Ghost Upon the Floor

 Tonight, we did something different for the film project. The Ghost and the Witch got together and watched the brand new “Halloween Kills,” the sequel to 2018’s David Gordon Green sequel/reboot of John Carpenter’s immortal classic “Halloween” from 1978. I was a huge fan of the 2018 film, and watched it as part of our film series in preparation just a few nights ago. And so the Ghost was super excited to see what the sequel would be like. What could be better than a new, Jamie Lee Curtis led Halloween film in October?

 The high point for the film for me was the opening flash back to the very ending of the 1978 film. These events are newly created for these new films, but the feeling, atmosphere and the look of the film are amazingly believable as part of the 1978 film. The actor who briefly plays Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis is amazing; we thought it had to be some kind of computer-generated trick. I also loved the flashback’s concluding shot and call back to the film’s opening.

The other good here come from the sequences early on; any scene Jamie Lee Curtis touches is fantastic, and while her character is in the hospital recovering from her injuries of the first film and she can’t believably run around as much, the side lining of her in the film nonetheless hurts the movie as a whole. It’s fantastic to see Kyle Richards back as Lindsey; her sequences in the film are great, and help justify its existence. While Brian Andrews unfortunately couldn’t play Tommy Doyle, I actually loved the casting of Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy, and thought he was used interestingly in the film. Other good comes from some of the jokes this movie has; noticeably dialed back from 2018, the humor in here—such as the kids running around on Halloween night stealing candy and unphased by Michael Meyers or the gay couple that has rehabbed the Meyers house—is organic and good.

What I didn’t like so much about the film was the ending. The last sequences are very weak, and commit the sin so many of the mid-franchise sequels did, in explaining too much about Michael, and taking the mystery away from him. Without his mystery Michael is so much less scary, and the very last shots of the film don’t even seem to be from the same movie.

Is “Halloween Kills” woth watching? Absolutely. It is far from my favorite of the franchise, however, and I do think that the 2018 film maybe should have been left to stand on its own.