Halloween Kills
Michael Myers lumbers into the twelfth instalment of the horror franchise inciting more tedium than alarm.
Just as the twenty-fifth James Bond film scales new heights, so the twelfth Halloween stabs itself in the face. Besides the obvious commercial value of another cheap instalment of a recognised brand, there seems no earthly reason to extend the enterprise another minute longer. The shameful thing is that John Carpenter, the director of the original 1978 shocker, endorses the new enterprise as one of seven executive producers (along with Jamie Lee Curtis). It’s not even a spoiler to reveal that this time next year we’ll be getting Halloween Ends, as one just can’t spoil Michael Myers. He is the sluggish, indestructible bogeyman who appears and vanishes at the flick of the editor’s knife. In spite of his wide public recognition, he can slip in and out of a house and past a police barricade without anybody noticing. Now you don’t see him, now he’s got a butcher’s knife in your gut. Of course, the citizens of Haddonfield are spectacularly slow-witted and say things other people don’t. And when creeping up on Myers to kill him they shout out his name, to give him ample time to turn around and take out their oesophagus.
While laying claim to be the goriest Halloween yet, number twelve is also the dumbest. Forsaking any attempts to rationalise the illogical, it seems more concerned with fulfilling its criteria of political correctness. So, rather than the traditional litter of scantily-clad babysitters, we now have the black couple and the gay couple and the teenage boy in a dress: all equal-opportunity lambs to the slaughter. Such calculated inclusiveness seems far more offensive than the viscera displayed on screen, the latter employed to flaunt the new advances in prosthetic proficiency. But if all this sounds remotely interesting, it isn’t, as the mechanical MO robs the film of any suspense, such as when an elderly couple – he’s white, she’s black – are explicitly sliced up for our apparent delectation. It isn’t interesting because we don’t know them as characters but we do know that they are going to meet a horrible end. It really is terribly boring.
If Halloween Kills has any shocks to vaunt, it is the choice of David Gordon Green as director and co-writer. He already turned in a mediocre sequel to the original film three years ago, although it saw a phenomenal return on its investment. But at least it had some visceral impact. Here, the gore is so over-the-top that without any elements of black humour it is just yucky. And this is the man whose first film, George Washington (2000), prompted The Los Angeles Times to declare that it is “one of the most striking and affecting American independent films of the year, heralding the arrival of a formidable young talent.” The other shock – an early one – is the digital resurrection of Donald Pleasence as Myers’ psychiatrist Dr Sam Loomis, rabbiting on about the coming of “pure evil.” This sentiment is adopted by the baying natives of Haddonfield who chant “the evil dies tonight!”, like people do. Of course, it’s preposterous.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Will Patton, Thomas Mann, Anthony Michael Hall, Robert Longstreet, Dylan Arnold, Omar Dorsey, James Jude Courtney, Scott MacArthur, Michael McDonald, Jim Cummings, Charles Cyphers, Diva Tyler, Lenny Clarke, Nick Castle, Nicholas Pryor.
Dir David Gordon Green, Pro Malek Akkad, Jason Blum and Bill Block, Ex Pro John Carpenter, Jamie Lee Curtis, David Gordon Green, Ryan Friedman, Danny McBride, Couper Samuelson and Jeanette Volturno Screenplay Scott Teems, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, Ph Michael Simmonds, Pro Des Richard A. Wright, Ed Tim Alverson, Music John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, Costumes Emily Gunshor.
Miramax/Blumhouse Productions/Trancas International Pictures/Rough House Productions-Universal Pictures.
105 mins. USA/UK. 2021. Rel: 15 October 2021. Cert. 18.
