Halloween Kills is Avengers: Infinity War from the new Halloween trilogy

This first glimpse of Halloween kills comes from the film’s world premiere at the 2021 Venice International Film Festival. Halloween kills opens in US theaters on October 15. Stay tuned for a full review as the film’s release draws near.

Producer Jason Blum is a big liar. It’s the first thing you need to know about the next horror movie. Halloween kills, because Blum explicitly stated last year that the sequel to 2018 Halloween – Which one is also the prequel to the next one Halloween ends – wouldn’t be half of a movie. It “looks like a full movie,” Blum told io9 in 2020. “There’s a first, second, and third act. It has a big end. You always know from the end of the second movie where the third goes. film, but the second film ends in a completely satisfactory way.

Well, Halloween kills, which just premiered at the Venice International Film Festival, definitely has three acts and a grand finale scene marking the end of the film. But that doesn’t make it a satisfying ending to this chapter of the story.

Halloween kills picks up immediately after the events of the 2018 film, which ended with three generations of Strodes – Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis), Karen (Judy Greer) and Allison (Andi Matichak) – apparently killing Michael Myers once and for all. Of course, The Shape survives yet again, and he’s more bloodthirsty than ever. But things are different in this movie, because for once Michael is the one being hunted down, and the lines between victim and abuser begin to blur.

Photo: NBC Universal

Rather than delivering the same story rhythms as the original film, but in a different setting, like that of 1981 Halloween ii made, Halloween kills Really looks like the planned second chapter of a trilogy that’s supposed to tell a big story. On the one hand, the film focuses on the wider Haddonfield community, bringing back fan-favorite characters from the 1978 franchise launch film to show how the original Michael Myers killings affected not only his victims and survivors. , but the community as a whole. . Anthony Michael Hall plays Tommy Doyle, the child Laurie kept when she first met the Boogeyman, and he struggles just as much as she does, unable to let go of the past, and is still preparing for the day. where the form begins to kill again.

So, when news is broke that Michael Myers has escaped from the institution holding him back, Tommy begins to organize a mob to take on the monster before he follows them, an idea that spills over into the community. town like wildfire. Director David Gordon Green, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Scott Teems and Danny McBride, and directs this entire trilogy, places major emphasis on the idea of ​​mob justice and how fear becomes hate, which becomes violence. It’s an intriguing idea that could potentially comment on the slasher genre as a whole, especially its problematic history of portraying the mentally ill as violent killers. Sadly, this film backs off all of its attempts at commentary, and the abrupt ending interrupts any final statement that might be made by the script, leaving behind a messy allegory to nullify the culture and mentality of the crowd, rather than something insightful.

The same can be said of the way the film treats Michael Myers himself. In a way, where the 2018 Halloween was all about Laurie, this is Michael’s movie. The tone is darker, the deaths are bloodier and more brutal, and audiences spend more time with him than previous films normally would. Halloween kills tries to explore Michael’s idea and the question of his nature, but never really comes to any conclusions. Is he like Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween argues, a scared little boy in the body of an incredibly strong man, with killer animal instincts? Or is he evil incarnate and a supernatural entity, as he is in the 1995s The curse of Michael Myers?

Photo: NBC Universal

Since Michael Myers is such a mystery, revealing his nature is always fruitful for films in the franchise, no matter how often filmmakers come back to the same questions and answer them differently. The problem is, the movie ends right before you can ask questions. Is good the Avengers: Infinity War of Halloween franchise: it brings back beloved characters for a big chapter where evil is at its strongest, it has a more dramatic undertone than the other films in its franchise, and it asks big questions that could change the shape of the narrative. Corn Halloween kills uses it all as just a table for the sequel, hoping audiences stick around long enough to learn the answers by paying for another movie.

It is therefore curious that a film which was planned well in advance as part of a trilogy, but which is not advertised as such, does not function as a stand-alone medium in the way Dune does – although Dune literally has a Part one title at the beginning. Where director Denis Villeneuve found a good place to end his debut Dune chapter in a satisfying way that brings back themes and plot points while introducing new ones to keep the audience engaged, Halloween kills is only half of a full movie. There’s a third act that builds to a natural place to end the story, but instead the script continues, until it suddenly stops because the credits start rolling, not because that the story is over.

Halloween kills features thought-provoking insights into the nature of serial killer and mob justice-focused slashers, with a larger, darker chapter that pays homage to the past while looking to the future. But the film is so focused on this future that it neglects its present. In this io9 interview, Jason Blum promised Halloween kills would avoid “this Lord of the Rings problem” where the audience might feel like they “didn’t understand the whole story” and promised to avoid it problem with the central chapter of this trilogy. Turns out he avoided it, because The two towers is more of a self-contained and satisfying story than this movie.