only wants one thing, to go home.
Here’s the thing though, in the original Halloween (1978) Michael, very clearly, is hunting Laurie, he becomes obsessed with her and stalks her throughout the entire movie. I understand they’re trying to retcon a lot of those connections that happened in the original sequels but you can’t say “it was never about Laurie”. Halloween (1978) was 100% about Michael trying to kill Laurie.
Meanwhile, Lonnie, Cameron, and Allyson figure out that Michael is on his way home and they head there to confront him but don’t tell anyone else.
Lonnie has a moment of clarity and realizes he brought his son to Michael’s home so he asks them to stay in the car… but, still doesn’t call anyone else for backup. Allyson and Cameron reluctantly agree to stay inside and Lonnie heads in with only a handgun.
Moments later Allyson and Cameron hear a gunshot, run inside, and search the home. Upstairs they find the posed bodies of Big John and Little John. For some unknown reason, Allyson runs to their bodies and removes the knife from Little John’s chest. For some bigger unknown reason, Cameron continues searching the house ALONE.
Unsurprisingly he finds his dad’s body stuffed in the attic door and, in a jump scare, Michael jumps out from a closet, lunging at Cameron. Cameron fires but misses and Michael pushes him against the wall stabbing him a few times. Allyson runs in and fires but Michael knocks the shotgun away.
Allyson pulls out the knife and stabs Michael several times in the stomach which appears to do jack shit. He grabs Allyson, looks at her like he recognizes her, and throws her down the stairs. Landing at the bottom, Allyson injures her leg just like grandma in the original.
A still alive Cameron tries to reach for the gun but Michael stomps on his arm. He then grabs him, bashes his head a few times on the staircase railing, impales him on some broken wood, and finally snaps his neck. It was extremely brutal and felt like it was done as a way to torture Allyson who was watching.
Michael heads downstairs and Allyson tries to stab him but he easily grabs the knife. Turning it on her, Allyson yells at him to do it and Michael seems a bit confused by the request. But, it’s revealed that she’s talking to Karen who appears with a pitchfork. Karen stabs Michael in the back and drops him onto the steps where she stomps on his head.
Although he appears unconscious, Karen removes his mask which immediately wakes him up. Using his mask Karen demands Michael go after her which he does because clearly, that mask holds a lot of sentimental value.
Karen leads him down a street and in between houses where he loses her but, Michael spots his mask on a sidewalk nearby. Michael grabs his mask and it’s revealed to be a trap as the residents of Haddonfield surround him.
The mob attack and pretty quickly beat the ever-loving shit out of Michael including shooting him multiple times. On the ground, Michael struggles to grab his knife but Karen picks it up and stabs him in the freaking spine, so he’s totally dead. I mean, EVIL DIED TONIGHT!
In the hospital, Laurie tells Frank that Michael is not a mortal man and instead something that gets stronger the more he kills. Would be nice if she shared her sources with the class so everyone can be prepared but I guess that’s not going to happen.
A few minutes later, Karen is with Allyson at the Myers House as paramedics treat her and a smaller group led by Tommy is about to finish off Michael for good. Brackett raises his gun to Michael’s head and is about to shoot but Michael wakes up, pulls the knife out of his spine, and slices Brackett’s neck. Oh, no… evil… dies tonight?
Michael then kills the rest of the group, and I think the problem is that they appear to be attacking one by one unlike a few minutes ago when they attacked together. Finally, Michael kills Tommy and bashes his head in with his bat.
Back at the Myer’s house as the paramedics continue to treat patients and Allyson is loaded up, in the dumbest character decision I’ve seen in recent memory Karen decides to enter the Myers house alone. What the fuck?
She then goes to Judith’s old room and looks out the window like Michael used to do. Unsurprisingly Michael appears behind her and kills her.
The film ends as we see Karen’s lifeless body fall to the ground.
Review:
Halloween Kills is good but it is a huge step down from Halloween (2018) it also very heavily leans into Michael Myers being an evil mythical unstoppable figure. At various points in the movie it felt as if we were being told of a legend and that’s fine but it’s pretty hard departure from Halloween (2018) which felt way more grounded.
I did like the mob mentality aspect to the town as it feels like something that might happen although it started to get a bit unbelievable when they were chasing someone clearly not Michael. Also Karen and Laurie being the only ones to realize it’s not Michael was another unbelievable aspect.
A more interesting approach would have been another group of people fighting off the unhinged mob and reflecting that off of Frank’s belief that he did the wrong thing protecting Michael in 1978.
The acting was great by the leads while some supporting characters felt like they were hamming it up for dramatic effect. The same is said for the dialogue, the supporting characters constantly yelling “evil dies tonight” and at times making random declarations felt borderline off-putting (cringey).
I definitely feel like the music was used for better effect than Halloween (2018) but nowhere near the suspense-building levels of Halloween (1978). By far the biggest negative for me in this movie was Karen’s death. It was extremely dumb and felt forced. It was almost like the writers realized they couldn’t end the movie without killing off one of the main characters and shoehorned this forced death.
Karen was the most logical of the three main characters and had no real reason to go upstairs and look out the window. Sure, the movie tried to play up the Michael looking out the window aspect (which btw is a retcon) but connecting that with Karen made no sense.
Overall Halloween Kills is still good as a sequel. The movie is also pretty gory and at times pushes that line depicting the brutal kills so if you’re squeamish or don’t like gore, you might drop this down to an okay.
Cast IMDB