Rent Halloween Kills (2021)

Horrible - Halloween Kills review by MM

Just like 2018's "Halloween", this movie is just a cash grab. If you haven't watched the original(s), then chances are you *may* enjoy this one. However, if you're like me who has watched ALL of the original ones, you won't like it. This movie just feels so forced and boring. You can tell Jamie Lee Curtis is getting paid a lot and isn't too bothered ?? But yeah, the Halloween franchise really needs to end, it's easily one of the worst Horror movie franchise

Abysmal - Halloween Kills review by SV

The plot is borderline incomprehensible, with about a dozen incoherent threads spliced together intermittently, some of them in the past.

There are a million characters, none of whom you will be able to bring yourself to care about at all. Apparently some incidental characters are from previous installments, and much is made of this, even though it matters not a jot.

The acting is on a par with the script, that is to say, execrable. I suspected Jamie Lee Curtis might stay in a coma throughout to avoid being associated with this but seemingly her career is in freefall.

The whole thing has a straight-to-video feel but without any redeeming charm. It's entirely free of humor and lacking in any kind of suspense or character investment, which renders even the vivid gore kind of objectionable.

I didn't mind the last one, which is why I bothered to give this one a go, but it's unimaginable to me that another Halloween film will be made after this.

Nothing to see here ... - Halloween Kills review by NP

It would be ridiculous to imagine Michael Myers, over forty years after his debut, was still of an age to adopt the physical prowess of a slasher killer. So, because ‘Halloween’ has long since been a franchise and needs to continue to make money, he has to become more than human: to possess powers beyond human understanding (‘the more he kills, the more he transcends,’ is all we get - never specified, explained or explored). He has all this power, yet chooses to go around stabbing sketchy residents while wearing a William Shatner mask. The notion of the ‘boogeyman’ is a frightening idea stretched decades over its reasonable lifespan, and has to continue because … well, because.

There’s a well-executed set-piece near the beginning where an entire fire-crew are killed by this one-note spectre. It’s impressively staged but empty because the villain is an impossible antagonist – no rules apply to him. He keeps coming back, so you know the outcome: anyone you meet is killed. So where do you go from there?

You bring back Jamie Lee Curtis again from the original and make another reboot, designed as a trilogy, that’s where. By its very nature, this delivers exactly what you expect. This is the middle portion, so things are more in limbo than usual – nothing major will occur because there’s still another instalment to come. Laurie Strode is sidelined because presumably, she will have a hand in despatching Michael in the apparent finale (before he appears to come back to life seconds before the end credits roll, I imagine).

So we have more of the same here. Loud non-entities, all virtually identical in character, horrible squealing kids, come and go in often lacklustre fashion; Michael, the least interesting of the lot, endures because the initial idea first introduced all those decades ago, was a successful one.

The deaths are brief and perfunctory, except the heroine survives all manner of violence, because she’s the heroine. Even her inevitable cry of ‘come and get me, mother*****r’ fails to inspire Michael to finish her off. The portrayal of a town quickly descending into panic is effective, but that’s about it. My score is 3 out of 10.