I wanted to watch Last Night in Soho, but to my surprise, the house was completely full about thirty minutes before the film started, and so instead of watching the next Edgar Wright effort I was instead forced to choose between a crowded and underhyped showing of Eternals or Halloween Kills. I don’t know that I’ve ever been less interested in a movie or movie franchise in my entire life. My awareness of the Michael Myers mythos is extremely scant and I’ve never really spared any of these properties a second thought. So imagine my surprise when I’m actually keeping up with the movie world, and my utter disappointment in it when the credits rolled.
Framing Fear
Halloween Kills is a slasherfest to end all slashers. There is so, so much murder and mayhem that it’s ridiculous. I think it’s preposterous that a guy who walks around and stabs people has been this hard to kill. I suppose that it’s just the supernatural element to the character, and gives him the fuel he needs to complete his bloody crusades. In theory, I think you can actually use Myers as a framing device, around which you can construct a well thought out, contemplative story and a set of characters that you can grow to care for. Instead, the movie chooses to… Actually I have no idea what the film ended up accomplishing. The guy just kills everyone and it’s not even entertaining.
Worse yet, it’s not even scary. I really did enter this film wanting to study it as a horror, and see if I could identify how elements of the film served to incite drama, tension and fear. Unfortunately, the movie is just one long string of tropes and clichés, used, misused and overused.
About halfway into the movie, we spend a moment in the hospital where an angry, bleating crowd bullies a fat, balding man into committing suicide. The result is a fairly graphic, gratuitous shot of his skull cracked open and spilled across the pavement, like a chunky bloody mary spilling from a goblet. Hey, I had to see that shit and now you have to sit through the description. I feel like there was something that could have been said, or a depth that could have been explored, but honestly the film has such little substance that I think they began filming the sequence, realized it was bullshit halfway in, and then sort of resigned themselves to it.
Jamie Lee Curtis is in this, and she basically just plays a homeless woman who gets angry and takes a painkiller to go fight Myers, but then gets shoved over, her stitches open up and then I legitimately have no idea what happens to her after this. It’s clear that she’s a leftover vestige from whatever film preceded this one, as this movie is a direct sequel to some other film. I suspect that this film, Halloween Kills, will serve as a prequel for some other film that I will not be fucked to see.
Evil Dies Tonight…?
The movie sucked. I don’t like slashers, but even for a slasher, this thing sucked. Why did they make it? Who the fuck is Michael Myers and why can’t he die? Why are these people unironically chanting ‘Evil dies tonight’? These answers may likely be best left unanswered. 2/10. There were not enough boobs in this movie and I am not happy about that.
Halloween Kills is currently in theaters, but I promise you, you really should go see something else even if you like slashers and horrors. Might I suggest a short film, made by yours truly?
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Originally published at http://85scenesreviews.wordpress.com on November 8, 2021.
