2018’s Halloween sequel was one of the first series to take advantage of deleting the franchise’s past history outside of the original – to make a fully-fledged proper follow-up to John Carpenter’s iconic 1978 horror.
And now all the good work has pretty much been eradicated, as this second film in this new trilogy to wrap up the ‘Halloween’ story, ends up being little better than the awful cashing-in sequels from the eighties/nineties.
While there’s an interesting premise behind it – which brings back the grown-up versions of the ‘affected’ kids from the original (including Anthony Michael Hall as Tommy Doyle) – this falls foul of being embarrassingly idiotic at times.
How many times can masked-psychopath Michael Myers be missed with a gun? How many times can people inexplicably run down a dark alley when they are faster than him and he’s only at walking pace? Plain and simple, at times this is bloody stupid.
In fact, it’s also extremely ‘bloody’ with a near forty ‘kill count’ – so if you’re a ‘slasher’ fan it does at least tick one major box.
This ‘sequel’ – so now third in the new official film ‘canon’ – takes place directly after the last, with Myers supposedly perishing in a fire after being left for dead by Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie Strode, daughter Karen (Judy Greer) and grand-daughter Allyson (Andi Matichak).
After laying waste to a group of poor firemen, news of this incident reaches Haddonfield, and unwilling to re-live the events of forty years before again, Doyle rallies the townsfolk to hunt Michael down in a form of ‘mob justice’.
Sadly he didn’t count on them all being ‘idiots’ – without a brain cell between them – as they comically blunder with Michael at their mercy.
Nice idea. Really poor execution.
The film really suffers with Lee Curtis taking a back-seat (she spends the first half recovering in hospital after her stabbing) and it runs out of purpose – and anything close to a coherent script – very quickly. And they had a chance to potentially sort this after its year ‘delay’ due to Covid.
It’ll still be (kinda) interesting to see where this ends up with erm, Halloween Ends next year, but sadly this only has blood and gore going for it – and has lost a heap of good will after Michael made an impressive comeback three years ago.
He sadly really doesn’t kill it here – he murders it. And not in a good way.
Rating: 2/5
Gavin Miller
Showcase Cinema De Lux Peterborough, Out Now
Cast: Judy Greer, Andi Matichak, Jamie Lee Curtis, Anthony Michael Hall, Will Patton, Dylan Arnold, Kyle Richards, James Jude Courtney & Nick Castle
Running Time: 1 Hr 45 Mins
Director: David Gordon Green
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