Halloween Kills

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🎙️ EPISODE 376: 10.29.21 A lot of folks have been GOING OFF on Halloween 2: Part 12 — Redux: Halloween Kills (?), and far be it from me to be piling on for the sake of be piling on. Instead allow me to simply pile on because HOLY SHIT THOSE FOLKS ARE 100% RIGHT THIS IS A GODDAM MESS OF THE HIGHEST ORDER. I had to stop about 3/4 of the way through this and truly consider whether the entire enterprise was some sort of farce; that this was an attempt from noted 'funny guys' Danny McBride (co-writer) and David Gordon Green (director/co-writer) to be funny on... on... some level? Because the plot, the characters, and — above all else — the dialogue are so so so stupid that all you can really do is shake your head and say what the fuck am I even watching? But there's not really any concrete evidence that this is all some inside joke or convoluted meta goof. No, this is the movie that they were attempting to make.

A true sequel to 2018's honestly not that bad rebootish direct sequel of the 1978 original which smartly ignored all of the franchise's subsequent entries. That movie wasn't great by any stretch of the imagination (it hinged on the flimsiest of premises, which — in part — proved to be this film's undoing), but it was fun and simple and didn't take itself so seriously. This movie is not fun, possibly too simple (?) and — worst of all — takes itself WAY too seriously, engaging in the mythology of the franchise in the dumbest and forced ways possible.

The plot/entire gist of this can be summed up in only a few sentences, so allow me to do that now. We pick up right at the fire that ended the 2018 version and — wouldn't you know it — the damn fire department is on the scene extinguishing said fire. This is weird because it essentially makes the firemen kind of like bad guys, and firemen are nothing but heroes in my book (yeah, I said it). Anyway, Michael survives (duh) and starts killing a shit ton of random people (duh). And here's the thing about that: it's not scary, like... not scary at all. It's gruesome and violent and I guess some props go out to them for not shying away from that Hard-R style blood and guts, but I don't give a shit about any of the people he's killing and it's all filmed in such way that there's almost no tension. These guys are introduced, then they die horribly. Those guys are introduced, then they die horribly. And so on. Meanwhile, a big-ass angry mob forms, led by a few of the grown-up children from the 1978 movie (Anthony Michael Hall, etc.) who are inexplicably real-life friends now with some truly random adult characters from that plot-line despite their 3+ decade age difference. Oh, and Jamie Lee Curtis gets really mad from her hospital bed recovering from the wounds she suffered trapping Michael in that fiery basement (she attempts to leave the hospital one time, but doesn't; she spends this entire movie in a fucking hospital bed lol). The angry mob forces a guy (who they mistakenly think is Michael, even though he's over a foot shorter and much fatter) to commit suicide. They eventually get to Michael, inflict angry mob justice on his ass, except he — of course — comes back to life and kills most of them, setting up god-knows-what for the 3rd and final entry in this now fully unfixable franchise.

So, yeah, where does one even begin? This is such an absolute hot mess it is stunning. There are so many directions this could have gone with each path more or less landing with a serviceable sequel as the result. If you came up with 50 ideas for how this could've gone, this one would easily rank at or near the very bottom. I have no real stake in this game, either. I'm no Halloween franchise mega-fan (I wouldn't even call myself a casual one). I wonder what most of them thought of this. I do WANT to say that, because this was such a failure, it negates the proposed Halloween Ends which starts filming in January and is supposedly due October 2022, but honestly I think I am weirdly more interested in that now because I just need to see how they TRY to solve this thing. And that's at least something, right?

CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 375 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 377 ⫸

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